ACLU Rises to Defense of FBI Whistleblower Edmonds
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) today issued a press release in which it raised the unresolved case of Sibel Edmonds, the FBI whistleblower who gave compelling evidence of catastrophic incompetence, corruption and criminal activity within the FBI and Justice Department and US military until, that is, she was silenced by a gag order from the former Justice Department chief, John Ashcroft.The leading civil liberties watchdog petitioned the Washington D.C. Court of Appeals to reconsider its decision to not here Edmonds’ stalled case, charging the government with gratuitous and unfair use of the “state secrets privilege” to punish whisteblowers- in this case, Edmonds – for speaking out on controversial matters that have the tendency to embarrass the government.
“…The government should be applauding, not punishing, employees who risk their jobs to expose threats to our nation’s security,” said ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson. “If the lower court ruling stands, many thousands of government employees will be unprotected from retaliatory dismissal, with no recourse in the courts, and others will be even less willing to risk exposing misconduct or corruption.”
If George Bush and his administrators are really serious about the war on terror, and about preventing tragedies such as 9/11 from occurring again, it is imperative that they allow the testimony of individuals such as Edmonds to get a fair hearing. There is no sense in cowering in fear behind the faˆšÃŸade of “state secrets” when vital information – no matter how potentially embarrassing it may turn out to be – is at stake.
In its press release, the ACLU also reiterated its interest in championing the causes of other potential whistleblowers, and urged others to come forward. “…Notable whistleblowers such as John M. Cole and Frederic Whitehurst support Edmonds’ case,” recounts the ACLU, “as do several senators, the families of 9/11 victims, the Project On Government Oversight and a long list of others. Many of them will be joining a friend-of-the-court brief to be filed later this month.”
The group also invites the press to a special briefing in Washington where representatives of these groups “…will be available for interview at a noon news conference at the National Press Club on Wednesday, January 26.”
The state secrets privilege is not often used, though it’s unsurprising that such a lover of liberties as John Ashcroft would have developed such a fondness for it. It allows the government, when cases of national security are involved, to block disclosure of relevant documents.
However, “…in the Edmonds case, the government used the privilege not just to protect particular documents but to urge dismissal of the entire case.”
Is the current imbroglio indicative of the government’s fate to be doomed by a failure to learn from history? In 1948, the ACLU recalls, the state secrets privilege was used by the government
“…to cover up its own negligence. In the 1948 Supreme Court case Reynolds v. United States, the government claimed that disclosing a military flight accident report would jeopardize secret military equipment and harm national security. Nearly 50 years later, in 2004, the truth came out-the accident report contained no state secrets, but instead confirmed that the cause of the crash was faulty maintenance of the B-29 fleet.”
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