She is a Turkish immigrant to the U.S. who spent her early years living in Turkey and Iran, with her family having to flee Iran at the time of the fall of the Shah. After completing her college degree in the U.S. she got a part-time job with the FBI translating recordings from Turkish into English. It was at this point that she discovered that some of the other translators were in some cases inept and in others intentionally doing mistranslations in order to hide subversive activities. Meanwhile, her supervisor would complain that she was working too fast. She should work slower, in his opinion, so that the department would hire more translators and he would be in charge of more employees and a bigger budget. When she reported these things she was the person who got fired and charged with crimes. A lot of these documents which were being translated had connections to the events of 9/11.
Our opinions about this book were split. Some of us thought that the book was very interesting if scary in exposing what was happening in our government institutions.
Azad thought that the book was long and boring and wondered how true the book could be. Sibel Edmonds ended up having to fight some long court cases to defend herself against government charges and Azad wondered where the money came from to pay for her defense. Lowell agreed with him about his suspicions.
We discussed that it was interesting that one person who stepped up to support Edmonds and became a friend was Daniel Ellsworth of Pentagon Papers fame. The book mentioned that Ellsworth's organization and the ACLU helped with some of Edmonds' law bills.
We discussed how one of the other translators at the FBI when Edmonds was there tried to recruit her and her husband to work for a Turkish organization which worked to prevent bad info about Turkey being exposed in the U.S. She was offered a lot of money to do it, but turned it down.
We discussed how Edmonds' extended family in Turkey was threatened by the Turkish government because of her actions. Her mother and sister living in the U.S. cut off all communication with her because of this.
Margaret was impressed by Edmonds' comments toward the end of the book about the time that she put into traveling to Vietnam in order to adopt a baby girl.
We discussed the 60 minutes interview with Edmonds from 2002, which can be found on youtube. It is well worth watching.
One of the interesting side discussions this month was when Azad talked about his many trips to Papua New Guinea for his job selling and supporting equipment to the copper/gold mine at the top of a mountain 7,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level.
We had a short discussion of other books. Azad recommended "Song of America" by George Mardikian. He also strongly recommended "Full Moon Over Noah's Ark" by Rick Antonson, which we chose to read for our May meeting.
The next meeting will be on May 20th. Until then ...