Sibels' Struggle Continues

perhaps to the Supreme Court.

An FBI contract employee who was fired after alleging national security breaches within the bureau's translation service plans to appeal to the Supreme Court to lift a gag order that she has been under for almost three years.

Sibel Edmonds lost her latest court battle on Friday when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a lower court's ruling that dismissed her lawsuit against the Justice Department. Edmonds alleges there were security breaches, mismanagement and possible espionage within the FBI's translation service in late 2001 and early 2002. She says the information she knows would lead to criminal prosecutions if aggressively pursued.

"We are going to the Supreme Court, that's for sure," Edmonds said Monday.

Edmonds, who worked under contract in the FBI's Washington field office, sued the Justice Department after being fired in 2002. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed her lawsuit last summer after former Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the state secrets privilege, which allows the government to withhold information to safeguard national security.

District Judge Reggie Walton said information about Edmonds' case would cause serious damage to the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States if publicly disclosed.

Damage to national security? How so? That sounds like a load of crap to me. Damage to foreign policy interests I can believe. In other words, this stuff would be very embarrassing for the US and would show just how slimy our empire is. We would hate for that to become public, wouldn't we?