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Today's featured truth teller - John M. Cole

Revealing negligence and security risks and supporting Sibel Edmonds at the FBI.

A veteran FBI counterintelligence agent, one of his tasks at FBI headquarters was to conduct risk assessment for FBI foreign-born translators and analyst applicants. Beginning in 1999, he discovered and began reporting serious issues of mismanagement, gross negligence, security breaches, cover-ups, and intentional blocking of intelligence that had national security implications. After he reported these acts to FBI management, he was retaliated against. He also came to the rescue of Sibel Edmonds, arguing how he had “talked to people who had read her file, who had read the investigative report, and they were telling me a totally different story” than FBI officials, who had only perfunctorily investigated her allegations. “They were telling me that Sibel Edmonds was a 100 percent accurate, that management knew that she was correct.” In 2004, after months of harassment for his defense of Edmonds, Cole resigned. A year later, the Justice Department’s Inspector General concluded: “the evidence clearly corroborated Edmonds’ allegations.”

• http://public.cq.com/docs/hs/hsnews110-000002438709.html
• http://www.nswbc.org/members_bios.htm#Cole

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// posted by Alice @ Tuesday, February 19, 2008