Senators ask Justice Department to declassify Sept. 11 investigation results

Senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee asked the Justice Department on Friday to declassify three reports concerning the FBI's translation program and information obtained by federal law enforcement agencies prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The Justice Department's inspector general has finished two of the investigations while the third is nearing completion, said Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. All of the reports, however, have been classified, the senators wrote in a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Inspector General Glenn Fine.

"While the needs of national security must be weighed seriously, we fear that the designation of information as classified in some cases serves to protect the executive branch against embarrassing revelations and full accountability. We hope that is not the case here," the senators wrote.

The lawmakers asked the department to take one of the following steps: release an unclassified version of each of the reports; release a redacted version of each, or release an unclassified summary of each. The senators asked for a reply by Thursday.

"Releasing declassified versions of these reports, or at least portions or summaries, would serve the public's interest, increase transparency, promote effectiveness and efficiency at the FBI, and facilitate congressional oversight," the legislators wrote. "To do otherwise could damage the public's confidence not only in the government's ability to protect the nation, but also in the government's ability to police itself."

Two of the reports investigate problems within the FBI's translations program, with a particular emphasis on accusations made by former FBI contract linguist Sibel Edmonds.

The third report investigates how information obtained by the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies prior to Sept. 11 "was not acted upon, or not acted on in the most effective and efficient manner," the senators said.

Paul Martin, spokesman for the inspector general's office, said Monday that the report on Edmonds and the report on pre-9/11 information are complete, and were classified by the FBI. He said the audit of the FBI's overall translation program should be done in a few weeks. He acknowledged his office recieved the senators' letter, but declined to say whether the office will push to declassify the reports. Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said officials there would "review the senators' letter as we do with all congressional requests."

The senators emphasized the importance of the investigations for reforming the FBI translation program.

"The FBI itself has provided alarming information about problems in the translation program during briefings to congressional staff," they said. "Yet two years after the allegations made by Ms. Edmonds triggered two investigations, we are no closer to determining the scope of the problem, the pervasiveness and seriousness of FBI problems in this area, or what the FBI intends to do to rectify personnel shortages, security issues, translation inaccuracies and other problems that have plagued the translator program for years."

The letter notes that the Justice Department has declassified information related to the 9/11 attacks and other national security issues during the past few years. For example, the department and FBI agreed to declassify information contained in the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry report into the 9/11 attacks. That report included details of the three issues examined in the inspector general's review of the FBI's handling of information and investigations prior to the attacks.