M E M O R A N D U M

TO: Reporters and Editors
RE: Sibel Edmonds allegations
DA: June 23, 2004

Sen. Chuck Grassley has complained to FBI Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General Ashcroft at recent hearings of the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the Justice Department and FBI's recent classification of information that had previously been made public and was widely reported. The information is about allegations made by Sibel Edmonds about security problems and performance shortcomings in the translation unit of the FBI.

Here is a comment from Sen. Grassley about this reclassification:

"It's ludicrous to classify information that's been in the public domain for two years. I've got questions about whether this has anything to do with genuine national security. If it does, then the action might actually aid our enemies by alerting them to publicly available information that the U.S. government now considers sensitive. It doesn't enhance national security for the Justice Department and the FBI to go out of its way to identify and classify information that's on-line, in newspapers and on the airwaves."