Audit: FBI Still Improperly Investigates Spy Charges

[The Backlash Cometh]

Posted Fri Jan 14, 2005

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI is not properly investigating allegations of espionage within the bureau despite proven security lapses, including an agent who spied for Moscow for 22 years, a federal audit said on Friday.
The Justice Department's inspector general said the FBI did not take seriously the allegations of a contract linguist who accused a co-worker of possible espionage.

Sibel Edmonds, who worked for the bureau as a contract linguist from September 2001 until she was fired the following March, had also expressed concerns over the FBI's foreign language translation program.

"Our investigation concluded that the FBI did not, and still has not, adequately investigated these allegations," Inspector General Glenn Fine wrote in an unclassified summary of a report that examined the allegations.

The FBI was criticized in a scathing 2003 audit for "significant deficiencies" in internal security that allowed Russian spy Robert Hanssen to become one of the most damaging spies in U.S. history.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=7333246