At issue are the claims of Sibel Edmonds, a contract translator for the FBI hired in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Edmonds reported that many of those hired to work in the unit could barely speak English; that they left secure laptop computers lying around while they went to lunch; that they took classified material home with them; and - even more disturbing - that one co-worker had undeclared contacts with a foreign organization that was under FBI surveillance.

She said bureau operations - including counter-terror ones - were compromised as a result.

Edmonds is suing the FBI, claiming she was fired for bringing to light these problems - which have been identified by several inquiries as significant contributing factors to the success of the Sept. 11 plot.

The Bureau has repeatedly tried to have the case thrown out, claiming that it cannot be heard without jeopardizing national security.

In two unclassified briefings for congressional staff in June and July 2002 senior FBI officials acknowledged the truth of a number of Edmonds' allegations, including those against a co-worker, Melek Can Dickerson, who had worked for an organization that was the target of surveillance in a counter-intelligence probe until she joined the bureau in October 2001 - and did not disclose the work on her application.

According to congressional staffers, bureau officials also said that Dickerson had a continuing relationship with at least two individuals who were surveillance targets in the probe. They acknowledged that Dickerson had either mistranslated or incorrectly marked "not pertinent" hundreds of telephone conversations recorded as part of the investigation and had tried to ensure that she was given responsibility for translating all the "take" from surveillance of that group of targets.

They said the FBI saw these as training issues.

Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote letters laying out Edmonds' allegations to the Department of Justice inspector general. The letters were released to the press and put on the senators' Web sites.

Then in April 2004, in response to a court request to produce the documents on which those briefings were based, the FBI said it now regarded much of the material discussed there as classified, and asserted the rarely used "state secrets privilege" to claim that Edmonds' case could not be heard.

"The timing of this strongly suggests that it was a litigation strategy," said Michael Kirkpatrick, an attorney with the watchdog group Public Citizen, which sued the FBI to obtain the release of the documents. "There was never any indication that this information was secret until the court ordered it handed over. This was done to gain a litigation advantage (for the department) and to shield them from embarrassment and congressional scrutiny."

Last week the Bureau withdrew its claim about the congressional briefings. "We have stated that the information in those (letters from Sens. Leahy and Grassley) is ... not classified," Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller told United Press International Tuesday evening.

He declined to say what effect this might have on the department's assertion of the "state secrets privilege" but added that the department's lawyers would be filing papers in the case on Thursday that might make its position clearer.

But the ACLU, which has since joined Edmonds' case, said that the collapse of the claim that the briefings were secret was a huge blow to the Justice Department's efforts to keep the case out of court.

"I do not see how they can continue to claim with a straight face that this case cannot go forward now that so much information about her allegations is in the public domain," ACLU attorney Ann Beeson told UPI.

Kirkpatrick said it would have been hard to maintain that Edmonds' allegations were secret, in part because of the release last month of an executive summary of a report by the department's inspector general.

The inspector general found that the FBI had failed to "adequately investigate" Edmonds' allegations, many of which "had bases in fact."

Most seriously, the report found, the bureau conducted only a "superficial"investigation of Edwards' most disturbing allegations - those against Dickerson.

Beeson said that the report - which found that retaliation was "in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI's decision to terminate (Edmonds') services" - "basically proves her case."

"They will immediately have to concede some of the central issues," she said of the Justice Department lawyers.

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