Classified Woman (2 page)

T
he beautiful sunny Friday afternoon on September 14, 2001, did not reflect our grim mood, as my husband and I sat across from each other in a deserted restaurant in Eden Center, often referred to as Little Vietnam, in Arlington, Virginia.

The small technology business we had started two years earlier had come under a tremendous amount of pressure due to the recently collapsed Dot Com industry. We had to let go of several employees and were in the midst of turning the company into a small consulting firm with less than a handful of people. I had switched from part-time to full-time status at George Washington University, where I was pursuing double majors in criminal justice and psychology, registered for a fifteen-credit course load, and determined to wrap up all my graduation requirements in less than fifteen months.

The clear, pleasant day certainly did not reflect the country’s mood either. Only three days past, the United States was attacked within its borders—not by a nation or government but supposedly by stateless invisible enemies scattered around the globe. Without any prior warnings from our own government or from any national or international entities—including the media—we all were caught off guard.

As we sat on 9/11 watching footage of buildings getting hit and collapsing, I could scarcely believe that the carnage, bloodbaths and wars I had witnessed as a child, when I lived thousands of miles from here, had found their way into my chosen country, the United States of America.

I remembered the period of anarchy in Turkey in the 1970s. My early childhood there was marked by bomb explosions and shootings in unexpected public places. Whether densely populated universities or overcrowded bazaars, all were considered highly probable targets; no place was considered safe.

I recalled an incident in Iran I had witnessed a few years later, when I was eight years old. I was in a minivan with six other girls, on my way home from school. We’d heard an explosion. Traffic stopped and we saw thick smoke rising in a column only a few yards away. Our driver got out and started talking with other drivers. I rolled down the window to hear one man explain, “… either a big fire or a bomb explosion in a building, probably the movie theater on the circle. I heard there were many people trapped inside …” As we passed the building, I leaned out the window and looked. The rescue teams, together with civilian volunteers, were removing charred bodies and stumps, dropping them on the sidewalk in front of the building. The driver, recovering as though from a trance, turned around and yelled, “Get down on the floor! You shouldn’t be looking at this!”

It was too late. That scene—the smell and horror of what I witnessed then—remains with me forever.

I had seen it too in hospitals during the Iran-Iraq war, where my father spent most of his time tending to badly burned bodies, amputating arms and limbs. I remember him showing me holes drilled in the molten faces of babies to act as air conduits so they could breathe. While certainly traumatic for a child, such a lesson was, in my father’s eyes, needed for life to teach what war is and what it does to its victims. My conscience thus was molded at an early age.

The 9/11 attack had brought back viscerally all that horror and trauma. Another casualty of that day was my newly shattered sense of security and optimism about a country I believed would never experience such horrors.

As depressing as things felt, we knew that together we would make it in the end. Our marriage, our true partnership for the past ten years, had made it through other difficult times and crises, the last being my father’s sudden death a year earlier; it would also make it through this one, I was sure.

After finishing our comfort soup and ordering our customary Vietnamese coffee, Matthew used his cell to check voice mail at home, jotting down the messages on a napkin. He slid it toward me and pointed to one. Someone from FBI Headquarters had left his number, urging me to call him back as soon as possible.

I wondered what this was about. The only connection I had with the FBI had to do with my application for a temporary part-time intern position I had sent them four years earlier, in 1997. I was interested in their department that dealt with crimes against children, having worked as a trained and certified advocate for the Alexandria Juvenile Court, where I investigated and represented child abuse cases for over two years. I had sent them my application for an internship (summer or a part-time position) relevant to the degree I was pursuing in criminal justice.

After reviewing my application, someone at the bureau evidently found my linguistic abilities of interest and asked me to take proficiency tests in those languages and in English. At first I was put off by the prospect of working as a translator but on second thought decided it could be a stepping-stone to where I wanted to be until I completed my degrees. I went ahead and took the intense and excruciating proficiency tests in the summer of 1997. Afterwards they said that all language specialists, whether full-time or contract, were required to obtain top-secret clearance (TSC), since they would be dealing with sensitive and classified intelligence and documents. The process of background checks and issuance of TSC could take anywhere from nine to fifteen months, I was told. They would then notify me and offer me options, such as contract or full-time employment.

Nine months passed; then another nine, and another. In 2000, I called FBI Headquarters to inquire about the status of the position I had applied for nearly four years earlier. Toward the end of that year I finally received a call from a woman from FBI Headquarters who told me with much sincerity and apologies that in 1999 the bureau had lost my entire information package and test results, together with those of over 150 other applicants. That package contained my bank account information, tax records, Social Security and private medical and family-related information. “What?!” I asked, incredulous. “… Do you realize what people can do with that information?”

She apologized again and said the bureau would conduct expedited background investigations and have the position ready for me in a year. “If you change your mind and decide to go ahead with it,” she told me, “the position will be ready and available for you.” That was the last I’d heard from the FBI—until then.

I grabbed the napkin and stepped outside to make the call. The HQ man came on and thanked me profusely for returning his call. He then went on to explain how badly the bureau was in need of translators in Middle Eastern and certain Asian languages: Farsi, Turkish, Arabic, Pashtun, Urdu, Uzbek, and so on. The bureau had tens of thousands of leads and evidence waiting to be translated into English before the agents could take any further action. They had thousands of pieces of raw intelligence pouring in daily, but they all were in foreign languages and could not be processed or assessed until translated. “Ms. Edmonds,” he concluded his pitch, “we need your skills badly. Your TS clearance came in last week and we would like you to start working for us immediately.”

I told him about my course load at school, our business, and that circumstances had changed.

“We are willing to accommodate your schedule and workload,” he appealed. “You can work for us as a contract linguist; determine the hours you can contribute each week … as much as you want, or as little as you can. Even if you could spare ten hours a week … We are at war, Ms. Edmonds; the FBI needs your skills badly…. You can serve your country …”

I remembered images, of young children not even six, hurling stones at monstrous tanks in the street. Tiny kids, against powerful war machines, but instead of running away they chose to stand their ground and fight, however insignificant their weapon—however small the force of their skinny arms.

I felt like those kids. I didn’t want to run and hide. I had to stand and fight, but I couldn’t find so much as a rock, and I couldn’t see the enemy. I hated feeling helpless. Now, only three days after the attack, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was imploring me that I in fact possessed a rock, several, in fact: my language skills. Our country could use my help. How could I say no?

“All right,” I said, one hundred percent confident. “I will. When can I start?”

I was told to stand by for another call in a minute or so. He would have an administrative supervisor at the FBI’s Washington field office call immediately and give me instructions. The supervisor’s name was Mike Feghali, and I would be assigned to his unit in that Washington office. I jotted down the name and waited for the call.

In less than two minutes, as promised, Mike Feghali called and briefly introduced himself as an administrative supervisor in charge of Farsi and a few other Language units. From his accent I could tell he was Middle Eastern, most likely Lebanese. He congratulated me on my decision to join and asked how soon I could start.

“How soon
can
I start?”

“Immediately; early next week,” he replied. I would first be briefed by a security agent on security and classification issues, asked to sign certain papers, and receive my entry and identification badge. I was told to come down Saturday; that time is of the essence. I could start the following week.

I wrote down his information and told him I would be there on Tuesday. Then we hung up.

I realized I had been out of the restaurant for at least twenty minutes. Matthew was curious. I told him I would be working for the FBI starting Tuesday, as a contract language specialist.

He looked concerned. I was only just recovering from the major blow of my father’s death, and with the school load and our business he didn’t believe I could handle that much at once. I tried—unsuccessfully—to assure him I could; he suggested I choose between school and the bureau, that it was not too late to drop some of my courses. I shook my head and told him I could handle it.

That night I lay awake thinking about the call: to duty. I spent hours unable to sleep; my mind wandering through twists and turns in my life.

The course of one’s life is shaped by turning points: many for some, a few for others—mine being a nonstop roller coaster ride. The arrest and torture of my father, for instance, for advocating and fighting for human rights and civil liberties, was a blow to my family and an early one for me at three years old. Our life turned upside down. Within months, my family packed up and returned to Turkey, where they had to rebuild from scratch. That was a turning point.

Within three years, when I was six, we found ourselves in the midst of daily terrorist attacks and the start of a period of anarchy in Turkey. There was an attack on a passenger bus in which innocent riders were senselessly gunned down—another turning point. We packed our bags and left the country, this time to Iran, where followed further hardships.

Four years later, we found ourselves in the middle of what came to be known as the Islamic Revolution that initially started with people from different backgrounds and political views coming together to depose the Shah and bring in a democratically elected government. The goal was to end monarchy. Yet within two years, fanatic Islamist dictators took over the country and began to implement fundamentalist laws that dictated not only how we were to dress and speak but what we were permitted to talk about. Ultimately, methods of harsh repression and certainty of punishment if their rules and restrictions were not obeyed came to govern how we were to think and act toward one another. Where control is total, we are told how to feel and what to believe.

The last straw for me, the turning point that led me to a life-changing decision, involved an essay I wrote for an inter-high school competition. My chosen subject was Turkey’s censorship laws, and why it was wrong to ban books and jail dissident writers. The school principal was outraged and asked my father to get me to write something else. He believed the essay would land me in jail and subject me to the torture reserved for political activists. My father refused, but the incident caused a crisis in my family; he was the only one who supported what I had done. For nearly eighteen years I had been subjected to constant upheavals that threatened my family’s survival; I was affected by their decisions. Now, for the first time, I would be the sole decision maker based on an experience that targeted me directly. This was to be my own turning point. A few months later, I was on a plane on my way to the United States.

As I lay awake that night, less than twelve hours from officially becoming a contract language specialist with the FBI, thinking on these pivotal points in my life, I could sense another one nearing: some major change, a turning point. I just didn’t know how, in what way, or what direction.

The next day, at ten on Saturday morning, I arrived at the Washington field office, where I was met by a female agent, very pregnant and blond, who then escorted me to a small meeting room on the entry floor. She seemed hassled and had a cool, dry attitude. She spent almost an hour going over Top Secret (TS) classification rules. She then placed a stack of papers in front of me and asked me to read and sign each document; I could ask for clarification if needed. They were filled with references to byzantine laws indicated only by their numbers, all in fine print and hard to read.

I asked whether we were expected to know these laws by heart, and wondered why they were cited without descriptions. “If we included the actual laws,” she said, “you’d have hundreds of boxes of documents to read and sign; as you see, the stack is already large enough.” Then she crisply added, “No, nobody knows these laws; people just sign them. This is the FBI, after all!”

I shrugged and went back to reading, doing my best to try to understand what I was being asked to sign. (I was taught never to sign anything I didn’t first read or fully understand.) Then again, as the agent said, this is the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I signed all the papers.