"And I have been campaigning for the past three months trying to get the Senate Judiciary Committee that has the oversight authority and responsibility to start its own public hearings"
About this Quote
There is a particular kind of desperation that comes from doing everything “the right way” and still being stonewalled. Sibel Edmonds’s line is built like a paper trail: time (“past three months”), effort (“campaigning”), the proper venue (“Senate Judiciary Committee”), the legal mandate (“oversight authority and responsibility”), and the modest ask (“start its own public hearings”). The specificity isn’t decoration; it’s an indictment. When someone has to recite an institution’s job description back to it, the subtext is that the institution is choosing not to do its job.
Edmonds, a public servant turned whistleblower, is speaking from the long American tradition of insiders who discover that procedure can be a weapon. “Campaigning” is a telling verb. It reframes oversight not as a routine democratic function but as retail politics, something that requires pressure, persistence, and persuasion-as if accountability is a special-interest request rather than the baseline. That word choice quietly exposes how power works: committees “with responsibility” often act only when the costs of inaction rise.
The phrase “public hearings” does the real strategic work. Edmonds isn’t merely asking to be heard; she’s demanding sunlight, a forum that creates records, forces sworn testimony, and makes evasion expensive. In the era when national security and classification became convenient shields, insisting on “public” is a challenge to the culture of managed secrecy. The line is bureaucratic on purpose, because bureaucracy is the battlefield. Her intent is to corner the committee with its own stated authority-and to make its silence look like complicity rather than delay.
Edmonds, a public servant turned whistleblower, is speaking from the long American tradition of insiders who discover that procedure can be a weapon. “Campaigning” is a telling verb. It reframes oversight not as a routine democratic function but as retail politics, something that requires pressure, persistence, and persuasion-as if accountability is a special-interest request rather than the baseline. That word choice quietly exposes how power works: committees “with responsibility” often act only when the costs of inaction rise.
The phrase “public hearings” does the real strategic work. Edmonds isn’t merely asking to be heard; she’s demanding sunlight, a forum that creates records, forces sworn testimony, and makes evasion expensive. In the era when national security and classification became convenient shields, insisting on “public” is a challenge to the culture of managed secrecy. The line is bureaucratic on purpose, because bureaucracy is the battlefield. Her intent is to corner the committee with its own stated authority-and to make its silence look like complicity rather than delay.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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