FBI Short of Translators

One of the key components of any war is intelligence. In the case of a war against terrorists, those who rely on unconventional forms of attack, intelligence to prevent attack becomes even more significant. If a single measure of America’s effectiveness in the war on terror were needed, the ability of the FBI to gather intelligence would be a fine candidate. By that measure, though, the nation is losing. The FBI has a backlog of untranslated conversations that run more than 100,000 hours of recordings.

The Justice department’s Inspector General did an audit of the FBI’s translation efforts back in July, and an unclassified version of the audit report appeared on the DOJ website earlier this week. It has been 3 years since the most dreadful failure of intelligence gathering in America since 1941. That is enough time for someone with a gift for language to develop the skills needed to translate into English the taped conversations of Al-Qaeda and its fellow travelers from Pashto, Urdu, Arabic and other less common (in North America) languages. And despite an increase in linguistic spending (rising to $70 million this fiscal year from $21.5 million in 2001) and a boost in the number of translators (to 1,214 from 883 in the same period), there were still 123,000 hours of unreviewed conversation in languages favored by Al-Qaeda as of April 2004. In all, more than 370,000 hours of counter-intelligence-related conversations were awaiting a listen.

If this were merely a labor problem that sufficient training and spending could resolve, patience would be in order. However, there are signs that the FBI has merely been sitting on its collective fundament. There is, according to the report, a requirement set out by FBI Director Robert Mueller that calls for review of counter-intelligence tapes within 12 hours of intercepting the conversation. One can readily understand the director’s desire to get cracking on intelligence while it is fresh, and 12 hours to review an intercept might be overly ambitious. The troubling fact is that the audit found, in April of 2004, that 36% of intercepted conversations weren’t even in the hands of the translators at FBI headquarters within 12 hours. Here, the problem is not with the quantity or quality of the linguists. It is a problem with computer storage space.

There is a canard about to hit the debate in defense of the FBI. Traditionally, America has relied on its immigrant roots to secure red-blooded Americans who just happen to speak the language of their grandparents to help with intelligence matters. But in the case of a war against Fascislam, not enough candidates can pass the security clearance requirements. While insulting to American patriots named Farouk, Abdullah and Mohammed, the FBI has had three years to teach the needed languages to people cleared for top secret work. And they are still short.

The FBI’s work load has doubled since September 11, 2001. Mr. Mueller said, "We agree with [the inspector general] that more remains to be done in our language services program, and we are giving this effort the highest priority." News of the next attack may be sitting in those unreviewed tapes. It would be nice to think that one of the good guys might get to it in time. The inspector general’s audit makes that hope a precarious one.


© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.


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