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I studied French for four years and then went to France for a year of study abroad. Before the classes began, all foreigners were requuired to register for summer language training. It was a way of minimizing the amount of "broken French" spoken by foreign students. Broken French was particularly offensive to University Faculty and Staff.

The process of "relearning" how to speak French was painful in that every word needed repeating until it was spoken to the satisfaction of the instructor. We were not allowed to advance until even basic words were pronounced correctly. The classes were three hours with variable hours of language lab after, usually two to three hours.

At the end of three months we the foreign students were speaking much better and many were told their accents were undetectable.

I can imagine what the DOD would do to someone 24/7 for six months. It is not unreasonable at all to expect they could churn out a language speaker with no detectable accent over a variety of phrases and responses, including cultural gestures such as using one's hands in a provincial manner.

Anyways the point was that the DOD has backup in languages, all languages for translation and the subject article is probably irrelevant insofar as national security. Let's hope so.

"At the end of three months we the foreign students were speaking much better and many were told their accents were undetectable. "

Do you really think accent is enough?
Autant des hommes. Autant d'avis.

And why would one trust any of these instructors after this notice?

I began learning Spanish when I was 8 years old in Puerto Rico. As a result my accent is better than 95% of the other "gringos." However, when I try to pronounce French it is horrible. As a result, I am convinced that foreign languages should be taught in grade school rather than starting in high school like it currently is. Because we lived in Puerto Rico, Spanish was mandatory for all grades even though I went to an English speaking school (Commonwealth School). Within an amazingly short period of time I had the accent down pretty good. The only pronunciation I had trouble with was the distinctive double r. That took me about 4 or 5 months to be able to correctly pronounce. I actually remember the time I was finally able to duplicate it. It was on a trip on the island and my dad was driving and suddenly I was able to roll my tongue correctly. Once I accomplished it, I spent most of the rest of the trip rolling the double r's on my tongue much to the amusement of the Puerto Rican women in the car.

The biggest problem for gringos is that double r pronunciation (also single r since it is also requires a slight tongue roll). Therefore I am convinced that languages should be learned while young.

I can imagine what the DOD would do to someone 24/7 for six months.

The Defense Language Institute in Monterey has been doing this for decades, 22 languages including Arabic. Most of the programs are about a year. A friend - 100 percent American - trained in Russian there and became a translator.

NSA certainly has a wealth of trained analysts and translators who hold clearance.

So why is the FBI hiring security risks rather than training cleared personnel?

More unbelieveable incompetence in the management ranks at the agency.

I can imagine what the DOD would do to someone 24/7 for six months. It is not unreasonable at all to expect they could churn out a language speaker with no detectable accent over a variety of phrases and responses, including cultural gestures such as using one's hands in a provincial manner.

This accent business is a red herring. Like making sure the deck chairs on the titanic are geometrically perfectly arranged. The critical and essential part of the training is accurate comprehension of regional dialects and double meanings. The elegance of our own language that is unconscious and that we take for granted. How the words are pronounced by the translator is irrelevant.

An important point is that it is a LOT easier to learn a foreign language well enough to translate it accurately into one's native language than to become so fluent that one can speak, write, and listen as well as a native speaker.

This would vary according to the language and the particular person's strenghths, of course. I probably could have gotten to the where I could have translated Spanish literature into English for a living long before I would have ever been able to pass myself off as a native speaker. Chinese would be much harder to get good at translating.

My father taught at the Monterey language school during the '60's. The school taught US servicemen to speak different German dialects and then taught them to speak english with a german accent. He never talked about what they did when he worked there.
My dad went to Princton at 15 and spoke 13 languages.