That's nonsense, which is why the FBI never used the excuse. The FBI is quite competant at doing security checks. As I recall, this turned out to be a relatively low level decision, for which there were no explanations.
I'm curious, how would a 1st or 2nd generation Egyptian, Jordanian or Iraqi Jew be more of an inherant security risk than an 1st or 2nd generation Egyptian, Jordanian or Iraqi Arab.
i/I'm curious, how would a 1st or 2nd generation Egyptian, Jordanian or Iraqi Jew be more of an inherant security risk than an 1st or 2nd generation Egyptian, Jordanian or Iraqi Arab./i
Without doing a proper background check, I couldn't tell you. You can't make blanket generalizations about nationalites in individual hiring decisions.
The son of a leader for Hamas might be the right man for the translator job, simply because his dad killed his mom and hates him for it.
You can't know these things unless you do the work. Again, all I can tell you is that there wasn't enough information in the article to make a judgement about the FBI. I do know that the way it was written, the FBI comes out looking bad, however. This is generally what happens in the press - it's the government or Americans that are the idiots.
What we do know is that the FBI has been partially responsible in keeping us terrorist-attack free since 9/11. That cannot have been an easy thing to succeed at. On that basis, I will give them the benefit of the doubt.
BTW, last time I checked the background checking contractors in the DC area were running nearly a year behind, and that was for TSA.
You drop the FBI check on top of that, and you are over a year easy.
Frankly, I'd hire only Hashemites to do the translations.