FBI chokes on backlog of untranslated Arabic

WASHINGTON – A shortage of Arabic translators is not only hurting intelligence-gathering efforts in Iraq, where troops are hunting Saddam Hussein and armed resistors, but also at home, where FBI agents are trying to ferret out al-Qaida terrorist cells before Osama bin Laden can activate them for another attack here.

Al-Qaida has trained up to 120,000 terrorists around the world, and some of them are inside the U.S., according to the recently declassified 9-11 report.

The bureau is having a hard time recruiting fluent American-born translators, because the Arabic language is rarely studied in American colleges, FBI officials say. So it's having to hire translators born in the Middle East, who require longer background checks.

"It's very problematic," said FBI spokesman Ed Cogswell, although he says the bureau has made recent strides in recruiting.

The shortage has caused a backlog of untranslated Arabic materials collected from electronic surveillances of suspected Islamic terrorists conducted in the U.S., and from interrogations of suspected terrorists conducted abroad, mostly at prisoner camps in Afghanistan and Cuba. The backlog also includes reams of documents in Arabic and other tongues recovered in Afghanistan and other countries.

According to the General Accounting Office, the lack of home-grown qualified linguists has resulted in thousands of hours of tape-recordings and pages of documents that have not been translated or studied – though Cogswell says the backlog recently has been reduced.

Former FBI counterterrorism agents warn that the shortage may be leading to inaccuracies in wiretap information obtained through federal courts under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.

Donald Lavey, who worked in counterterrorism for 20 years at the FBI, said wiretap translations by Mideast-born agents should have a "second opinion," because their backgrounds may "prejudice" their interpretation and analysis.

"We are at war, and we need more than one translator for each subject under electronic surveillance," he said. "We are relying too heavily on single Arab translators for significant information, and worse yet, investigative guidance."

He says translators will often leave out large sections of conversation in surveillance logs, because they deem it irrelevant to the investigation.

"It's noted as 'personal' or 'family' information with a comment by the translator that there is no substantive investigative information. It is viewed as immaterial to the case," Lavey said.

"But this is often inaccurate," he added. "Very easily, and too often, something like, 'I am picking up my brother at the station,' is overlooked and never made note of, but it may be very significant."

Cogswell responded that case supervisors "try to vet [logs] through two people, if they can."

Lavey recalls a problem with a former Arab translator in the FBI's Detroit office who tried to back out of secretly recording a fellow Muslim suspected of terrorism by claiming the subject had threatened his life.

"I know of one case where a translator claimed to have heard the subject speaking about him and making threats against him," Lavey said. "Three other translators listened and did not hear any of that information."

He also cites the more recent case of Gamal Abdel-Hafiz, an immigrant Muslim, who twice refused on religious grounds to tape-record Muslim terrorist suspects, hindering investigations of a bin Laden family-financed bank in New Jersey and Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, recently indicted for his ties to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group.

A fellow FBI agent, Robert Wright, said Abdel-Hafiz finally explained to him that "a Muslim does not record another Muslim," after first claiming he feared for his life. Other agents said he contacted Arab subjects under investigation without disclosing the contacts to the agents running the cases.

Despite his divided loyalties, the FBI subsequently promoted Abdel-Hafiz by assigning him to the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia, a critical post for intelligence-gathering. Three-fourths of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudis. After Wright and another agent blew the whistle in the media, he was put on administrative leave.

Then there's the case of Jan Dickerson, a Turkish translator hired by the FBI last November.

In screening her for a clearance, the FBI missed her ties to a Turkish organization under investigation by the FBI's own counter-intelligence unit, according to a CBS News report. The bureau even let her translate the tapes of conversations with a Turkish intelligence officer stationed in Washington who was the target of the probe.

A co-worker who reviewed Dickerson's translations told CBS News that she left out information crucial to the investigation, such as discussion of methods to obtain U.S. military and intelligence secrets. She had marked it as "not important to be translated."

Lavey argues for stricter background checks on translators from the Middle East.

"Care needs to be taken at this point in time as to their religious background and political views," he said.

Cogswell confirmed that most of the Arabic translators the bureau hires are from the Middle East.

He told WorldNetDaily that they nonetheless aren't scrubbed any more than other agents.

"They go through the same background check as everyone else – full field background investigations," Cogswell said, though he says their checks take "a little longer" because investigators have to travel to their home countries to ask questions.

Lavey and other agents worry that the religious bonds of Muslim agents may trump their oath to protect and serve America.

In a moment of candor, Ihsan Bagby, a black convert to Islam who has taught at American universities, revealed what many skeptics say is the true sentiment of devout Muslims in America.

"Ultimately we can never be full citizens of this country," he said, "because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country."

Muslim group leaders here in Washington are on record saying they hope the U.S. Constitution will one day be replaced by Koranic law.

Yet the FBI has assigned some of its Muslim agents to educate other agents about Islam.

At the FBI's New York field office, just blocks from Ground Zero, a Muslim agent from Pakistan has been lecturing agents about Islamic customs as part of a bureau-wide Muslim sensitivity-training program ordered by FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Lavey says that at some FBI field offices, wiretap conversations of Arab terrorist suspects recorded as far back as the '80s have only "very recently" been translated into English. He notes that key discussions by plotters of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing were caught on tape months before the attack, but weren't translated from Arabic to English until well after the bombing.

That any backlog still exists two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is outrageous, he says.

Cogswell, while not excusing the backlog, explains that the FBI does not have a large pool from which to recruit translators to clear the backlog. He fairly notes that the Arabic language is a difficult and demanding one to learn, and few Americans are fluent in it.

But Lavey says the FBI was advised years ago to send more agents to learn Arabic at the bureau's language school. It was also told to lengthen the course.

"It was pointed out to headquarters that agents leaving language school after one intensive year of Arabic were ill-prepared to use the language effectively , and that, at a minimum, another half year was needed to learn a dialect conversationally," he said. "This information was ignored."

NEAR THE SYRIAN BORDER, Iraq. Specialist Aaron Molina is getting out of the Army to learn to be a chef. This represents a considerable loss for the Army, since it has invested about a million bucks in the 26-year-old Cleveland native.

    Spec. Molina is a Russian linguist and a signals intelligence expert for the 66th Military Intelligence Company, which is part of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. He has a degree in computer science from Ohio State University.

    Few in the military have received more, or more expensive, training than Spec. Molina and other linguists. After basic training, there is a year or more of language instruction at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif.

    The instruction is all by native speakers. The method is total immersion. At no university in the United States is there better instruction.
    Then there is training in their particular black art, conducted chiefly at Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas.

    And before the training begins, candidates must pass a thorough background check for the high-security clearances Army linguists must have. This takes months and costs tens of thousands of dollars.

    Spec. Molina likes his job and is very good at it. But he is getting out because, as a junior enlisted man, he spends more time sweeping the motor pool than he does doing his job.

    If Spec. Molina's case were isolated, there would be no point to this column. But his case is more or less typical. The first-term retention rate among linguists is distressingly low. And it is low because these valuable assets are not being treated with the dignity they deserve.

    It's understandable why Spec. Molina and the German and Spanish linguists in his unit are driving trucks and standing guard here, since their skills are not relevant in Iraq. The treatment of Sgt. Paul Olsen's wife, Kelly, is less so.

    Kelly is an Arab linguist, formerly part of the 66th MI Company. Paul and Kelly had a baby, Vivian, 11 months ago. Their families live far from the 3rd ACR's base of Fort Carson, Colo., so there was no relative close enough to care for Vivian if both were deployed. Kelly requested permission to remain at Fort Carson when the 3rd ACR deployed, so she could take care of Vivian. Permission was denied. So Kelly applied for, and received, a humanitarian discharge. So instead of having Kelly at Fort Carson, where she could still perform valuable work, the Army is now another million bucks short.

    The linguist retention problem could easily and inexpensively be ameliorated if a little common sense were applied. The Army, properly, offers large bonuses to young people who have the aptitude to become linguists. But it doesn't pay enough attention to the people it already has attracted, and is now turning off.

    The Army can't offer Spec. Molina a bonus large enough to get him to re-enlist, so long as he thinks he'll still be treated like dirt. But no bonus would be required if he were treated with the respect he thinks he deserves.

    Linguists need to enter the military as privates. They are, after all, soldiers, and there are certain skills to be acquired. The Army is not a suitable profession for lateral entry. But if linguists re-enlist, they should be made warrant officers. This would provide them with greater status, and exempt them from scut details.

    Moreover, when the Army has new language needs to fill, it ought to look more toward teaching linguists it already has additional languages than to recruiting new people off the street. If a language like Russian has become less important, send someone like Spec. Molina back to Monterey to learn Arabic or Dari or Pashtu. He's already been through basic, got his security clearance and learned the intricacies of his secret craft.

    I've never met a former DLI student who didn't love the place. The prospect of going back there would in itself be a powerful incentive to re-enlist. And a linguist who speaks two additional languages can be twice as valuable as the linguist who speaks only one.

http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20030516-102229-6858r.htm

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