Learning that the FBI did not have many Arabic linguists immediately after 9/11 was not surprising. This is, though (WaPo):
Five years after Arab terrorists attacked the United States, only 33 FBI agents have even a limited proficiency in Arabic, and none of them work in the sections of the bureau that coordinate investigations of international terrorism, according to new FBI statistics.
[snip]
The numbers reflect the FBI’s continued struggle to attract employees who speak Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and other languages of the Middle East and South Asia, even as the bureau leads a fight against terrorist groups primarily centered in those parts of the world. The same challenge is facing the CIA and other agencies as the government competes with the private sector for a limited number of applicants with foreign-language proficiency, according to U.S. officials and experts.
On September 10, I’d actually have been surprised if they’d had Arabic linguists, since once upon a time, the FBI was restricted to domestic investigations; it was the CIA that handled international problems. The entire world of U.S. intelligence has been turned inside out.
This is 2006, though. How on earth is the FBI in such a ridiculous situation five years later? And (one might reasonably wonder), how are they managing to be effective in this Mid-east centric terrorism climate?
Well… they’re using contractors.
“Do we need more Arabic-speaking agents? By all means we want more Arabic-speaking agents,” Gulotta said. “But admittedly it’s a very difficult group of people to recruit and hire. . . . We’ve been a lot more successful in recruiting and hiring contract linguists and language specialists.”
Polimom wonders, actually, at that. Since contractors cost more than employees generally (and specifically, a linguist in this environment will cost more), could it be that the FBI simply isn’t offering enough money?
There are some other, more historical, problems sneaking up and biting the FBI in a sensitive place on this one, though — and not least among them is American provincialism.
Yes folks, I’m sorry to have to say this, but for a world power, we’re linguistically retarded. We’re a deliberately monolingual country that has, in recent years, somehow managed to make it even less attractive to speak anything other than English (see Spanish, illegal immigration, national language).
Related to that: it’s hard for the FBI to recruit people who speak other languages because it’s much harder to pass the security clearances when one has relatives living in other countries (particularly those about which we’re concerned). Unfortunately, people who don’t come from “there” went through our public education system here, which doesn’t generally give access to foreign languages until at least Junior High… and even then it’s typically Spanish or French.
Aside from all that, though, Polimom has some real curiosity about where all the Arabic linguists are — because there are many. They were trained at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey, and the military began madly funneling linguistically-talented recruits into the MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) program over two decades ago.
How do I know this? I was one of them.
One of the first conversations I ever had with DH was, oddly enough, about exactly this. I fully expected someone to contact me immediately after 9/11, to access my language skills… but they never did. And I’m not the only one.
So I can only gaze at this story about the FBI, and marvel, yet again, at the wonders (and the short-sightedness) of bureaucracy. Feeling safe yet?
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Some interesting blog perspectives include:
Hugh Hewitt, who thinks we need to establish a training academy for intelligence skills such as foreign languages. Of course, Polimom thinks we already have one…
Shakespeare’s Sister wonders whether linguists who were dismissed for being gay might not reflect a bit of… er… nose off, spite face idiocy (my interpretation).
And then there’s this from Poliblog, which kind of answers my last question above:
So, I guess if one doesn’t want the NSA to know what you are saying when they listen in on your international calls, your best bet is to speak in Arabic. Lovely.
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