It seems we have 50 FBI agents who speak Arabic out of 10,000. Suppose that instead of deciding to spread our scarce language assets thinner by invading Iraq, the Bush administration had done something much cheaper like a $15 billion per year effort to massively boost America's base of people who speak Arabic, Turkic languages, Urdu, etc.? Wouldn't that have been more helpful?
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Fifty
28 Jan 2008 01:43 pm
Comments (39)
I agree with MY. After Sputnik, didn't we respond to the (wrongly) perceived missile gap by vastly increasing federal support for math and science education in preparation for the space race? Wouldn't what MY suggests be a similar and consistent response to a national security crisis? Oh, I forgot, the Republican party in the 50's was led by Eisenhower, a man actually interested in defending his country in a realistic way rather than against the fevers of his own imagination.......
I take the point. Still, it seems like there a lot of agencies who would need Arabic speakers far more than the FBI would. It would be interesting to see what the comparable numbers are for CIA and NSA and DIA and what have you.
I'm also curious to know why the FBI got to interview Saddam at all; seems kinda outside the mission.
Suppose that, instead of deciding to spread our scarce language assets thinner by invading Iraq, the Bush administration had done something much cheaper like purchasing $15 billion worth of gold and destroying it with a nuclear warhead. Wouldn't even that have been more useful?
I'm hard pressed to think of anything that would have had consequences as bad as those as the Iraq invasion, except the invasion of other countries not complicit in 9/11 (Italy? Gabon? Honduras?)
Honestly the problems with the FBI go far deeper than Arabic speakers. After all, there isn't a shortage of Arabic speakers in this country. They are all over the place. A lot of big colleges in this country offer it as a major. But the FBI is running a PR campaign. If you smoked pot you can't work for them. How many brilliant minds are automatically disqualified.
Related, from that long NYT piece over the weekend: the US employs more members of military marching bands than foreign service officers.
There are obvious issues surrounding recruitment and vetting, seen in the Prouty case. But those can be addressed with the right kind of application.
For some reason unknown to me, Portland OR public schools has 4 programs (Spanish, Russain, Japanese and Mandarin) for immersion. Kids start in kindergraten with a half day and continue the half day in the immersion language until 5th grade. After fifth grade, the program continues, but with fewer hours, until high school graduation.
The half day is not a language class, it is elementary school in that language.
You want Arabic speakers? Give school districts $$$ to do this. You don't get enough students? Promise them free rides at the state university, in whatever subject they want, as long as they graduate from the program. Still not enough, throw some more money at families, and they will be dying to have their kids learn Urdu.
My daughther started Japanese immersion in kindergarten this year. No money was involved, just that the Madarin school was a little too far.
The old joke is three languages = trilingual, two languages = bilingual, one language = American. Heck, there are Arabic speakers everywhere but the FBI has every single one of them on their terrorist watch list and the TSA wouldn't let them fly to DC anyway.
Strictly speaking, freddiemac, you can get away with some "youthful indiscretion" and still be gainfully employed by the bureau. I think the magic number is fourteen (which I suspect was arrived at via dartboard). Though if you personally sold narcotics, that's a different story all together. No clearance for you!
Honestly, 50 fluent in Arabic is higher than I'd have guessed and I think some improvement has been made in the past few years. But, MY is right. As long as the FBI is going to be expected to handle overseas terror operations, they're going to need a greater base of agents with Arabic fluency. Some extra cash for such a program wouldn't be so bad.
Ok, ok, the Bush administration is the biggest disaster in recent history. Pretty much everyone agrees on that nowadays. Complaining how bad it is at this point is like complaining about the smell of a bus station bathroom. We all know it sucks, just hold your breath, it won't last much longer.
Well, given all the trouble that someone named Sibel Edmonds has been causing, maybe the politicians in DC just doesn't *want* any more FBI translators:
http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_01_28/article1.html
Suppose that the Bush Jr. administration isn't actually interested in having more and more accurate Arabic and Farsi speakers.
At some stage, you have to allow for the possibility that what they do actually reflects what they want, rather than perpetually assuming they want something better but never manage to be able to do so.
freddiemac hit it on the head. A friend of a friend recently applied for a position at the FBI as an intel analyst. This kid spoke Arabic, was intelligent and graduat from a good university. The FBI offered him the job, but he failed his background check because he had smoked pot 3 years ago. That's one less bright, dedicated, and ambitious public servant working to keep the country safer.
It's nearly criminal. I guess the war on drugs is more important than the war on terror.
D'oh! Elvis! I wasn't the first with "shouldn't they just piss away the money" instead.
I thought about suggesting that they set money on fire, but that actually might strengthen the dollar (which could use it); thus my suggestion of nuking gold.
Well, the Army keeps kicking out Arab linguists for being gay, but I hear they're willing to let a little hashish slide in the interest of meeting recruiting goals.
So, Army: Pot but no gays.
FBI: Gays, but no pot.
Maybe they should trade.
I thought about suggesting that they set money on fire, but that actually might strengthen the dollar (which could use it); thus my suggestion of nuking gold.
Bite your tongue.
You needn't disagree with the decision to invade Iraq and the subsequent use of resources, to be aghast at having only 50 Arabic speakers in the FBI.
The resources argument can apply to any and all things. Wouldn't Iraq money be better spent doing a host of other things - education, tax refunds, Afghanistan, social security, alternative energy development?
Liberals would be wiser to expend their intellectual resources outlining a strategy to win the WOT, rather than use it all figuring out ways to criticize Bush.
I'm pretty sure, lowercase greg, that criticizing Bush may be a far more effective way of winning the war than anything else anyone's tried.
Yeah, Allan, in fairness, your post was funnier than mine. But I got the glory of the FRIST POST. It's a tough balancing act.
MY says, down the page, that if he'd have been president the FBI would have handled interrogations in the war on terror. So these 50 folks would have been pretty damn busy.
jh, the FBI is an independent law enforcement agency. A new president isn't going to get to appoint a new director right away, and when a new director is appointed, the director will not answer to the president.
You don't necessarily need a lot of devoted agents for something to be successful in the FBI. Look at how big an impact Mulder and Scully had all by themselves. Compared to that, 50 is a ton.
Because language instruction has a low profit margin for KBR and Halliburton, much less than unnecessary wars.
done something much cheaper like a $15 billion per year effort to massively boost America's base of people who speak Arabic, Turkic languages, Urdu, etc.?
Sounds like a good investment, but where would President Yglesias get the money since he's already spent it on an unused, high-speed train?
Add to this the 'need' for domestic spying. We reserve the right to wiretap any phone in America, apparently, but we apparently don't need to know what any of those 'terrorists' are saying.
Matt, you're talking about the job my dad did after serving in the Korean War. He already spoke German, so when he joined the Air Force, they taught him Russian. He served in Germany. When he got out, he was recruited to attend Georgetown U., then went to work at the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress. Their to "client" was DoD. He spent years as the head of the East Bloc Division, with a staff of linguists. They took jobs for other gov't depts. researching anything from the date a certain holiday fell in North Korea to huge dissertations about the probably outcomes of certain economic policies in East Germany etc etc. In my view, he was a Cold Warrior and it was this kind of understanding the other side that helped. He always voted Repub, he and my mom both thought there were graver threats to nat'l security than most Americans knew about. But his staff always got cut during Repub administrations, he hated that. He was really depressed when he retired (during Reagan? I can't remember). They were axing, axing the FRD and he said, "I don't know what kind of world we're leaving for you."
But I think El Cid is right.
While obviously Bush should do more about this, the problem with Arabic language education go beyond what money can solve. You can attend a premium university in our country , major in Arabic (I did), be excellent as all hell (I was), then go to an Arabic country and discover that your curriculum was crap and you can barely understand directions from people.
Mostly the problem is that people in the Arabic world do not speak one language, although they write the same one. So until we lose our mindset of looking for "arabic-speakers" rather than Egyptian, Palestinian, Iraq, Morrocan, etc. speakers, we will never be able to solve this problem.
Focusing solely on the FBI gives a false impression. There are hundreds of Arabic linguists produced by the military every year. Many stay in the military, others leave and become civilian linguists working (mostly) for various government agencies, others never use their language again.
A huge problem of using native linguists is the clearance process is almost always disqualifying. They can be used as teachers, but not in other capacities.
If the FBI doesn't have lots of Arabic linguists, it's because they aren't really trying. Although I will say that finding people who "speak" Arabic can be very difficult as speaking it well is much harder than listening or reading.
Focusing solely on the FBI gives a false impression. There are hundreds of Arabic linguists produced by the military every year. Many stay in the military, others leave and become civilian linguists working (mostly) for various government agencies, others never use their language again.
A huge problem of using native linguists is the clearance process is almost always disqualifying. They can be used as teachers, but not in other capacities.
If the FBI doesn't have lots of Arabic linguists, it's because they aren't really trying. Although I will say that finding people who "speak" Arabic can be very difficult as speaking it well is much harder than listening or reading.
There already are programs for this: https://clscholarship.org/home.php
National Security Language Initiative (NSLI)
On January 5, 2006 , President Bush launched the National Security Language Initiative (NSLI) to further strengthen national security and prosperity in the 21st century through strategic language learning. The NSLI initiative will increase dramatically the number of Americans learning critical need foreign languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Farsi and others through new and expanded programs from kindergarten through university and into the workforce.
The NSLI initiative is a coordinated federal government program that includes the Department of State, Department of Education, Department of Defense, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
"This is the largest initiative of its kind focused on language in half a century," said Thomas A. Farrell, deputy assistant secretary for academic programs at the State Department.
Suppose that the Bush Jr. administration isn't actually interested in having more and more accurate Arabic and Farsi speakers.
This reflects the position of Michael Ledeen, who seems to believe that a working knowledge of Persian might actually inhibit his hawkishness towards Iran.
Heck, there are a lot of Iraqi translators now living in fear who might be open to offers.
Re: The FBI offered him the job, but he failed his background check because he had smoked pot 3 years ago.
Unless the kid had a police record for this, or someone of his close acquaintance chose to blab about it, or the FBI has psychics with astonishing abilities, how would they know that?
Re: A huge problem of using native linguists is the clearance process is almost always disqualifying.
I can see a possible issue involving native speakers who are Muslims, but what about the large number of Arabic-speaking Christians in this country? These people should no more be a security threat than German Jewish refugees would have been in WWII. Moreover if all you want is a translator/interpretter why set the security bar stratospherically high? Such people can be employed on a purely need-to-know basis, with no access to deep-classified material.
Unless the kid had a police record for this, or someone of his close acquaintance chose to blab about it, or the FBI has psychics with astonishing abilities, how would they know that?
Because he told the truth when they asked him? Shocking behavior for a prospective FBI agent, I realize, but stranger things have happened.
The neocons are terrified that people who speak Arabic, Farsi, or Urdu might end up being slightly sympathetic towards the native speakers of those languages. It's a lot harder to demonize someone if they seem human, and the neocons are about nothing if not demonization.
Togolosh nails it. It's bad enough in America if you want to learn French or German - in some people's eyes just the desire to learn a foreign language makes you kind of suspect. Anyone who wants to learn Arabic or Farsi is practically committing treason. Look at how someone like Michael Totten has made himself into a Middle East expert by befriending english speaking Arabs and Kurds and making no effort to learn local languages or history. That is the approved neocon approach.
PDX Pete,
That Portland program is fascinating. And you're right, if Uncle Sam promised free college to any student who participated, parents would sign their little brats up in droves.
Of course, the trouble is, if the government does roll it out, there's the issue of who picks which language-- does the government allow parents to choose (and have Mandarin oversubscribed by yuppie spawn and not enough kids studying, say, Farsi) or does the government pick the language?
Since kids can learn two new languages easier than an adult can learn one, I'd structure the programs so there's training in three languages-- English, a language the parents choose (from what the local school offers) and a language Uncle Sam chooses.
Well, it's not Fitzhugh, his vocabulary consisting as it does entirely of the word "brother."
"I'm also curious to know why the FBI got to interview Saddam at all; seems kinda outside the mission.
Posted by southpaw | January 28, 2008 1:59 PM"
That's what I was wondering when I read about it on CNN. It just seems... odd. You would think the CIA would go ballistic for the FBI being on their turf.
Doesn't this just mean that it is theoretically possible that somebody can claim to speak a less popular Central Asian Turkic language often spoken by many Muslims, apply for a job at the FBI and get it because no one there would know how to test you on it? Think of how our military linguists were going crazy thinking that AQ was involved in some videotaped beheadings because they mistranslated a phrase meaning "the one kneeling down, doing nothing" for AQ.
"Well, given all the trouble that someone named Sibel Edmonds has been causing, maybe the politicians in DC just doesn't *want* any more FBI translators"
"Doesn't this just mean that it is theoretically possible that somebody can claim to speak a less popular Central Asian Turkic language often spoken by many Muslims, apply for a job at the FBI and get it because no one there would know how to test you on it?"
Both of these statements are exactly the situation Sibel Edmonds came across in her work at the FBI.
Sibel was Iranian born of Turkic parents, raised in Turkey, emigrated to the US. She speaks Turkish and Farsi. After 9/11 she applied for a translator's job at the FBI. It took months for the background checks, and she thought she had been rejected when they finally contacted her.
Once she got there, she became aware of "irregularities" in the department. FBI agents were asking her to re-translate documents and wiretaps that had been marked "unimportant" by other translators because the agents didn't believe they could be unimportant. And they weren't.
Sibel discovered that many of these which had been translated by other translator's had important information relevant to the agents' cases.
It was then that she was approached by Melek Can Dickerson, an FBI translator married to a US military officer involved in arms procurement. They attempted to recruit her to join an organization which she knew to be under investigation by the FBI.
She reported this to her superiors, who told her to ignore it. She went higher up - eventually all the way to Robert Mueller - and ended up having her assigned tasks taken away, her computer seized, and she was eventually fired and escorted out of the building.
Once she went to Congress with her details about the espionage being conducted within the FBI translation department, the FBI launched an internal investigation and concluded that her allegations were credible and that she had been fired in retaliation.
She testified in a secure Congressional facility to several Congressman, and also testified at the 9/11 Commission about both the problems at the FBI translation department and about the information she had obtained there pertaining to senior elected and appointed US officials engaging in criminal activity.
At this point, the DoJ issued a "State Secrets Privilege" gag order, preventing her from telling anyone what she knows. Only a Senator or Congressman with sufficient security clearance can hear her story and repeat it publicly - and none have, despite Henry Waxman declaring that her case would be number one on his list when he chaired the Intelligence Committee. Now he won't return her calls...
This case illustrates several things:
1) The FBI and other government agencies have been penetrated by moles from the very organizations that are being investigated - and that these moles have compromised the translation efforts.
2) The FBI and other intelligence agencies are incompetently run. Duh! Big surprise!
3) The FBI and other government agencies have been politicized and brought under the control of other agencies such as the State Department and the DoD, and as such can be ordered to shut down investigations which threaten high-ranking US elected and appointed officials, or which threaten the "diplomatic relations" the US has with certain countries - notably Israel, Turkey, and Pakistan.
So it really won't do the US much good to try to hire more translators if:
1) The FBI can't run a competent translation department.
2) The FBI can't hire anybody but spies as translators.
3) The FBI can't do anything about the information that it does translate if the "persons of interest" involved are the "wrong" persons of interest.
skyler is right. I studied Mandarin for years, thought I was proficient, went to China, and learned I couldn't speak it for crap. Most Chinese people study English for years and can't speak it for crap either (though they can read it). You can't really learn a language until you've lived in the country for at least a few months.
Comments closed February 11, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Suppose that instead of deciding to spread our scarce language assets thinner by invading Iraq, the Bush administration had done something much cheaper like lighting $200 billion dollars on fire. Wouldn't that have been more helpful?
Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | January 28, 2008 1:56 PM