Newsweek has a really good article in this week’s issue on the U.S. military’s difficulties in translating intelligence obtained in the Middle East. Apparently, finding Arab-speaking translators willing to work with the U.S. government has proven to be extremely difficult. Considering the potential for terrorist attacks, the consequences of this unmet need can be devastating.
As Newsweek documented thoroughly, the problem is not in obtaining information from potential terrorists. Through wiretaps and other covert intelligence-gathering efforts, the military is already obtaining volumes of information about training, plans, transactions, and potential targets. The problem is, most of the time, we don’t understand a word of it.
“To fight the war on terror, the FBI desperately needs translators,” Newsweek reported. “Every day, wiretaps and bugs installed under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) record hundreds of hours of conversations conducted in Arabic or other Middle Eastern languages like Farsi. Those conversations must all be translated into English — and quickly — if investigators are to head off budding Qaeda plots against the United States. Today, more than two years after the 9/11 attacks, the FBI is still woefully short of translators. FBI Director Robert Mueller has declared that he wants a 12-hour rule: all significant electronic intercepts of suspected terrorist conversations must be translated within 12 hours. Asked if the bureau was living up to its own rule, a senior FBI official quietly chuckled. He was being mordant: he and every top gumshoe are well aware that the consequences could be tragic.”
The article added, “A shortage of Arabic speakers has plagued the entire intelligence community. Though U.S. intelligence was using all the best technology — spy satellites, high-tech listening posts and other devices — to listen in on the conversations of possible terrorists, far too often it had no idea what they were saying. A congressional inquiry after 9/11 found enormous backlogs. Millions of hours of talk by suspected terrorists — including 35 percent of all Arabic-language national-security wiretaps by the FBI—had gone untranslated and untranscribed. Some of the overseas intercepts contained chillingly precise warnings. On Sept. 10, 2001, the National Security Agency picked up suggestive comments by Qaeda operatives, including ‘Tomorrow is zero hour.’ The tape of the conversation was not translated until after 9/11.”
In fact, the problem is getting significantly worse all the time. As our efforts in the war on terror expand, so too does the amount of information from the Middle East that needs translating. The intelligence officials are, to put it mildly, overwhelmed.
I’d like to offer small suggestion that might help. Get rid of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
The Newsweek article didn’t mention it, but less than a year after 9/11, the U.S. Army dishonorably discharged six well-trained linguists — all of whom are proficient in Arabic — because they admitted to being gay. (At the same time, the Army also discharged gay linguists who specialized in Korean and Mandarin Chinese. It’s not like those are important languages or anything…)
All nine soldiers were at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, the military’s foremost language training center.
This is truly insane. As the Newsweek article reminds us, the U.S. military desperately needs Arab-speaking translators. We had servicemen and women who were well-trained Arab-speaking linguists, but we got rid of them because of their sexual orientation.
Which would we rather have: professional soldiers/linguists, who happen to be gay, translating potential terrorist threats or sensitive intelligence from the Middle East going untranslated? It’s national security interest vs. a military free of openly gay soldiers. This shouldn’t be a difficult choice.
The Newsweek article quoted an FBI official as saying, “If a nuclear suitcase bomb goes off in the hold of a ship in the Port of Long Beach because we missed an intercept that was sitting untranslated in a cardboard box, the bureau would be taken apart brick by brick.”
That’s true, but it’s equally horrifying that some people may have been able to translate that intercept in that cardboard box, but the government told them we didn’t want their help because they’re gay.