WASHINGTON, 11 February 2007 — Since the Sept. 11 attacks and the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, American agencies have been slow to hire Arab- and Muslim-Americans to help them wade through Mideast and South Asian cultural and language operations.
At the FBI, if one counts the agents there who know a handful of Arabic words — including those who scored zero on a standard proficiency test — just 1 percent of the FBI’s 12,000 agents have any familiarity with the language.
These 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 terror groups primarily centered in those parts of the world.
The same challenge is facing the CIA, the US military, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies working in these regions and with Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans at home.
In Washington, it was reported last year by an Inspector General that thousands of hours of intelligence tapes remain untranslated.
Even at the State Department, only 10 of 34,000 employees are rated fully fluent in Arabic.
In Iraq, the military sorely lacks American translators, forcing reliance on foreigners. This correspondent found herself having to translate for her unit while embedded as journalist with the Marines at the start of the Iraq war.
Due to these significant operational failings, the incoming Director of National Intelligence (which overseas all US intelligence agencies) retired Navy Vice Adm. John M. McConnell, garnered much interest when he announced last week that he intends to improve security rules to make it easier for US intelligence agencies to hire first-generation Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans for highly sensitive jobs.
The current rules, which date from World War II, limit intelligence agencies’ ability to employ first-generation Americans “who might have native language capabilities from serving in some of these very sensitive positions in the intelligence community” and thus hinder efforts to deal with radical Islam, McConnell said during his confirmation hearing last week before the Senate Select Committee.
According to McConnell, the current rules require citizenship verification for access to the most highly classified data. For American citizens born overseas, their citizenship must be verified, as well as the US legal status of immediate family members, including “spouse, cohabitant, father, mother, sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters,” — according to the directive.
Another issue that must be considered when hiring is “foreign influence,” according to guidelines adopted by the White House in 2005.
These include “contact with a foreign family member, business or professional associate, friend, or other person who is a citizen of or resident in a foreign country if that contact creates a heightened risk of foreign exploitation, inducement, manipulations, pressure or coercion.”
McConnell said he wants to change these directives because they constitute “one of the areas that needs probably the greatest deal of attention and improvement... using people who speak the native language, understand the culture and the tribal conditions.”
This decision, he said, comes after embarrassing revelations that America is not equipped with Arabic or South Asian speakers.
