Difference between revisions of "2003-10-27 Lost In Translation"
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<let name=data index=Authors>\Daniel Klaidman\Michael Isikoff</let> | <let name=data index=Authors>\Daniel Klaidman\Michael Isikoff</let> | ||
<let name=data index=Source>Newsweek</let> | <let name=data index=Source>Newsweek</let> | ||
| − | <let name=data index=Topics>\Federal Bureau of Investigation\War on Terror\ | + | <let name=data index=Topics>\Federal Bureau of Investigation\War on Terror\9-11/warnings\Sibel Edmonds\2001/09/10</let> |
<let name=data index=URL>http://www.newsweek.com/id/61916</let> | <let name=data index=URL>http://www.newsweek.com/id/61916</let> | ||
<let name=data index=Title>Lost In Translation</let> | <let name=data index=Title>Lost In Translation</let> | ||
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<p>Since 9/11, goaded by the dire warnings of Attorney General [[John Ashcroft]], Congress has poured billions of dollars into the war on terror to beef up manpower, including hiring foreign-language translators. (calling all linguists... to serve your country, reads the latest help-wanted ad posted on the FBI's Web site.) The bureau has made some headway: before 9/11, the FBI had only 40 Arabic and 25 Farsi speakers to listen to national-security intercepts. Today, officials claim, there are 200 Arabic and 75 Farsi speakers on the job (about two thirds are contract employees). Still, that's not nearly enough: every week, say informed sources, hundreds of hours of tapes from wiretaps and bugs pile up in secure lockers, waiting, sometimes for months on end, to be deciphered. The bureau's slow progress is not for lack of money. Rather, the FBI's understandable but obsessive concern with security, its sometimes cumbersome bureaucracy and, critics say, the remnants of its nativist culture make it a difficult place for Muslims and foreign-born linguists to get jobs and work.</p> | <p>Since 9/11, goaded by the dire warnings of Attorney General [[John Ashcroft]], Congress has poured billions of dollars into the war on terror to beef up manpower, including hiring foreign-language translators. (calling all linguists... to serve your country, reads the latest help-wanted ad posted on the FBI's Web site.) The bureau has made some headway: before 9/11, the FBI had only 40 Arabic and 25 Farsi speakers to listen to national-security intercepts. Today, officials claim, there are 200 Arabic and 75 Farsi speakers on the job (about two thirds are contract employees). Still, that's not nearly enough: every week, say informed sources, hundreds of hours of tapes from wiretaps and bugs pile up in secure lockers, waiting, sometimes for months on end, to be deciphered. The bureau's slow progress is not for lack of money. Rather, the FBI's understandable but obsessive concern with security, its sometimes cumbersome bureaucracy and, critics say, the remnants of its nativist culture make it a difficult place for Muslims and foreign-born linguists to get jobs and work.</p> | ||
| − | <p>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 "[[Pre-9/11 warnings|Tomorrow is zero hour]]." The tape of the conversation was not translated until after 9/11.</p> | + | <p>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 {{date|2001-09-10|Sept. 10, 2001}}, the [[National Security Agency]] picked up suggestive comments by Qaeda operatives, including "[[Pre-9/11 warnings|Tomorrow is zero hour]]." The tape of the conversation was not translated until after 9/11.</p> |
</blockquote> | </blockquote> | ||
'''Commentary''': | '''Commentary''': | ||
| − | * | + | * [[2009-06-03 Project Expose MSM Reports]]: [[Sibel Edmonds]], who provided the author with many facts and additional sources detailing extensive security and quality-control problems at the FBI's translation division, says that the article was essentially a whitewash toeing the FBI party line that the only problem was a shortage of translators. (Also note that the article even implies heavily that "obsessive security" was a problem, rather than ''lack'' of security.)</let> |
| − | <let name=data index=TextShort>“A shortage of Arabic speakers has plagued the entire intelligence community. ... On | + | <let name=data index=TextShort>“A shortage of Arabic speakers has plagued the entire intelligence community. ... On {{date|2001-09-10|Sept. 10, 2001}}, the [[National Security Agency]] picked up suggestive comments by Qaeda operatives, including "[[Pre-9/11 warnings|Tomorrow is zero hour]]." The tape of the conversation was not translated until after 9/11.”</let> |
</hide><if not flag=including><let name=docat val=1 /><noinclude>{{:project:code/show/link}}</noinclude></if> | </hide><if not flag=including><let name=docat val=1 /><noinclude>{{:project:code/show/link}}</noinclude></if> | ||