Sun editorial:

Stamping out terrorist threats

CIA should make stronger effort to brush up on foreign language skills

Wednesday, April 22, 2009 | 2:08 a.m.

One of the national security weaknesses exposed by the 9/11 attacks was the lack of Arab-speaking agents in the CIA and in other U.S. intelligence-gathering agencies.

The gathering of information on foreign-based terrorists and their organizations would seem to be an impossible task without the mastery of foreign language skills necessary to interpret the verbal and written material gathered in the course of an investigation.

One would think the CIA — in the nearly eight years since the terrorist attacks — would have become proficient in that skill set. In fact, the number of CIA employees who speak more than one language has risen by 70 percent over the past five years.

But USA Today reported Monday that even with that increase, only 28 percent of the agency’s clandestine operations employees and only 18 percent of its analysts speak a foreign language. The overall number of CIA employees proficient in at least a second language is a pathetic 13 percent.

The agency has its work cut out in order to meet CIA Director Leon Panetta’s goal of having every spy and analyst trained in a foreign language.

The CIA’s poor language skills are a sad reflection of how little emphasis this country places on teaching foreign languages. If American schools placed more emphasis on that, the CIA and other agencies that rely on foreign language skills would be able to draw from a deeper pool of talent.

A 2005 study prepared by the Center for Applied Linguistics, a language education advocacy group in Washington, reported that more than 50 percent of European adults are fluent in a second language. By contrast, only 9 percent of U.S. adults fall into that category.

To help reduce possible future terrorist attacks, the CIA should aggressively step up its recruitment and training efforts to ensure that its spies and analysts have the language skills necessary to do their jobs effectively.

Discussion: 3 comments so far…

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By Future

April 22, 2009

6:23 a.m.

Suggest removal

Now that Obama is taking us back to the CIA witchhunt days of the 70s who wants to be in the CIA.

Why do we need to have "every spy and analyst trained in a foreign language" when we have stopped interrogations and NSA electronic spying?

Obama hasty hurried to the CIA headquarters on 4-20-2009 to defend his decision to only release the interrogation methods and not the al-Qaida operational information obtained - to reassure demoralized CIA agents.

Obama said "Don't be discouraged by the what has happened the last few weeks"

Obama claimed the ACLU court case forced him to release the classified information. Or was it moveon.org

Obama decided not to prosecute the CIA agents since Eric Holder would have little chance of winning in court. Obama did not have the goods.

Obama did not release the information gained by the interrogations as hinted by the heavy redacted memos. In a memo to CIA staff Obama's National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said "A deeper understanding of the Al Qaeda network" was gained.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/...

Obama and Eric Holder took the coward's way out in refusing to use selective prosecutorial discretion to prosecute the alleged torture interrogators.

Instead the President and the Attorney General are holding a Public Trial in the newspapers without a jury.

On 4-20-2009, Obama said "With respect to those who formulate those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws....And I don't want to prejudge that. ... There are a host of very complicated issues involved there."

"Those who formulated" would include Nancy Pelosi whose approval was required.

A public hanging by newspaper trial is more "torture" than interrogation by caterpillar (bug-in-a-box).

Because both Obama and Eric Holder knew that the chance of 12 citizens convicting these warriors would be slim to none and that as part of the case the public would learn what Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed knew about terrorist operations.

Panetta and the four former CIA directors warned Obama against release.

What is clear is that no future detainee needs to fear CIA interrogations.
By jfnance32

April 22, 2009

6:38 a.m.

Suggest removal

Obama wants to copy and fax all the top secerts to the press to help his political agenda. Forget about protecting us from terrorists. He has higher priorities.

Yet, his Columbia school records and his original birth certificate are buried in super tight security vaults that even Mossad can not penerate.
By Future

April 22, 2009

11:32 a.m.

Suggest removal

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seized on an opportunity on 4-22-2009, to take a sarcastic shot at Dick Cheney in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, telling lawmakers that "It won't surprise you that I don't consider him a particularly reliable source,"

Clinton was calling Cheney a liar about whether there was intelligence obtained.