EXCLUSIVE: Lack of translators hurts U.S. war on terror

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By Rowan Scarborough

U.S. national security agencies remain woefully short of foreign-language speakers and translators nearly eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks resulted in a war on an enemy that often communicates in relatively obscure dialects, current and former officials say.

The necessary cadre of U.S. intelligence personnel capable of reading and speaking targeted regional languages such as Pashto, Dari and Urdu "remains essentially nonexistent," the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence wrote in a rare but stark warning in its 2010 budget report.

The gap has become critical in the war effort, especially in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater, where al Qaeda and Taliban operatives text message, e-mail and talk in languages that the intelligence community had largely ignored before 2001.

Intercepting phone and radio calls in the region's native tongues is critical to monitoring terrorist camps and movements in Pakistan's tribal areas, officials said.

The National Security Agency (NSA), based at Fort Meade, Md., channels the calls to translation centers, where linguists are supposed to quickly translate the words into English so that they can be distributed in reports and raw transcripts to commanders and policymakers. But such quick follow-through does not always happen.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the senior Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told The Washington Times that U.S agencies remain "behind the eight ball" in catching up to dialects not deemed important during the Cold War.

"We've been pushing the language issue for an extended period of time. The agencies just didn't respond," Mr. Hoekstra said in an interview. "They'd come in. We'd talk about language capability. We'd beat them up. They'd leave. They'd come back a year later, and it wouldn't be a lot better. We'd beat them up again.

"I can't explain it. No. 1, Congress has been pestering them. No. 2, you would think it's important for them to do their job. You could understand it immediately after 9/11. This takes a little time to do to get it right. But still talking about it in 2009 makes no sense at all," he said.

Intelligence officials say they've offered significant sums of money to try to lure more translators, but recruitment remains slow and some attractive candidates have trouble passing the review for security clearances.

"We've made progress on foreign languages -- including Pashto, Dari and Urdu -- but there's more to be done," CIA spokesman George Little said. "We continue to offer generous financial incentives to individuals with foreign-language skills, including hiring bonuses and additional pay for current officers."