Politics > Politics-USA > The Feds listen in on terrorists. Too often they can’t understand a word they hear
| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
19 Oct 2003 06:15:29 PM |
| Object: |
The Feds listen in on terrorists. Too often they can’t understand a word they hear |
From NEWSWEEK, 10/27/03 issue:
http://msnbc.com/news/982235.asp?0cv=CB20
Lost in Translation
The Feds listen in on terrorists every day. Too often they can’t
understand a word they hear
By Daniel Klaidman and Michael Isikoff
NEWSWEEK
Oct. 27 issue --
The clash of civilizations rages in some surprising places, and one of
them is the large room in the FBI’s Washington, D.C., Field Office
that houses a unit known as CI-19.
In one set of cubicles sit the foreign-born Muslims; across a
partition is everyone else.
They have the same vital job: to translate supersecret wiretaps of
suspected terrorists and spies.
But the 150 or so members of CI-19 (for Counterintelligence) segregate
themselves by ethnicity and religion.
Some of the U.S.-born translators have accused their Middle
Eastern-born counterparts of making disparaging or unpatriotic
remarks, or of making "mistranslations"---failing to translate
comments that might reflect poorly on their fellow Muslims, such as
references to sexual deviancy.
The tensions erupt in arguments and angry finger-pointing from time to
time.
"It’s a good thing the translators are not allowed to carry guns,"
says Sibel Edmonds, a Farsi translator who formerly worked in the
unit.
To fight the war on terror, the FBI desperately needs translators.
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.
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Makes ya feel real secure, doesn't it. Thank you, Mr. presidunce.
Harry
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