Intelligence

Audit Finds Large FBI Translation Backlog

Yahoo! News - Audit Finds Large FBI Translation Backlog

Tue Sep 28, 2:29 AM ET
By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Despite major increases in money and personnel, the FBI (news - web sites) is still failing to translate many al-Qaida surveillance recordings in a timely manner and faces a giant backlog of untranslated material from terrorism and espionage investigations, a new Justice Department (news - web sites) audit shows.

The report released Monday by Glenn A. Fine, the department's inspector general, found more than one-third of al-Qaida intercepts authorized by a secret federal court were not reviewed within 12 hours of collection, as required by FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, more than 123,000 hours of audio in languages associated with terrorists still had not been reviewed as of April 2004, the audit found. In addition, more than 370,000 hours of audio associated with counterintelligence had not been reviewed.

This backlog existed even though money for the FBI's language services had increased from $21.5 million in fiscal 2001 to about $70 million in fiscal 2004. The number of linguists had risen from 883 to 1,214 over that period, the audit found, while electronic surveillance collection in key languages such as Arabic and Pashto has risen 45 percent.

FBI critics on Capitol Hill said the audit indicates that the bureau's translation capabilities are far from adequate.

"It doesn't do anyone any good for the FBI to have the terrorists' attack plans in its hands but still not be able to see or hear what the plans are," said Sen. Charles Grassley (news, bio, voting record), R-Iowa, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee (news - web sites).

The audit was completed in July in classified form. The version released Monday was edited to remove sections classified as "secret" by the FBI.

The FBI also is not meeting Mueller's requirement that all al-Qaida communications collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act be reviewed within 12 hours of interception. During April 2004, the audit found, 36 percent of such communications authorized by the secret FISA court were not even received at FBI headquarters within 12 hours.

The audit found that the FBI still lacks language personnel necessary to do all the needed translation work, and limitations in its technology, especially computer storage capacity, also cause problems that lead to backlogs.

"Three years after the worst terrorist attack on American soil, the overall effectiveness of a major investigative tool in our antiterrorism arsenal is still in doubt," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record) of Vermont, senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. "The Justice Department's translation mess has become a chronic problem that has obvious implications for our national security."

The audit made 18 recommendations for the FBI, many of which already have been implemented, Fine said. FBI officials told auditors they are hiring linguists as quickly as they can be found in such languages as Arabic, Farsi, Pashto, Urdu, Chinese, Turkish and Kurdish.

"The FBI appears to be taking steps to address these issues, which are critical components of the FBI's counterterrorism and counterintelligence efforts," Fine said.

Mueller said the FBI's translation workload has doubled since the Sept. 11 attacks, and the bureau is committed to hiring more linguists and fixing the technological problems. One difficulty is that the FBI has trouble finding qualified linguists who can pass required security clearances for sensitive terrorism and intelligence investigations, he said.

But Mueller also said FBI linguists are now connected worldwide so that someone in one office can work on information collected by another office far away.

"We agree with (the inspector general) that more remains to be done in our language services program, and we are giving this effort the highest priority," Mueller said.

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On the Net:

Justice Department inspector general: http://www.usdoj.gov/oig

FBI: http://www.fbi.gov

September 28, 2004 at 07:21 AM in FBI | Permalink | TrackBack (91) | Top of page | Blog Home