Monterey DLI NAMES 10 TO FIRST HALL OF FAME CLASS

[Harold F. Schiffman]

 Posted on Sun, Nov. 05, 2006

LANGUAGE INSTITUTE NAMES 10 TO FIRST HALL OF FAME CLASS

By KEVIN HOWE
Herald Staff Writer

Ten people will make up the inaugural class to be inducted into the
Defense Language Institute's Hall of Fame during the language school's
65th anniversary celebration at the Presidio of Monterey in a ceremony at
2 p.m. Wednesday. Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey will be the keynote
speaker at a joint service retreat ceremony at 4 p.m. Wednesday at the
Presidio of Monterey's Soldier Field. The 10 Hall of Fame nominees were
selected for their contributions to language training and linguist
employment in the Defense Department, and include DLI graduates and
instructors, government leaders and policy-makers. They include:

 Air Force Col. William Fife graduated from the Russian basic course in
1948 and helped create the Air Force communications intelligence
capability. He transformed Army Security Agency equipment and
organizations into the Air Force's first Mobile Radio Squadron, created
the first airborne communications intelligence collection program,
established Air Force Security Service intercept sites at Misawa, Ashiya
and Wakkanai, Japan and in Korea, and planned and flew on the service's
first reconnaissance mission in 1949.

 Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Francona graduated from the Vietnamese basic
course in 1971, the Arabic basic course in 1974, and the Arabic
intermediate course in 1978.

He distinguished himself during numerous assignments in the Middle East,
including tours as an adviser to the Royal Jordanian Air Force, liaison
officer to the Iraqi armed forces during the Iran-Iraq War, and personal
interpreter and adviser to Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf during the Persian
Gulf War.

He was the lead interpreter for cease-fire talks with the Iraqi army that
ended Operation Desert Storm. After the Gulf War, Francona served as the
first air attach at the U.S. Embassy in Syria. He served with the National
Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central
Intelligence Agency in the region, and developed the Defense Department's
counterterrorism intelligence branch. Since retiring from the Air Force,
Francona has written numerous articles and a book, "Ally to Adversary --
An Eyewitness Account of Iraq's Fall From Grace," and is a military
analyst for NBC News.

 Shigeya Kihara was one of the four original instructors of the Japanese
language for the Fourth Army Intelligence School -- later the Military
Intelligence Service Language School and precursor to DLI -- which by the
end of World War II graduated approximately 6,000 soldier-linguists.

After the war, Kihara and his family moved with the school from Minnesota
to the Presidio of Monterey, where he continued to teach Japanese. In
1960, he became director of research and development and later, director
of support systems development. He retired in 1974, after 33 years.

Upon retirement, Kihara remained active in the community. His interests in
documenting the role of the language school during World War II, and the
role of Japanese-Americans during that period, led him to consult on
several books, films and magazine articles documenting contributions
Japanese-Americans made to the war effort despite being held in internment
camps by the U.S. government. Kihara died Jan. 16, 2005.

 Army Maj. Gen. Roland Lajoie graduated from the Russian basic course in
1968. From 1973 to 1976, he served as assistant Army attach to the Soviet
Union, after which he commanded the U.S. Army Russian Institute in
Garmisch, Germany. He later served as deputy director for international
negotiations to the Joint Chiefs of Staff as first director for the U.S.
On-Site Inspection Agency, defense attach in Paris and Moscow and chief of
the U.S. Military Liaison Mission in Potsdam, East Germany.

His last military assignment was as the associate deputy director for
operations and military affairs with the CIA.

Lajoie served as deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for
cooperative threat reduction until January 1998. In December 1998,
President Clinton appointed Lajoie as the U.S. chairman to the U.S.-Russia
Joint Commission on POW/MIAs, where he led efforts to uncover the fates of
military personnel of both sides missing since World War II.

 Air Force Maj. Gen. Doyle Larson was instrumental in the development of a
career linguist force within the Air Force. He founded RC-135 airborne
reconnaissance units at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, and Offutt Air
Force Base, Neb. He established the RC-135 operation at Kadena, Japan, in
support of U.S. military operations in Vietnam and later commanded the
Electronic Security Agency -- now the Air Intelligence Agency -- where he
developed the "Comfy Olympics" language competition which continues today
and was the precursor to the DLI Linguist of the Year competition.

Upon his retirement, he received the Order of the Sword from the Air
Intelligence Agency enlisted community for his dedication to bettering the
lives of enlisted linguists, including promotions, selective re-enlistment
bonuses, flight pay for enlisted air-crew linguists, and quality-of-life
improvements. Larson served as president of the Air Force Association.

 Hugh McFarlane graduated from the Russian basic course in 1966 and the
Hebrew basic course in 1970. During nearly 23 years as a Navy linguist, he
established and administered the first Naval Security Group language
maintenance program at Misawa Japan. He helped manage and then redesign
the National Security Agency/Central Security Service military linguist
program, which remains the longest-lived language intern program in the
cryptologic community.

After retiring from the Navy in 1988, McFarlane worked for seven years at
DLI, where he implemented the Feedforward/Feedback information exchange
system between the language school and follow-on technical schools, wrote
a major portion of the Command Language Program manual, guided seven
comprehensive curriculum reviews and mentored more than 15,000 cryptologic
students.

He is the author and editor of several versions of the cryptologic and
defense training managers' final learning objectives for all basic,
intermediate and advanced language courses.

As National Security Agency/Central Security Service liaison to the office
of the secretary of defense and the office of the director of national
intelligence, McFarlane has been a participant and planner in the
transformation of language policy and practice in cryptology, the Defense
Department and the intelligence community.

 Army Col. David McNerney was commandant of DLI from 1981 to 1985, when he
developed and implemented a construction program for 25 new buildings at
the Presidio, including two large classroom buildings, the Price Fitness
Center, 13 barracks buildings, nine academic and administrative support
buildings and a massive utility upgrade.

McNerney reorganized the troop command structure, initiated a professional
development program for military linguists that included language
proficiency development and the use of military language instructors,
instituted a number of academic and testing initiatives, doubled the size
of the permanent civilian faculty, and instituted the faculty personnel
system and developed the system of foreign language proficiency pay that
was later enacted by Congress.

 Glenn Nordin graduated from the Russian basic course and the Army Russian
Institute in the 1950s, as well as the Vietnamese Adviser Course in 1966.
He served as a radio interceptor with tactical forces, operations officer
with the Army Security Agency in Berlin, was a deputy branch chief at the
National Security Agency, a translator for the Washington-Moscow Hotline,
a ground intelligence officer in Vietnam, and was commandant of the Army
Electronic Warfare School.

As a defense contractor, Nordin led team development of the first
all-digital workstations and online dictionaries for language specialists.
He was also executive secretary of the Director of Central Intelligence
Foreign Language Committee and assistant director for intelligence policy
(language) with the office of the secretary of defense, during which he
conceptualized a variety of initiatives in foreign language education,
training, processing and analysis, including a virtual language
work-learning environment to facilitate workload sharing and continuing
education of language specialists.

His work with the Interagency Language Roundtable brought him to national
attention as an advocate for universal language education and employment.

 Former White House Chief of Staff and Congressman Leon Panetta has
championed language education in the military and worked to improve the
Presidio of Monterey for more than 30 years. As a congressman from 1977 to
1993, Panetta was instrumental in providing funds for capital improvement
projects on the Presidio, including construction of Nicholson Hall,
Munakata Hall, Aiso Library, Munzer Hall, Price Fitness Center and the
newer troop billets.

Panetta played an essential role in the institute being regarded as an
academic institution through his efforts to secure teacher compensation
based on educational background and performance. His support in Congress
of better pay for DLI faculty members led to the current faculty personnel
system. He has continually advocated for more and better language
instruction in the United States and was a key participant in developing
and gaining congressional approval for the National Security Education
Program.

Panetta served as chairman of the House Budget Committee, director of the
Office of Management and Budget and as White House chief of staff during
the Clinton administration. He and his wife, Sylvia, founded the Panetta
Institute for Public Policy.

 Whitney E. Reed was commandant of the National Cryptologic School from
1986 to 1993 and National Security Agency/Central Security Service deputy
director for education and training, and developed a system of language
training and maintenance at sites outside of DLI for the Navy and adapted
it for the Air Force. The system is now known as the Air Force Exportable
Language Training Program.

Reed revised language training curricula to include current, authentic
real-world materials in the classroom, making classes more relevant to
military linguists, and was instrumental in bringing computer technology
to language teaching by providing the first infusion of computers into
National Cryptologic School and Defense Language Institute classrooms, and
developed teaching guidelines to take advantage of their new capabilities.

Reed encouraged the Defense Language Committee to establish a realistic,
measurable proficiency graduation standard for listening, reading and
speaking for linguists and developed final learning objectives for basic
language courses.

New members of the DLI Hall of Fame will be inducted annually, with a call
for nominations each May.

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/15935424.htm
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