Focus on languages, US intelligence chief is told

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From the Philadelphia Enquirer, Posted on Wed, Feb. 21, 2007

Focus on languages, intelligence chief is told

At the swearing-in of the new director, Bush cited a need for recruits
with skills in Arab cultures.

By Jennifer Loven
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - President Bush instructed the nation's new spy chief to focus
on finding more recruits with the language skills and cultural background
to collect information on al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. During a
swearing-in yesterday at Bolling Air Force Base outside Washington for
retired Vice Adm. Mike McConnell, Bush said the intelligence community
still needed significant improvements more than five years after the Sept.
11 attacks. He charged McConnell, who took over as national intelligence
director several days ago, with better integrating the nation's 16 spy
agencies, improving information-sharing among those agencies and with
other officials throughout government, and finding better intelligence
technologies. Bush, and later McConnell, also focused on a persistent
weakness in U.S. intelligence-gathering: a dearth of operatives who speak
critical languages, such as Arabic or Farsi.

McConnell, 63, said: "The old policies have hampered some common-sense
reforms, such as hiring first- and second-generation Americans who possess
native language skills, cultural insights, and a keen understanding of the
threats we face." Bush told the 300 invited guests: "These are enormous
challenges, and Mike McConnell has the experience and the character and
the talent to meet them." "This is an opportunity and a privilege of a
lifetime," McConnell said. To go after the fast-paced threat of terrorism,
McConnell said, the government must start acquiring new technologies and
capabilities with the agility that was seen during the Cold War.

Yet terrorists, he said, also are seizing on advances in technology. "The
time needed to develop a terrorist plot, communicate it around the globe,
and put it into motion has been drastically reduced," McConnell said. "The
timeline is no longer a calendar. It is a watch." McConnell's resume
includes nearly four decades of work in the intelligence community. His
office, created by Congress just over two years ago, oversees activities
spread across 16 agencies, including the CIA, FBI and National Security
Agency. McConnell's predecessor, John Negroponte, has been nominated as
deputy secretary of State.

Read a transcript of the remarks by President Bush and national
intelligence director Mike McConnell via http://go.philly.com/mcconnell

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/nation/16744122.htm

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