[lg policy] F.B.I. Is Slow to Translate Intelligence, Report Says

[Harold Schiffman]

F.B.I. Is Slow to Translate Intelligence, Report Says
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I.’s collection of wiretapped phone calls and
intercepted e-mail has been soaring in recent years, but the bureau is
failing to review “significant amounts” of such material partly for
lack of translators, according to a Justice Department report released
Monday.  “Not reviewing such material increases the risk that the
F.B.I. will not detect information in its possession that may be
important to its counterterrorism and counterintelligence efforts,”
said the report, which was issued by the office of the department’s
inspector general, Glenn A. Fine. In a statement, the Federal Bureau
of Investigation said that it was working to reduce its backlog of
unreviewed audio recordings and electronic documents, and that it
continued seeking to hire or contract with more linguists.

“The F.B.I. remains committed to reviewing all foreign language
material in a timely manner and setting priorities to ensure that the
most important material receives the most immediate attention,” the
agency said in a statement. The government’s ability to review and
translate materials quickly has been a subject of concern since the
2001 terrorist attacks. Two previous inspector general reports also
faulted the bureau for significant backlogs in reviewing information
in other languages.  Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican
who has pressed the F.B.I. to improve its translation abilities,
praised the bureau for its recent arrest of several terrorism suspects
inside the United States but said that its linguist department
remained “a big hole.”

“Today’s report appears to point to more of the same by the F.B.I.
with its translation department,” Mr. Grassley said in a statement.
“The F.B.I. needs their feet held to the fire in order to make
substantive changes in the translation area.”  The inspector general
report consisted largely of numbers — some of which were disputed by
the bureau — and did not contain any specific examples of cases in
which the bureau failed to detect a potential terrorist as quickly as
possible because of a delay in reviewing material.
The report also contains new information about the bureau’s efforts to
hire more translators. It showed that the number of the bureau’s
linguists — both staff members and contractors — had fallen slightly
to 1,298 as of September 2008, from a peak in 2005. It met its hiring
targets in 2008 for only 2 of 14 targeted languages.

The process of hiring linguists has been slowed because of lengthy
security vetting and competition with other intelligence agencies that
are also trying to hire more translators, the report said. The report
did find “significant improvements” in some F.B.I. practices. In
particular, for the past three years the bureau has reviewed every
text — a fax or paper document — its agents have collected for
top-priority counterterrorism investigations. But the inspector
general found that there were backlogs in reviewing audio recordings,
including telephone calls, and electronic files, like e-mail messages
and Web pages.

The F.B.I. and the inspector general disagreed over how to measure
those backlogs. Mr. Fine’s office found that the F.B.I. had failed to
review 7.2 million electronic files collected by counterterrorism
investigators. Nearly all of that backlog dates from 2008, when the
bureau’s intake of such materials for all types of investigations
nearly tripled, to 46 million files, the audit said.  But the F.B.I.
argued that as the volume of such files had increased, its analysts
increasingly used sophisticated computer searches of databases to find
high-priority files rather than opening each individual file by hand.

The inspector general report, citing field office reports, also said
there might be as many as 47,000 hours of counterterrorism audio
recordings that were not reviewed as of September 2008, which would be
a more than fivefold increase in the backlog since 2003. But the
F.B.I. argued that the inspector general report was double-counting
duplicate recordings. The bureau said that its primary system for
storing counterterrorism recordings had only about 4,470 hours waiting
for review, and that it had reduced its backlog in that system by
about 40 percent since 2003.

But the F.B.I. also acknowledged that some counterterrorism materials
were stored in other systems, and that it could not say what their
status was. It agreed to overhaul its tracking of such materials as
well as act on 23 related recommendations in the report. Senator
Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, which oversees the F.B.I., called the report
“troubling.” “While the F.B.I. has made progress in this area,” Mr.
Leahy said in a statement, “I remain concerned that the bureau’s
ability to adequately review this material is still seriously
deficient.”  “The ability to quickly and thoroughly translate and
review these materials is essential to our national security,” he
added.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/us/27fbi.html?_r=1&ref=us&pagewanted=print
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