Global War on Terror: FBI Agents Lack Arabic Language Skills
CONSIDERED A CAREER AS AN FBI LANGUAGE SPECIALIST?
Washington Post: FBI Agents Still Lacking Arabic Skills
Five years after Arab terrorists attacked the United States, only 33 FBI agents have even a limited proficiency in Arabic, and none of them work in the sections of the bureau that coordinate investigations of international terrorism, according to new FBI statistics.
Counting agents who know only a handful of Arabic words — including those who scored zero on a standard proficiency test — just 1 percent of the FBI’s 12,000 agents have any familiarity with the language, the statistics show.
The numbers reflect the FBI’s continued struggle to attract employees who speak Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and other languages of the Middle East and South Asia, even as the bureau leads a fight against terrorist groups primarily centered in those parts of the world. The same challenge is facing the CIA and other agencies as the government competes with the private sector for a limited number of applicants with foreign-language proficiency, according to U.S. officials and experts.
Well, the FBI and CIA need to identify young, middle age and older candidates, recruit college age/middle age students and offer them financial incentives including scholarships and loan forgiveness.
The United States has its national security at stake and intelligence/law enforcement services are of vital national interest.
The federal checkbook should be opened to train, and deploy qualified people to protect us.
And an ROTC type program based at colleges/universities would stimulate an immediate recruitment of language skills specialists.
Technorati Tags: FBI, CIA, FBILanguageSpecialists