Example Of A World Wide Muslim Religionist

[ajwps]

The world of Islam has a Qur'an commandment to convert all the world to the faith of Muhammad or slay them from ambush. (Qur'an Sura 9:5)

Here is just a little sample of what the world would be like with Mullah's running the earth.

http://www.nynewsday.com/ny-usinte032399569oct05,0,5244805.story

Washington - The eight-minute tape recording of the murder was ghastly and disturbing. An enraged father shouted in Arabic, "Die quickly! ... Quiet, little one. Die, my daughter, die!" as he repeatedly stabbed his teenage daughter with a butcher knife while his wife held her down.

The 1989 killing in St. Louis was captured on a court-approved FBI telephone tap of a Palestinian, Zein Isa, who was suspected of supporting terrorist causes. Agents were not listening as the killing took place. The FBI ultimately handed over the tape, which was used to help convict the couple of murder.

Other recordings played during the trial revealed that Isa had been threatening his daughter's life for weeks before the murder. None of those tapes had been translated until after the fact.

Even if FBI agents had been listening in real time to the murder, it is doubtful they could have intervened in time to stop it. Still, Matthew Aid, a security specialist, cites the case as symbolic of a chronic problem for U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies in their efforts against terrorism. Clues to Isa's future conduct were there for the taking, he said, but a shortage of linguists prevented the material from being translated in time.

"They didn't get around to processing the tapes," Aid said. "It's a perfect example of what happens when agencies like the FBI and others put the emphasis on collection" and not on personnel to translate and analyze the backlog of voice and signals intercepts. "Machines are wonderful things, but the problem is you still need human beings to listen to the stuff, analyze it and report it," said Aid, an intelligence historian and managing director at Kroll Associates, an international security firm.

There are other examples. After the 1990 murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane in Manhattan, the FBI confiscated a large amount of handwritten Arabic-language material from the assassin's apartment but did not translate or analyze it. The material, reviewed only after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, had photos and drawings of the Trade Center and hints of the bombing plot.

Since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, arguments over allocation of money, resources and personnel in the clandestine effort against terrorism have taken on new urgency.

There have been calls for more linguists and analysts throughout the intelligence community with fluency in Arabic as well as languages such as Pashto and Farsi that are common in Afghanistan and its neighbors. Such specialists will be needed, experts say, to help cope with the huge amounts of data swept up by U.S. and allied eavesdropping sensors as well as an anticipated increase in domestic wiretapping.

Given the likelihood that members of terrorist networks like that of Osama bin Laden are becoming wary of using phones and other equipment that can be tapped, specialists say there also will be new demands for covert operatives to steal secrets and recruit spies to infiltrate terrorist groups. Here, too, the intelligence agencies will need people fluent in the language and knowledgeable about the cultures in which they seek to move.

The challenges are particularly daunting for the ultra-secret National Security Agency, which draws on satellites and aircraft as well as sea- and ground-based sensors to eavesdrop on communications around the globe. James Bamford, author of "Body of Secrets," a book about the NSA, said that a single agency listening post typically collects 2 million communications per hour. Computers, using word-spotting search terms to narrow the possibilities, toss out all but perhaps 16,000 of those intercepts, Bamford said. Only a few thousand might eventually be studied by analysts for possible relevance. "That's still a tremendous amount of communication and a minimum number of linguists and analysts" to sort through it, Bamford said.

The NSA does not disclose figures on the number of specialists for specific languages. Nor does the CIA, although Anya Guilsher, an agency spokeswoman, said the number of CIA officers with a proficiency in Arabic had tripled in the past three years. Melvin Goodman, a former CIA intelligence analyst who is at the nonprofit Center for International Security, said he would be surprised, however, if the agency has more than a few dozen employees who are fluent in Arabic.

In a report accompanying the fiscal year 2002 bill to fund intelligence activities, the House Intelligence Committee takes agencies such as the FBI, the CIA and the NSA to task for too often relying on "intelligence generalists" rather than analysts with strong linguistic abilities and extensive expertise in a specific foreign language, culture and geographical area.

The result, the report said, is that "at the NSA and CIA, thousands of pieces of data are never analyzed, or are analyzed 'after the fact' because there are too few analysts; even fewer with the necessary language skills. Written materials can sit for months, and sometimes years, before a linguist with proper security clearances and skills can begin a translation."

"It's a hell of a lot easier to collect than to analyze," said a former NSA specialist with training in Arabic. "It's like you have a garbage dump and you are looking for two cocoa beans. You have to have the garbage dump in order to do it. Collection will always be a necessity."

The former NSA employee declined to say how many linguists are available in Arabic or other languages, but he said that through much of the 1990s, the agency emphasized hiring of information technology specialists. "There was a hiring quota," he said. "Extremely few linguists were being hired, and those were highly targeted" to immediate needs.

Staff trims were aimed at reducing the number of specialists with Russian or other languages no longer deemed as essential after the breakup of the former Soviet Union, he said. The cuts had unintended consequences. "Even those with critical analytic skills were given every opportunity to take early and incentivized retirements," he said.

The situation changed in the late 1990s, he said, with more aggressive recruitment of linguists. However, it can take a decade to develop a skilled analyst with the required language fluency and knowledge of a particular area, he said.

Even then, the job is far from easy. Those who translate voice intercepts face obstacles if the conversations involve slang, code or indirection. "If a guy is talking about bringing three million sheep to Kandahar [in Afghanistan], what is he talking about? Do the sheep mean rounds of ammo?"

For intelligence operatives working abroad, the issue of language skills is equally worrisome, the House Intelligence Committee report said. "Intelligence officers overseas often cannot contact and recruit key potential sources because they do not possess the requisite language skills," it said.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former intelligence officer for the CIA, argues that even a Muslim CIA case officer with native-language abilities would have difficulty recruiting operatives abroad under the traditional system by which case officers, using cover identities, work from U.S. embassies and consulates.

Gerecht says even during the Soviet-Afghan war, when the CIA was helping to arm mujahideen rebels, the agency "never developed a team of Afghan experts." The first case officer to have some proficiency in an Afghan language didn't arrive until 1987, he said, about a year and a half before the end of the decade-long conflict.

Ted Crump, a federal government language specialist and author of a recent study of language needs in federal agencies, said all of the intelligence agencies acknowledged they were short of linguists. "They were borrowing from Peter to pay Paul," Crump said.

Crump noted that the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center in Fort Detrick, Md., an arm of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, has no in-house linguists. "They would have to scratch around throughout the whole defense establishment to get something translated," Crump said. Among other things, the center is charged with keeping track of foreign medical capabilities, infectious disease and environmental health risks and biomedical subjects of military importance.

Agencies throughout the government have turned in emergencies to a little-known reserve unit, the 300th Military Intelligence Brigade in Draper, Utah, for translation services, Crump said. The unit has specialists in about 20 languages, including Arabic and Farsi, he said. It draws on a population of Mormons who learn languages for church-mandated missionary activities abroad.

While there have been past warnings about the lack of personnel skilled in foreign languages (there was a Senate hearing on the topic last year), Goodman, the former CIA analyst, said the terror attacks should serve as a wakeup call. Even then, he said, recruits will not be available for many months while agencies do screening and security clearances. Crump said security clearances can take up to 18 months and cost $30,000 to $50,000 per person. He also said the requirements for facile voice translators almost demand that the new hires be native speakers.

The FBI issued a call for linguists shortly after the terror attacks and has received about 1,400 resumes so far, according to spokesman Steven Berry. The bureau expects to hire at least 200 within the next month, he said. Guilsher of the CIA said her agency has been receiving close to 5,000 resumes a week for a variety of positions, about 10 times normal. Some of the applicants have skills in languages such as Arabic, Farsi and Urdu, she said. An NSA spokesperson said the agency has received about 6,600 resumes, more than double the monthly average, and also expects to bring back as many as 100 retirees to augment the work force.