We listened to FBI Director Mueller’s testimony to the Senate on C-SPAN, including his discussion of the Foreign Language Program and the findings of the Inspector General Glenn Fine. We learned that prior to the 9/11 attacks, translation capabilities were decentralized, but since then, the FBI has centralized management, command, and control at a center for foreign language translation — presumably the National Virtual Translation Center (NVTC). This center coordinates the efforts of 1,300 translators in 52 field offices that are strategically aligned with international priorities. For comparison sake, that’s fewer than the 1,650 linguists employed by the E.U.’s Directorate-General for Translation Services for translating less critical bureaucratic documents.

Mueller talked about the prioritization criteria he instituted to determine what gets translated — and apparently what gets left on the shelf. The NVTC receives weekly updates to its priorities, mirroring the intelligence community’s hot list. He said that the agency has prioritized the workload so that the most critical intercepts are reviewed in 24 hours. This triage has reduced the accrued backlog, currently estimated at still over 8,000 hours. The FBI Director noted problems with processing these intercepts, including white noise from microphone and very obscure languages and dialects that the FBI couldn’t process because it didn’t have linguists for those tongues.

The Inspector General’s report voiced concern about recruiting practices. Since 9/11, the FBI has recruited and processed more than 50,000 translator applicants. This has resulted in 877 new contract linguists and 112 language analysts after attrition. It increased its pool of linguists by 69% in general, but for high priority languages like Arabic, it has grown more than 200%.

Concurrent with hiring is a continuing concern with translation security and quality. Pre-employment vetting eliminates more than 95% of applicants. The FBI prefers having translators who have been immersed in the culture, a factor that gives them the ability to translate colloquial and idiomatic documents. Around 80% of its translators hold at least a Bachelor’s degree and 37% hold graduate degrees.

The Inspector General (IG) acknowledged the FBI’s progress and that it is moving in the right direction, but he saw a need for more work. The FBI’s audit of unreviewed counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism audio intercepts amounted to 4,086 hours in April 2004, but had doubled to 8,354 hours by 2005. The IG did not see any indication that this backlog was labeled highest priority. The IG also noted that it now takes the FBI 14 months (vs. 13 previously) to hire contract linguists.

We listened to the C-SPAN broadcast so you wouldn’t have to. Had you tuned in, you would have been frustrated as we were at the news. It is nearly 4 years after 9/11, a year after the Madrid attack, and just weeks after the London transit bombings. Yet issues like intelligence backlogs and hiring translators get far less attention in the White House and Senate than pressing issues du jour like prosecuting reporters for reporting leaks by presidential advisors, privatizing Social Security, and making sure that the next Supreme Court Justice can help overturn Roe v. Wade. The FBI may have its priorities on what gets translated next, but we’re not convinced that the boss in the White House is listening.