Testimony
of David Alba, Assistant Director, Investigative Services
Division, FBI
Before
the International Security, Proliferation and Federal Services
Committee
Senate Governmental Affairs Committee
September 14, 2000
"The FBI's Foreign Language Program"
Good
morning, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to
talk to you about the FBI's foreign language program. Among
other things I'm responsible for the FBI's foreign language
program itself. I'm also fluent in Spanish and can speak
firsthand of the value of foreign language expertise in law
enforcement as well as in national security investigations.
The 1990
census figures show that almost 14 percent of approximately
30 million people in the United States speak a foreign language
at home. Many of these people will be victims or subjects
or witnesses in our investigations.
When
you look at the FBI's major initiatives, such as foreign counterintelligence,
international terrorism, international drug investigations
and multi-national white-collar crime, foreign language ability
becomes even more critical.
The FBI
looks primarily at three different sources for foreign language
support and that's the special agents themselves, language
specialists who are full-time employees and contract linguists. Fifteen
years ago the language needs of the FBI were predictable,
but today things have changed dramatically. Spanish continues
to be one of our seven critical language needs. The other
six are Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Farsi and Vietnamese. The
FBI never has enough agents or linguists who speak these critical
languages.
A few
times a year the FBI receives a request for a language we've
never heard of. These include Twi, Avar and Gypsy. Sometimes
it's just a challenge identifying the language, but it's more
difficult to find somebody who can translate a tape or a document
from that language into English, often under pressure of short
deadlines.
Court-authorized
electronic surveillance is highly effective and often involves
a foreign language. Criminals usually use coded language
to cover their activity and this complicates the issue even
further. In 1993 you may remember the plot to bomb several
New York landmarks by radical followers of an Egyptian sheik. The
codeword used for the bombs was the Arabic word "Hadduta,"
which literally means a child's bedtime story when translated
from Arabic. It sounded innocent enough but it became
obvious that something was wrong when the suspects talked
about preparing four "Hadduta," renting a warehouse
for the "Hadduta" and buying oil and fertilizer
for the "Hadduta."
We know
that not all people who speak a foreign language are able
to translate or even fewer are able to interpret. These
are very difficult and separate skills. Last year the
FBI language specialists and contract linguists translated
over a million pages of documents and countless hours of audio
material. With the growing demand for certain languages
the work continues to back up. When we're talking about
unaddressed work coming from critical national security related
investigations, the implications are very sobering.
One problem
we have is being able to keep some of our contract linguists
busy enough so they won't be looking for other jobs. In
some languages the volume of work never ends, but in others
the amount of work may be intensive only for a few months,
and when we need the language again, often after a period
of months or even years our linguists, contract linguists
have found other jobs and now we start recruiting, testing
and processing all over again, which is very time consuming.
The FBI
is now working with other Department of Justice components
to develop common language proficiency and security standards
for linguists, who will have access to law enforcement sensitive
information. That problem does not necessarily exist
in the intelligence community, but it does exist in law enforcement.
The project
is to create a database accessible to law enforcement components
that contain all known linguistic resources by specialty,
for example an interpreter or translator or a monitor, and
also give language skill levels and an important thing for
us, security clearances.
We're
always looking for new and innovative ways to find linguists
and process language, foreign languages. We have a very
active foreign language training program, and another source
of support is something that's been mentioned already today
is the machine translation. I've been told that in some
languages it may be as accurate as 80 percent, but still you
need a linguist to prepare it. So in essence what it
does, especially on documents, it's kind of like a document
triage. It does help.
The language
requirements have multiplied several times over. For
example, agents we have working on the border now who do not
speak Spanish cannot take complaints in Spanish, interview
victims or witnesses, nor can they develop informants in Spanish. Because
of the influx of Spanish-speaking and other immigrants into
the United States, this situation is happening not only on
the border but the rest of the country.
I appreciate
the opportunity to brief the Subcommittee on things that are
critical to FBI operations and would be happy to answer any
questions.
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