U.S. PAYS DEARLY FOR ITS SCARCITY OF TRANSLATORS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100660001-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 11, 2011
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: June 8, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
STAT
STAT
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U.S. pays 8 June 1986
for its- scarcity
of translators
By FRANK GREVE
Herald Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - A shortage
of Berber translators helped kill
two U.S. Army sergeants, Kenneth
T. Ford and James E. Goins,
intelligence experts believe.
They say that intercepted Liby-
an diplomatic messages warning
of the April 5 Berlin nightclub
bombing - in which Ford was
killed and Goins was fatally
injured - went untranslated for
several days because of an increas-
ingly common problem: a scarcity
of skilled linguists.
In fact, the discotheque attack,
which provoked
the U.S. bomb-
ing of Libya 10
days later, is
but one of five
recent military
and intelligence
setbacks in
which the lin-
guist shortage
played a part.
The issue is
not new. Five
years ago, Adm.
Bobby R
. T-
-man, then depu-
ty director of the CIA, warned in
congressional testimony that
"steadily deteriorating language
training capabilities" presented "a
major hazard to our national
security."
Today, top military, diplomatic
and intelligence officials are con-
vinced that crises with a linguistic
angle are no fluke. They acknowl-
edge what Craig L. Wilson, the
Defense Department's director of
intelligence personnel and train-
ing, calls "dismal ignorance" of
Third World languages. They con-
fess to policies that discourage
foreign language experts, and
admit critical and growing short-
ages of highly skilled linguists
even in such common languages as
French and German.
Case in point
The problem was underscored
last November when Soviet dou-
ble-defector Vitaly Yurchenko an-
nounced in front of television
cameras his intention to return to
the Soviet Union after three
months in CIA custody.
Speaking English so awkwardly
that it dramatized his point, Yur-
chenko, the highest-ranking KGB
official ever to defect, complained
that "during these three horrible
months for you I didn't have any
chance to speak Russian. I was
explained that they say there is a
shortage of Russian-speaking
translators."
Indeed, there is "a serious
shortage of really competent Ru
sian linguists at the agency
according to Donald F. Jameson,
retired senior Soviet operatio~
officer at the CIA. "And y
tant case like Yurchenko unless
you can do it in the man's native
language."
One month before Yurchenko's
exit, Soviet seaman Miroslav Med-
vid's freedom apparently was lost
in the translation when he was
returned to Soviet custody after
jumping ship near New Orleans.
Border Patrol officials and inter-
preter Irene Padoch disagreed on
whether Medvid sought asylum -
a hard question because Padoch
was not fluent in Medvid's dialect,
according to intelligence officials.
In two other cases, U.S. intelli-
gence may have been breached by
employees hired in part for their
fluency in important difficult lan-
guages.
The Chin case
Larry Wu-Tai Chin, "one of the
best" Chinese translators at the
CIA, could skim Chinese publica-
tions, interpret nuances in official
documents and translate many
Chinese dialects, according to a
memorandum by his former boss,
Cy Braegelmann.
Chin, so vitally competent that
he was cleared for classifications
above top secret, committed sui-
cide in February after he was
convicted of spying for more than
30 years for his native China.
In another spy case, Ronald W.
Pelton, a former National Security
Agency communications expert
currently on trial for treason,
probably would not have been
hired in 1965, intelligence officials
said, without a knowledge of
Russian gained as an Air Force
enlistee.
Skill in Russian is far rarer in
the United States, where only
about 28,000 students study Rus-
sian, according to the Modern
Language Association, than is skill
in English in the Soviet Union,
where it is studied by 10 million.
Even within the State Depart-
ment's career Foreign Service,
advanced language skills are in
short supply. Only about 50 of Its
more than 4,000 Foreign Service
personnel speak and read French
with the genuine fluency of a
well-educated native, according to
Ambassador Monteagle Stearns,
who is studying the State Depart-
ment's advanced language skills
and urging reforms.
Sen. Paul Simon, D-I11., a persis-
tent promoter of foreign lan-
guages, noted in an interview that
only six of the 66 hostages taken
at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in
1979 spoke any Farsi, the domi-
nant native language of Iran.
Price of ignorance
The price of ignorance, Simon
continued, quoting former hostage
Morehead Kennedy, was that "We
were speaking to the elite in
English; we didn't know what was
going on in the streets of Tehran."
Even when skilled linguists are
available in the Foreign Service,
they are not necessarily posted
where they are needed. Two speak
Lingala, for example, a major
tribal language of Zaire; one is
currently stationed in Kingston,
Jamaica, and the other in Paris,
according to the State Depart-
ment's personnel records.
A shortage of skilled linguists,
said Inman, the retired admiral
who now heads Microelectronics
and Computer Technology Corp.
of Austin, Texas, "means that you
run a high risk of unpleasant
surprises."
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"Contrary to the common view
that our knowledge of a foreign
country comes from clandestine
operations and electronic surveil-
lance," Inman continued, "the
bulk of our knowledge comes
from open sources. By that I mean
people who observe, who sit, who
listen, who talk, who read the
media, who know the mosques,
the bazaars and the coffeehouses."
Shortages persist
Although the Defense Language
Institute in Monterey, Calif.,
teaches 61 languages, and the
Foreign Service Institute in Ros-
slyn, Va., teaches 45, shortages
persist of speakers of obscure and
difficult languages, such as Berber
and Pashto, Farsi, Urdu and Dari.
"It doesn't surprise me a hoot,"
said retired Army Lt. Gen. James
A. Williams, director of the De-
fense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
from 1981-85, that problems in
translating Berber apparently de-
layed warning of the Berlin disco
attack.
U.S. and Israeli analysts familiar
with the messages involved in the
Berlin incident say the major
impediment was that they were in
Berber, a language often used by
Libyan diplomats to assure confi-
dentiality.
"Given the volume of threats in
Europe, and our reliance on con-
tract emigres for languages like
Berber, you probably have no one
working 'round the clock," Wil-
liams explained.
"The whole Third World is a
helluva problem," Williams con-
tinued. "We can turn out French,
Russian, Spanish and German
speakers, but that's not where the
crises are. The crises are In the
Middle East and Africa, strange
places where you need linguists
who can't get or maintain fluency
very easily."
But in 1981 testimony to a
House education subcommittee,
Williams' predecessor, Maj. Gen.
Richard X. Larkin, testified that
DIA would continue to stress "the
prevailing Western languages of
former colonial regions, which
comprise most developing coun-
tries."
At the CIA there was "no bank
of talent" to replace the retiring
generation of translators hired
after World War II, Inman said.
The State Department, which
Sen. Simon said has "the only
foreign service in the world that
you can get into without speaking
a foreign language," also discour-
aged language specialists in the
'60s.
"The perception was that it was
better to be a senior staff aide or a
program manager than a language
or area specialist," Stearns re-
called.
And the perception was right, he
concluded after analyzing the
backgrounds of 147 Foreign Ser-
vice officers promoted since 1975
to the top rung of the State
Department's career ladder. While
they were eicpected to speak two
foreign languages, according to
the Foreign Service manual,
Stearns found that 31 of the 147
spoke none.
Stearns' proposal to stress for-
eign language in promotions and
reserve some top embassy slots
abroad for careerists with near-
native fluency Is under study at
the State Department.
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