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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13392191/site/newsweek/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13392191/site/newsweek/page/2/
Smart, Skilled, Shut Out
Intel agencies are desperate for Arabic speakers. So why do they reject some of the best and brightest?
By Dan Ephron
Newsweek
June 26, 2006 issue - The job search was going better than he'd expected. Daniel Kopp, a fluent Arabic speaker who had moved to Washington, D.C. in hopes of working for one of the government's security services, had already passed the first interview at the Department of Homeland Security. The son of American Christian missionaries, Kopp grew up in Jerusalem, went to high school with Palestinians and mastered the kind of nuanced, throaty Arabic that most graduates of language institutes back home could only envy. Now Kopp was sitting across the table from Wayne Parent, director of current operations at DHS, who seemed to recognize the worth of this fellow American with an insider's understanding of Arab society. "We very much need people like you," Kopp quotes Parent as saying at the interview. The operations chief told Kopp that in a meeting he'd just had with the Department's batch of 84 new recruits, he had asked how many Arabic speakers were in the room. Not one hand had gone up.
Kopp, who is 28 and has a degree in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, left expecting a quick job offer. When a month passed, he phoned Parent and heard a different refrain: problems with the security-clearance system prevented Kopp from being hired. (Parent did not respond to an interview request.)
So began an exasperating odyssey for Kopp, one that highlights a flaw in the way linguists are recruited by agencies that lead the war on terror. Over the next 14 months, he was courted by government bureaus desperate for his skills—including the CIA, NSA and State Department—only to be turned down over what clearance investigators apparently deemed a security red flag: the fact that he spent long years overseas and has family abroad (Kopp's parents still live in Jerusalem, as do his in-laws). Kopp's plight is not unique. Lawyers and lawmakers who deal in the matter say that long after 9/11, the security-clearance system is still stacked against some of the best linguists—those who learn their language natively. "The system inhibits individuals who, on their own initiative, traveled to the region, learned the language and want to contribute to the U.S. security effort," says Rebecca Givner-Forbes, an analyst at the Terrorism Research Center, a for-profit, nonpartisan think tank in Arlington, Va.
Some extra caution is understandable. Agencies that trade in America's most guarded secrets worry that applicants who have lived overseas might have come under the sway of foreign groups. Relatives abroad, the fear is, could become targets of blackmail schemes by hostile countries trying to squeeze information from Americans. "We want to make sure we're bringing in people with the right skills while also managing the risk," said a CIA official, who could not be named discussing recruitment policy.
The problem might just be in the way the guidelines are applied. "Much of the time, it seems completely arbitrary," says Sheldon Cohen, a Virginia lawyer who petitions against clearance-board decisions. Sometimes foreign ties spawn legitimate probing, he says. Other times, it leads to automatic disqualification. One of Cohen's clients is an Iraqi Christian who fled Saddam Hussein's regime 25 years ago and became a U.S. citizen. In 2003, he took a private contracting job as an interpreter in Iraq and later Guantánamo, getting a clearance to view secret documents and participate in classified interrogations. But his clearance wasn't renewed last year. The reason: he has a sister and a sister-in-law in Iraq—information investigators had known before.
Government officials involved in vetting applicants wouldn't comment on specific cases but said all the security agencies had made headway in enlisting Arabic speakers since September 11, and in recruiting Arab-Americans. Only the State Department provided hard numbers. Its spokeswoman said the full-time Arabic-speaking staff had grown since 2001 from 198 to 231. Officials from both Homeland Security and the CIA said their agencies have new recruiting programs that target university language students.
But Arabic linguists say that's where the recruiters fall down. While most U.S. universities teach modern standard Arabic, the colloquial Arabic actually spoken across the Middle East is a different vernacular—and it varies from country to country. The result: schoolbook linguists are ushered in while the really proficient speakers are kept out.
Kopp's experience underscores the point. He was eventually offered a State Department job, investigated for more than a year, then told "foreign influence" thwarted his clearance. While he waited, Kopp corresponded with a few top security officials he'd met at public conferences. One was William Nolte, who worked on shaping the CIA's foreign-language policies after 9/11. In an e-mail exchange last year, Nolte (who did not respond to NEWSWEEK queries) said he was discouraged that Kopp was still jobless. "I'm retiring in August," Nolte wrote. "I can be more effective arguing for reform from the outside." That was last August. Reform, it seems, still needs to be translated into reality.
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