C.I.A. Reviewing Security Policy for Recruiting Translators

I'm surprised that in today's climate, post Sept.11th, the CIA have waited this long to review this policy.

The NY Times
June 8, 2005

C.I.A. Is Reviewing Its Security Policy for Recruiting Translators
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, June 7 - The Central Intelligence Agency is reviewing security procedures that have led the agency to turn away large numbers of Arabic-language linguists and other potential recruits with skills avidly sought by the agency since the attacks of 2001, Congressional and intelligence officials say.

Many of those rejected, the officials say, have been first-generation Americans who bring the linguistic facility and cultural knowledge that the C.I.A. has been trying to develop in seeking to improve its performance in penetrating terrorist organizations and otherwise gathering intelligence in the Middle East and South Asia.

Many of these applicants still have relatives abroad, often in countries that raise alarm among security officers. Former intelligence officials say that besides the problems of conducting thorough background checks in those countries, the agency also worries that recruits could be blackmailed if their families were vulnerable.

The C.I.A. prides itself on security guidelines that are the strictest in government, allowing the hiring only of American citizens with a top-secret clearance. In recruiting for its clandestine service, the agency invites applications only from those under 35 years old.

The officials would not say how many otherwise-qualified applicants had been turned away for security reasons, and they cautioned that in some cases the security concerns might have been well-founded. But they suggested that the numbers could range from the scores into the many hundreds, at a time when President Bush has ordered the C.I.A. to increase the ranks of its clandestine service and its analytical branch by 50 percent each over the next five years.

"We are taking a fresh look at the process to determine what works, what doesn't, and what can be done better," said Jennifer Millerwise, the top C.I.A. spokeswoman. Ms. Millerwise said the agency was "incredibly focused from the top down on looking at new ways to get new people who have the right skills, the right experience and would make great officers."

Among the possibilities under review are revised standards for background checks and the creation of new job categories subject to less stringent requirements. But the C.I.A. is likely to resist anything that would be perceived as a scaling back of security restrictions.

Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said the goal of any review should be "to allow people who have relatives in other countries to help us out if they are law-abiding patriotic Americans," and added, "We have cut them out at our peril."

In a unanimous report issued last week, Republicans and Democrats on the committee joined in complaining that the C.I.A. was still lagging far behind targets set by Congress in developing expertise in languages like Arabic; Chinese; Farsi, spoken in Iran; and Pashtu, spoken in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But Congress and intelligence officials appear divided over how best to address the problem, with C.I.A. officials concerned that any lowering of security barriers could prove disastrous.

"The answer is not to weaken the standards," a former senior intelligence official said. "But it may be that we are using the standards in a way that is archaic by the needs of the time."

Any final decision is likely to fall to John D. Negroponte, who as the new director of national intelligence oversees the C.I.A. and 14 other agencies. In its report, issued on June 2 to accompany a bill authorizing spending for intelligence programs in 2006, the House committee urged Mr. Negroponte to put in place a more flexible security system devised "to leverage the cultural and linguistic skills" of unconventional hires that it says may be "critical to national security."

Former intelligence officials said the fact that a potential C.I.A. employee had close relatives abroad would not automatically be disqualifying. But they said the C.I.A.'s security office had traditionally treated such relationships as a major obstacle to a top-secret clearance, particularly if those relatives were in countries like Syria or Iran, where it would be difficult for the C.I.A. to conduct a full background investigation, or if there was any hint that relatives had ties to terrorist organizations.

Among other concerns, the former officials said, C.I.A. officers who had close relatives abroad might be more susceptible to blackmail if threats were made against their family members.

In an interview, Ms. Harman said the more flexible arrangements already in place at the National Security Agency might provide a good model for the C.I.A. to emulate. At the security agency, which is responsible for intercepting communications around the world, a multilevel security clearance system allows non-American citizens to be hired in limited cases, and allows certain headquarters jobs to be filled by employees with clearance levels less than top-secret, an N.S.A. official said.

The N.S.A. official, who spoke on condition that he not be identified, said that "devoting additional resources, training and risk mitigation approaches" to addressing the challenges posed by the hiring of unconventional candidates "has assisted greatly in meeting the agency's diverse hiring requirements."

The system used by the C.I.A. makes a strict distinction between its case officers, the clandestine employees who recruit spies abroad, and agents, those hired by the agency who often are the main source of information. Among the changes that some former officials have recommended is to establish a third category of officer to serve abroad who would be a C.I.A. employee but would have a less high-level security clearance and might never be permitted to work from the agency's headquarters.

In the report released last week, the House committee said that the C.I.A. and other agencies were only now displaying "the beginnings of modest change" toward building better language capability and cultural awareness into their work force, despite years in which Congress provided hundreds of millions of dollars to promote better language education and more aggressive recruitment of linguists.

"Year after year, this committee has insisted that the intelligence community recruit a more culturally diverse cadre of analysts and officers, especially seeking individuals proficient in critical languages such as Arabic, Chinese and the much less well known languages including Pashtu and Urdu," the report said.

A spokesman for Mr. Negroponte's office declined to comment, citing the sensitivities surrounding the issues of security and recruitment. But a former intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the agency was likely to resist any approach that would open the C.I.A. to employees with less than a top-secret clearance.

The former official said the main focus of the review now under way at the C.I.A. was whether its judgments in refusing such clearances had sometimes been too harsh and was resulting in the unnecessary disqualification of too many recruits.

"Is it harder to get through our checks if you have lived abroad most of your life, or if your mother or father still live there?" the former official said. "Of course." But, he said: "There are no panaceas to the fact that there are not enough Arabic speakers, and to lower the standards would result in absolutely certain, surefire disaster, in terms of opening the way for possible penetration by hostile countries or groups."

"If it were easy, black and white, it would have been done by now," the former official said. "But it isn't easy; it's complex."