WASHINGTON — The FBI does not have enough translators to review as much as one third of the foreign-language material it collects in counter-terrorism operations, according to a Justice Department audit.
About one third of electronic documents and one quarter of audio files collected in anti-terror probes have not been translated and reviewed, said the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, seen by AFP Tuesday.
"Not reviewing such material increases the risk that the FBI will not detect information in its possession that may be important to its counterterrorism and counterintelligence efforts," it said.
According to Fine, Federal Bureau of Investigations agents translate and read all of the 4.8 million pages of text in foreign languages.
However, 14.2 million e-mail messages, or 31 percent of the total during the auditing period, have not been reviewed. Neither have 1.2 million hours of audio, or 25 percent of the 4.8 million hours collected.
Despite the demand for translators, the FBI has also seen the number of their linguists drop, going from 1,338 in March 2005 to 1,298 in September 2008.
"We found that the FBI failed to achieve its linguist hiring goals for critical languages," the report read.
"Failure to meet its hiring goals affects the FBI's ability to translate all of its collected material and hampers its efforts to reduce the backlog of unreviewed material."
It takes the FBI some 19 months to hire a contract linguist, "an increase from the 16 months we found in 2005 audit," the report read.
In a statement, the FBI said it "appreciates" the review of its foreign language program, and said that agents use "advanced technology" to help identify and prioritize electronic and audio files "that are most relevant to the FBI?s mission."
And despite "a workload increase of 100 percent" since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States, "the FBI?s translation capacity now matches its collection capacity in many languages."
FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said he was "confident that with respect to counterterrorism translation matters, we have made progress to address our collected material in a timely way."
"I am confident that today, our language translation capabilities, including recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining effective linguists, are better than ever before," he said.
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