The Translator Scandal Ripens

Infiltration and Translator Disasters in Iraq

pleaded guilty to a charge of illegally possessing classified documents and allegations about passing on information to insurgents. Federal agents had found these documents on his home computer hard drive.

Baghdad in March 2004.

Malki also committed immigration fraud to become a naturalized US citizen. He passed information on to the insurgents in Iraq, during his time in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, and upon his return to America in 2005. Malki had worked for Titan Corporation-a major defense contractor in Iraq back in 2003 and 2004.

At a hearing in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn a year later in February, 2008, regarding the suspect, an Army officer with the 82nd Airborne Division described some of the reports that Malki had obtained.

The irony is that his military superiors reportedly gave Malki high marks for his work with an intelligence unit in Iraq. Little did they know what he was really doing. He was found out when he applied for a security clearance. He even entered the U.S. back in 1989 under false pretenses seeking political asylum.

Malki was recruited originally as a translator for the 82nd Airborne in Iraq by a multi-billion dollar U.S. company headquartered in Manhattan, L-3 Communications-Titan Group. Titan has received several billion dollars in procurements for in-country translation services in Iraq from INSCOM, the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, since it began contract translation services in 1999.

In 2005, Titan merged with giant L-3 Communications, a defense contracting firm specializing in global communications, surveillance and intelligence technology. This followed SEC investigations about bribery charges and Army procurement penalties concerning Titan because of the revelations involving translators in the detainees controversy at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. The combined entity continues to be awarded translation services contracts by the Army.

report. The question is, how many of these deaths, as well as countless others, were the result of infiltration by insurgent sympathizers like Malki?

How did we let this counterintelligence debacle occur with such disastrous results?

Iraq enabled infiltration through ineffective and unprofessional interrogations. When information gathered by professional counterintelligence linguist/analysts was presented to U.S. military commanders pointing this out, it was sloughed off.

According to informed sources, the late Saddam Hussein and his intelligence cadres prepared the way. Beginning in 2002, he enlisted Iraqis loyal to him to infiltrate as English-speaking operatives into American bastions in the event of a conquest. These operatives were trained to gather intelligence and foment insurgency.

To find out how this incredible lapse in counterintelligence occurred, I spoke with qualified sources who conducted screenings of Iraqi personnel at Camp Falcon in South Baghdad. The sources were former military intelligence specialists and linguists working under separate contractual arrangements.

In the aftermath of the conquest of Baghdad in April 2003, local U.S. military intelligence personnel were approached by English-speaking Iraqis offering to be of assistance. In May of 2003, the first of a series of contracts with Titan was awarded to procure U.S. law enforcement trained personnel to assist military commanders at Camp Falcon in screening local employees.

U.S. personnel.

The media was pre-occupied by the alleged abuses in the Abu Ghraib Prison and litigation by Iraqi detainees against defense contractors like Titan and CACI. No attention has been paid to how insurgents infiltrated Camp Falcon and the defective screening procedures put in place by Titan. Camp Falcon blew up in October, 2006 when insurgent mortars hit an ammo dump.

The Hezbollah Translator Sisters

Stratfor terrorism report  revealed the stunning cases of three Lebanese Muslim women, all roommates in the Detroit area, who entered the US on student visas, Khalil Nabbouh who became USMC Captain Spinelli, FBI Agent and later CIA case officer Nada Nadim Prouty, and her sister Elfat El Aouar who married a fugitive Hezbollah fund raiser. These women exploited our immigration system, committed marriage fraud and ended up serving as a Marine, an FBI agent and a CIA case officer in highly sensitive positions. Their cases demonstrate how easily our national security and intelligence community can be penetrated and duped by cultural and religious ignorance. This could potentially be a major intelligence scandal of significant proportions with Hezbollah and Iran as the beneficiaries of a veritable treasure trove of information on domestic counter terrorism programs and military deployments in Iraq. The information should be the basis of a thorough Congressional investigation of the weaknesses of our Middle Eastern strategic and military intelligence, as well as domestic counter terrorism and counter intelligence apparatus. A veritable purge of counter terrorism and counter intelligence functions in the FBI and DNI would seem to be the order of the day.

Here are some telling observations from the Stratfor report:

United States fraudulently.

U.S. government has long known that the results of polygraph tests administered to Middle Easterners, Muslims in particular, can be seriously flawed. The reason, frankly, is that for a host of cultural and religious reasons, lying does not stress Middle Easterners and Muslims as much as it does Western Christians. This allows them to defeat polygraph tests.

The Army Tries To Recruit Muslim Translators

The US Army desperate for Arabic translators in Iraq recruits in major Muslim communities in America like the Detroit and Chicago areas, even resorting to using billboards in Arabic.  

There is a yellow billboard in Detroit in Arabic, with the exception of the contact person, “Call Mona” in English with a phone number. These billboards have popped up in concentrated Muslim areas like Detroit and Chicago. The Army alleges it has tough problems recruiting Arabs although it picked up 270 Arab translators via this route last year.

The Arab translator problem in our military, FBI, CIA and Homeland Security agencies is a disaster mostly self-inflicted. After 9/11, thousands of Christians and Jews who spoke critical languages like Arabic, Farsi, Pashto and Urdu were brushed aside and not considered. The government had been cajoled into thinking only Muslims could speak and interpret Arabic, the “holy language” of Islam. This has led to Muslim translators, as we have seen, passing information to insurgents in Iraq and to Hezbollah in Lebanon and doubtless on to Syria and Iran.

However, despite this, the Army persists in the delusion that this is an important track to fill its quota of desperately needed Arabic translators.

Witness this excerpt from an AP account of the Army program that demonstrates the futility of recruiting from the ummah, even here in the US:

“At first, it was more hostile from the community. It was at the peak of the invasion,” said Mona Makki, a community liaison and language specialist with a company that helps the Army with recruitment. “They perceive us now in a positive way.”

Hassan Jaber, executive director of the Dearborn-based Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, said the Army has built some credibility in the community, but it is not fully embraced.

“To my knowledge, people who are volunteering and taking these jobs are doing it in secret,” he said. “It might be a factor of shame, and that they go in there … because of the money offered, not necessarily because they feel the war is justified.”

Sgt. Mario Banderas, a 39-year-old native of Lebanon, joined the Army in Detroit and served a tour of duty in 2005 as translator in Iraq. He returned as a recruiter.

“I had the idea in my mind that I can go talk to this community and probably get at least two or three people a day to join the Army. This is not the case,” said Banderas, whose name is an alias because the Army does not release translators’ real names to protect their safety.

“The idea that people have here, as soon as they see me in uniform is: ‘Oh, you’re in the U.S. Army? You’re in Iraq killing your own people?’”

The Peculiar Case of a Former FBI Muslim Agent

Bassem alleges that FBI counterterrorism agents lack language skills and cultural understanding. Bassem, an Egyptian born Muslim is partially correct. He noted in a Philadelphia press conference in January, 2008 reported by the AP:

Middle East and the radical Islamic groups, as well as the language, are not necessary to run the counterterrorism division,” said Youssef, speaking publicly for the first time on the subject Saturday at an American Library Association meeting.

The FBI denied discriminating against him and trumpeted it allegedly had 46 agents and 285 language analysts who speak at least conversational Arabic.

Bassem is disingenuous as the FBI and even government contractors go out of their way to hire Muslims as recruiters who are critical language speakers. That means that they insinuate fellow Muslims into language analyst positions thereby engaging in taqiyyah -religiously sanctioned dissimulation. Doubtless, Bassem will have amici briefs filed in his whistleblower suit by Muslim Brotherhood front groups like CAIR and ISNA. FBI director Mueller has gone out of his way to engage in outreach to these groups and even taken them on tours of local field offices.

The Evidence of Bias in Translator Hiring-The American Congress for Truth Survey Results

In January, 2007, my colleague at American Congress for Truth (ACT), Brigitte Gabriel and I put out an action alert to our membership requesting instances of bias in hiring of non-Muslims as translator analysts by our national security agencies. The response was overwhelming. As we have found out in our inquiries first rate Arab and Farsi linguists who are Middle Eastern Christians, Jews and apostate Muslims were disappointed that their talents had gone unused because of political correctness and frankly outright intimidation by Muslim linguists in our security agencies.

This survey was limited, but nevertheless, it is indicative of concerns about why our government persists in denying employment to loyal American citizens who offered aid in reducing the mountainous backlog of untranslated Arabic and Farsi intelligence documents and intercepts.

NSA director, Army Lt. Gen. Keith in commenting in written response to Senators on the large backlog of time consuming labor intensive foreign language intercepts on terrorism noted:

One knowledgeable insider in our national security apparatus wrote in response to the ACT action alert:

Brigitte Gabriel, ACT Founder, Lebanese Christian

Brigitte applied three times to the FBI in 2001 and 2002 volunteering her services to help translate, in whatever capacity she could be used, to help our country in the fight against terrorism. She never got an answer. Finally the Government sent her a government application that stated that translators must be between the age of 25 and 35, (she had just turned 36), must have graduated with a degree in the language they wish to apply to translate and must have three years on the job experience as translators (utterly ridiculous bureaucracy). Meanwhile, government agents were complaining on television that they did not have enough translators.

Brigitte Gabriel speaks not only the classical Arabic which is the official language of most of the Middle East, but also the local dialects, Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian, Palestinian, and Jordanian.

From an Iraqi Christian

U.S. I worked as a linguist for the U.S. Army in Iraq.”

From a Lebanese American Christian

Ft. Benning, Georgia in May, 2003 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Supporting our armed forces and intelligence units. In October 2004, I was injured by a suicide bomb blast inside the Green Zone [in Baghdad]. I had to come back for treatment. A year ago I was released by all doctors and they recommended that I could go back to work, but not in Iraq. I called my employer and to my amazement they offered me a job back in Iraq but not a stateside one because I lacked a security clearance. I refused and they sent me a letter in January, 2006 laying me off. I have tried in vain to find a job with the government or defense contractors. The recruiters are usually Muslim and some have told me that they have relatives working for al Jazeera TV. Can you believe that!”

From a Persian American Jew

From a Coptic Christian American

Rejection of American Israeli citizens

 and Paul Sperry in his engrossing book Infiltration.

Agenda for a GAO investigation

The result is that we have a large gap in un-translated intelligence information and a deficit in HUMINT analysis and assessments that has stifled development of National Security strategies in the war against Islamic Jihad in the Middle East and globally.

Walid Phares of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy had indicated interest in this issue. In an email exchange following his review of a letter we sent to Senator Joseph Lieberman of the US Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, he said:

Dennis Hale, Political Science professor at Boston College, remarked in an email response:

Given the agenda that Rep. Susan Myrick and the House Anti-terror Caucus released on April 18th a GAO investigation of the Translator Scandal is imperative.

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