Army interpreters betraying soldiers

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Tuesday, February 10, 2004 | Paul Sperry

[JohnHuang2]

OPERATION: IRAQI FREEDOM
Army interpreters
betraying soldiers
U.S. resorts to hiring ex-Saddam loyalists to gather intelligence

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Posted: February 10, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Paul Sperry
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is turning to local Iraqis once loyal to Saddam Hussein to meet a critical need for Arabic translators in areas of resistance.

And some of the hired interpreters are betraying soldiers hunting for guerrilla fighters and the caches of arms they're using to attack American soldiers, military intelligence officials told WorldNetDaily.

"We heard about dozens of cases where the infantry would find out where stuff was, brief the interpreter, but the interpreter would get out of sight," said one Army intelligence official who recently returned from Iraq. "And when the infantry went on the raid, the stuff wouldn't be there."

Additionally, two recent internal reports by Army investigators have expressed doubts about interpreters' loyalty.

In one undated report prepared by the Center for Army Lessons Learned in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., investigators in Iraq observed that local interpreters seemed to be holding back information from soldiers during interrogations of detainees.

"The foreign national would give a 10-minute answer, and the interpreter would translate 'yes' or 'no,'" said the trip report, authored by Lt. Col. Robert L. Chamberlain, a top Army intelligence trainer. "Who knows what agenda the interpreter has?"

In another report, dated Sept. 17, Chamberlain complained that some interpreters have led soldiers to the wrong targets.

"If an interpreter is running a source and receives a single source, unconfirmed report of some activity, he immediately brings this up the chain of command without conducting any analysis," he said. "Then this information is nominated at the next targeting meeting, and bam, the wrong target is engaged and the media is there saying what bad things soldiers are doing. Yes, this scenario has occurred."

Chamberlain said a shortage of competent and reliable interpreters is hurting occupation efforts.

"The U.S. Army does not have a fraction of the linguists required to operate" in either Iraq or Afghanistan, he said in one evaluation.

Indeed, a top Army personnel official projected before Operation Iraqi Freedom that several hundred Arabic translators, interpreters and cryptologic linguists would be needed to collect human intelligence and run tactical intelligence operations in that war alone.

Yet the Army had only 209 authorized positions for human intelligence collectors – and 39 of them were unfilled, according to a General Accounting Office audit before the war.

"The greatest number of unfilled human intelligence collector positions was in Arabic," the GAO report said.

The shortfall was worse among Army translators and interpreters. The Army had just 84 authorized positions and only half – 42 – were filled, GAO found.

Due to the translator shortage, American commanders have had to hire former Baathist and Fedayeen members to help with interrogations, officials say. And weeding out the disloyal interpreters is difficult.

"We know we've got Baathist and Fedayeen working for us as interpreters," the Army intelligence official said. "Except nobody knows how to get rid of the bad ones. There aren't enough counterintelligence agents to run counterintelligence ops against the interpreters."

The official, who asked not to be identified, added that defense contractors, including Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, are hiring local Iraqis without security clearance. The Class 1 interpreters, as they're called (meaning they haven't undergone any vetting), are paid about $10 a day – "a king's ransom over there," the official said, and a fraction of the going rate for language contractors in the U.S.

A military spokesman in Baghdad had no comment.

Defense analysts say Iraqi interpreters and informants could be an asset or a liability, depending on how closely soldiers monitor them. If soldiers lose contact with them for any period of time, they are more likely to be misled.

"You have to be in regular contact. That means you have to keep up human contact, even though you're bringing Iraqi police security forces into the area," said Anthony Cordesman, senior defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies here. "You still have the problem that all of these [locals] are both an asset and something you have to watch and maintain contact with, or they could easily become a source of misinformation."

[JohnHuang2]

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

Quote of the Day by Milligan

[boxerblues]

"Then this information is nominated at the next targeting meeting, and bam, the wrong target is engaged and the media is there saying what bad things soldiers are doing. Yes, this scenario has occurred."

Why does this not surprise me

[Neets]

The official, who asked not to be identified, added that defense contractors, including Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, are hiring local Iraqis without security clearance. The Class 1 interpreters, as they're called (meaning they haven't undergone any vetting), are paid about $10 a day – "a king's ransom over there," the official said, and a fraction of the going rate for language contractors in the U.S.

I just love it when they quote "The official, who asked not to be indentified"

[Steel and Fire and Stone]

Solution is pretty simple. Issue every unit with an interpreter a tape recorder, and record every word spoken by both the investigation target, and the interpreter, and ship 20% of the tapes, and particularly any important interviews back to the U.S. for evaluation. If the interpreter gives a line of bull, instead of giving a faithful interpretation of the interviews, he'll be found out pretty quickly. The fact that some precentage of tapes are evaluated by a second party will keep a lot of the potentially wayward guys in line, too. Just because a guy arranges for a "disappearance" of an arms stash, doesn't mean he's working for Sadaam's crew, or Al Qu'eda. He may just be a free-market entrapraneur, out to make a few bucks on the black market.

Either way, they need to tape everything and spot check the tapes to keep them honest.

SFS

[XBob]

great idea, tape the conversations.

I was going to recommend hiring Kuwaiti's, Egyptians, or Bahraini's. But they could scan the tapes.

In fact - they could use radio's/satellite and transmit the comm, for direct, on the spot translation from outside the country.

[texasflower]

This is probably why the weapons search has been unsuccessful. I would certainly think the same would apply to that situation.

I know a lot of the scientists speak English, but I don't see why they would want to volunteer too much and be implicated in possible crimes that would send them directly to the tribunals.

The lower level Iraqi's that hid this stuff are most likely Saddam loyalists and would most likely not tell where things were, so they could sell this stuff or use it against our troops.

At least that's what I think.

[Dajjal]

BTTT

[ScudEast]

A mad idea - probably not practical but what the hey. Why don't we teach all the soldiers a litte Arabic? Obviously it won't be enough to allow them to do all their own interpreting but it could be enough to allow them to deal with simple situations, and give them a better idea whether their interpreter is pulling a fast one. I expect many of the soldiers have already picked up some Arabic. I know there are many dialects but it seems that some basic standard Arabic is going to be useful to US and coalition forces for many years to come. Is this already being done - I'm not an expert?

[blanknoone]

Another solution is to take the translators out of their own area. In Bosnia, we usually used Croats or Muslims translators when dealing with Serbs, and Serb translators when dealing with other groups.

It would seem simple enough to do something similar between Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurd. Make sure that any given translator is more loyal to America than to the person being questioned.

Another trick is to have someone else listen in. We used to do this serruptitiously by having another American with another translator outside the tent. (Only really worked when on the camp and we controlled the environment) One of the purposes was to have someone else able to step in and steer the questioning a different direction or explore something subtle the questioner skipped over or didn't notice. We never told the translators (but I'm sure they figured it out) that it was also to make sure we were getting good, accurate and complete translations.

The only complication with all this is that you have to house and feed them away from their homes. (which also further isolates them from potential treachery) I think that should be a small price to pay.

[Theo]

Technology might provide another solution. I work in the software industry, doing voice applications. I'd think the technology is pretty close to be able to do a rough lower-quality-than-Babelfish translation of what Iraqis are saying. The translation might give "the gist" of the conversation, and if the translator is obviously "off," then consider them suspect....

[antiRepublicrat]

And some of the hired interpreters are betraying soldiers hunting for guerrilla fighters and the caches of arms they're using to attack American soldiers

Meanwhile, we have other translators being shot in the street for "aiding the enemy." They know their lives, and the lives of their families, are in danger yet they continue to help us.

You get the good and the bad.