Thursday, July 28, 2005

FBI is 8,000 Hours Behind on Translating Tapes

The FBI is falling further behind in translating intercepted communications from terrorist suspects, leading to a backlog of unreviewed tapes that has doubled in the past year to more than 8,000 hours, the Justice Department's inspector general disclosed yesterday.
The backlog has surged despite efforts by the FBI to hire more Arabic-language and other translators, because the bureau is collecting much more counterterrorism data than it used to, Inspector General Glenn Fine said. In some cases, the FBI is failing to translate highest-priority intercepts within 24 hours, despite a bureau policy mandating that deadline.

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