FBI: Jews need not apply for Arabic linguist jobs:
Despite a shortage of Arabic translators, the FBI turned down applications for linguist jobs from nearly 100 Arabic-speaking Jews in New York following the World Trade Center attacks, WorldNetDaily has learned.Now why would that be?
The FBI's New York office in October 2001 asked a local charity that works with Arab Jews to submit applications for the linguist jobs, which are crucial to anti-terrorism investigations.
But not one of the more than 90 applicants was hired, even though some had helped translate Arabic for Israeli radio and TV news stations and the Israeli army before coming to America, the charity's director says.
Another source familiar with the interviewing process says the FBI was concerned that many of the applicants were ''too close to Israel,'' and might lack the objectivity to accurately translate the Arabic recordings and writings of Muslim terrorist suspects under investigation. Indeed, some worked for the Israeli military.Well, I'm certainly glad the government hired some objective translators instead.
Many of the translators that both the FBI and military have hired are Arab Muslims. The Army is investigating two Muslim linguists for possible spying at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where captured members of al-Qaida and the Taliban are being held and interrogated.Nothing to see here, move along!
The major security breach at Gitmo comes on the heels of the FBI's own investigation of some of its Muslim agents.
Gamal Abdel-Hafiz, an immigrant Muslim, twice refused on religious grounds to tape-record Muslim terrorist suspects, hindering investigations of a bin Laden family-financed bank in New Jersey and Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, recently indicted for his ties to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group.
A fellow FBI agent, Robert Wright, said Abdel-Hafiz finally explained to him that ''a Muslim does not record another Muslim,'' after first claiming he feared for his life. Other agents said he contacted Arab subjects under investigation without disclosing the contacts to the agents running the cases.
Despite his divided loyalties, the FBI subsequently promoted Abdel-Hafiz by assigning him to the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia, a critical post for intelligence-gathering. Three-fourths of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudis.
After Wright and another agent blew the whistle in the media, however, Adel-Hafiz was put on administrative leave.
Then there's the case of Jan Dickerson, a Turkish translator hired by the FBI last November.
In screening her for a clearance, the FBI missed her ties to a Turkish organization under investigation by the FBI's own counter-intelligence unit, according to another whistle-blower. The bureau even let her translate the tapes of conversations with a Turkish intelligence officer stationed in Washington who was the target of the probe.
Sibel Edmonds, a co-worker who reviewed Dickerson's translations, said Dickerson left out information crucial to the investigation, such as discussion of methods to obtain U.S. military and intelligence secrets. She had marked it as ''not important to be translated.'' Dickerson recently left the FBI and now lives overseas.
