FBI Chief – Terrorist Threat Grows More Worrisome

The head of the FBI said the threat of a terrorist attack against the U.S. is becoming more worrisome “with each passing day.”

Robert Mueller, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that law enforcement agencies have disrupted several plots in the past year as terrorists “remain determined to strike the United States.”

“As the Christmas Day attempted bombing illustrates, the threats we face are becoming more diverse and more dangerous with each passing day,” Mueller testified. “We not only face threats from al-Qaeda, but also from self-directed groups not part of al-Qaeda’s formal structure.”

via FBI Chief Tells Congress Terrorist Threat Grows More Worrisome – BusinessWeek.

FBI Lacks Translators For Terror Intelligence

AFP cites a Justice Department audit in a report that states the FBI currently does not have enough translators to review as much as one third of the foreign-language material it collects in counter-terrorism operations.

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.

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