9/11 Law Enforcement Privacy

' •... \
·········.MEMORANDUM
....
FOR THE RECORD

\\ \'\"\""':::Cvent: Interview of Language speciali~t(ts1 ... ..1

\ \\ rl~~.: October 2, 2003

\ \\, Special ••~ccess Issues: None

\ \ Prepared··~~::'.Caroline Bames

Team numbei\::~.

tcation: FBI, M!.~i Field Office

Participants Non-coiii:\ission: Assistant General Counsel Sean O'Neill

p~,~lPants - commiSSi~:::~:ce -.co::::::~:am~

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i980s,
"\ Iwas born in Lebanon '~~)mmigrated to the United States in the early
settlmg in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida .. He has a BA in Accounting and is a Certified
Public Accountant. He has worked as a"¢P.A for a couple of private companies. He
originally applied for the FBI Special Agenrposition, but it "didn't work out." In the
1997/98 timefrarne, he applied to be an LS with the FBI. His background investigation
.

took some time, so he became a contract linguist ..with the Bureau in February 2001. He
applied for the federal position because he felt it-offered more job security. Also, he feels
his language skills are very important now, and he-can offer more this way than by
working as a CP\ \<:-\
By August 2001, h~ had not heard back from the Bureau ..on his background investigation
and had not yet done any contract translation work for thenj·>..Because he had just lost his
other job, he contacted the Bureau for a status check and the-Bureau sent him to the NY
Office on 8/13/01. He ..,worked in the NY Office for six month~."·1 ~as walking to
work through the courtyard of the World Trade Center Towers erea when the planes hit
the towers on 9/11). Immediately after 9/11, he was stationed at the Command Post for
three weeks. For a time ~e was the only Arabic speaker at the Post~'1 then was
detailed to HQ for one morh~ and comreted a couple of 15 day rotations at Guantanamo
(GITMO), alternating with another Miami Arabic LS. He fipally rotated
back to Miami and began wor mg on major cases. .

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"SeCtet-

Relationship with SAs

",I btat~d'ihat,t~e extent to which the LSs work directly with the SAs is personality
driven. He feels thattheSAs do not utilize the LSs to the extent that they should and the
SAs need to be better "educated' in this area. He said that he, personally, likes to be "out
in the field," rather than spending-all of his time sitting behind a computer. He would
like to help the SAs to develop and/orcommunicate more effectively with sources, for
example. He explained that even if an Arab-source speaks English, and Arabic-speaking
\.\. \.. \.. LS may pick up on and be able to interpret non-verbal and other cues that a non-Arab SA
\,\ \" \...would not notice or understand. He said he doesn't want.what happened in Beirut to
\ \. \"'"'~,appenhere (no further information). "

\\.... \~added that most SAs do keep the LSs up to date on what's ~~ppen,~ngwith the
\\ ~eY're working, but some of the SAs simply are not in the Office a lot'l..__ --'
....
, \. thought it was possible that some SAs don't trust the LSs, in part due to the recent
'\ \ indictments of translators at GITMO for espionage, but he thinks this is unlikely.

\ \ He sai~':"thatthe SAs "do their homework" on CT and the Middle East and some have
\. ....
~ tried to l~am
Arabic, but the CT area is a new one for the Miami Office. The Middle
\ \, Eastern culture is very different from the Hispanic one with which most SAs are familiar.
\\ \\

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~~ " Job ofLS

\ \r---lbelieVe~\that the other Arabic LS5in the ffi

....~As. 9/11 Classified Information

'\I IThe ICe., as sent ot er trans ation wor to ot er FBI leld offices on occasion.
II
V \,

Ibelieves that"'i,twould be ideal if the LSs could focus exclusively on certain FISA
! subjects because thenthey could 'I reco ize ke names and voices and some
, ." 0 d.
9/11 Classified Information

IDf~~matioD TechDolo~ Resources

The new system that the LSs us~

to do their translation seems to be working well now
although initially users were not eomfortable with it. It doesn't crash as often as the
previous system did. The new version doesn't contain a lot of changes that the user can
see; most of the changes are "behind the scenes" in nature. LSs have FBI email and
intranet access on their desktop comp,\ters.

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BOOtOl 2
• ;Ddoesn't
Interaction with Analysts

work much with the analystsand is not sure what they do.

9/11 Law Enforcement Privacy

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