FOURTEEN YEARS AFTER 9/11; PATHETIC – AT 10:46 A.M. ET:  A new, authoritative, report tells us that the FBI is not ready to fight terrorism in the United States.  From The New York Times: 

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. urgently needs to improve its intelligence capabilities and hire more linguists to counter the rapidly evolving threats to the United States, according to a report released on Wednesday that examined the bureau’s progress since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The report by the F.B.I. 9/11 Review Commission said that the bureau had made great strides in its intelligence collection and sharing, but that its ability to gain information from people and to analyze it lags “behind marked advances in law enforcement capabilities.”

“This imbalance needs urgently to be addressed to meet growing and increasingly complex national security threats, from adaptive and increasingly tech-savvy terrorists, more brazen computer hackers, and more technically capable, global cyber syndicates,” the report said.

The F.B.I. has enough linguists in its large offices, but they are in “short supply” throughout the rest of the country. Often, linguists use a virtual system to communicate remotely with agents and analysts working on cases.

“Hiring additional linguists and integrating them should be a high priority,” the report said.

The review commission was created by Congress in 2014 to assess the bureau’s progress since the attacks. In particular, the panel examined how the F.B.I. put the put into effect the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, which released its report in 2004.

“Many of the findings and recommendations in this report will not be new to the F.B.I.,” the report said. “The bureau is already taking steps to address them. In 2015, however, the F.B.I. faces an increasingly complicated and dangerous global threat environment that will demand an accelerated commitment to reform. Everything is moving faster.”

COMMENT:  It is very easy to fall behind.  We are all familiar with the cliché about armies that are fighting the last war.

Hiring linguists is critical.  It is also problematical.  Intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have found that not all "linguists" can be trusted.  They are often from the very countries or cultures that we are fighting, and being assured of their loyalty is not easy.  A linguist can change a word here, a phrase there, and mislead an agency without the agency suspecting a thing.

Oh, but it doesn't matter, does it?  The war on terror is over.  I know, because Sherlock Obama told me.

March 25, 2015