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| CIA Chief Reaches Out to Arab, Muslim Population in Dearborn |
| 2009-09-17 |
| "I need you; the nation needs you," CIA Director Leon Panetta told about 150 Metro Detroit leaders at an invitation-only banquet at the Bint Jebail Banquet Hall in Dearborn. He told reporters just before the dinner that the CIA needs to re-examine security clearance procedures that may, in the past, have improperly excluded job candidates for reasons such as having family members in homelands such as Lebanon or Iran. "We can't collect the information that we need or the intelligence that we need unless we have language capability," said Panetta, who was warmly received. It takes about 10 years of training to become an expert translator of the most difficult languages on earth, but wouldn't it have been nice to have started 8 years ago? Security clearances are one thing, but hiring native speakers to teach non-native speakers (who can qualify for security clearances without equivocation) in a national push to create a large corps of fluent speakers & translators was a no-brainer on 9/12/2001. |
| Posted by:Anguper Hupomosing9418 |