US agencies had almost no Arabic fluency in the war on terror

Evidence

But the facts Bloomberg stated were true. The Washington Post reported that out of the entire FBI staff of 12,000 agents, only 33 have even a limited command of Arabic. (As a point of comparison, nearly 900 speak Spanish.) It’s not just the FBI either. The State Department, for example, lists 279 Arabic speakers on its staff. But when a bipartisan advisory panel investigated this figure in 2004, it discovered that only 54 of them could be considered fluent. And of the 54, only 6 were fluent enough to appear on Arabic television. The Iraq Study Group pointed out that the American embassy in Iraq, staffed with over 1,000 employees, also has only 6 fluent Arabic speakers. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 784 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: US intelligence agencies have severely few fluent Arabic speakers — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 784; Cold War language programs reframed Arabic study as a propaganda and policy tool — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 740

Broader Connections

• US intelligence agencies have severely few fluent Arabic speakers #corroborates (0.98) — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 784