While the article cites reliance on translators as a substitute measure that American officials seem to think is entirely acceptable, I find this dim-witted. Professionally I use lots of interpreters and translators - even in cases where I am fully capable of not. It's sometimes useful to have a plausible deniability after business meetings and the like, and I am never surprised when interlocutors I know speak one of my languages go through interpreters, they're managing the contact in the same way. Leaving aside a desire of one's own to show off, it sometimes is a smart thing. However, from these years of experience I am very, very aware of the drawbacks. Even the best interpreters and translators (using interpreter to refer to specifically oral translation) are inexact if they are not intimately familiar with the subject matter and context of a text; above all when, as is the case in business and I would image intel matters, the translation is rushed. It is, in my mind, therefore idiotic and utterly unacceptable to have one's domestic intelligence (and indeed by all accounts, generally one's intelligence services) largely dependant on second hand accounts and translations that effectively none of the responsable cadres can actually independently asses. It blinds one and renders one's appreciation of events far less useful, at best.

The blindness the American official system seems to have - never mind the speeches, I mean in real effective terms from recruitment to real non-theoretical operational incentives to the actual employees - to the utility and indeed key driving importance of having a well-developed, professionally fluent set of agents in targetted languages continues to astonish me.

The United States will continue to be half-assed in its approach until it reforms these issues.