ABSTRACT
Prologue: Are There Any Translators in the House? In the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a critical workforce planning problem in the federal government emerged: a lack of Arabic translators working for the government, in particular for the FBI. In fact, some have argued that 9/11 could have been averted had the FBI’s workforce included more Arabic translators. It may be recalled that, after terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in February 1993, agents confiscated documents and translated previously taped telephone conversations, all in Arabic, that offered vital clues to the bombing. The FBI missed those clues because it did not have an adequate cadre of translators to get through the backlog of untranslated wiretaps and documents in Arabic. From 1993 to 2001, the problem of the translator shortage remained unresolved.
