Audit Finds Large FBI Translation Backlog - some al Qaeda recordings may have been erased
The FBI has a backlog of hundreds of thousands of hours of untranslated audio recordings from terrorism and espionage investigations, despite large increases in money and personnel for translations since the 2001 terror attacks, a Justice Department audit released Monday found. In addition, the audit by Glenn A. Fine, the agency's inspector general, found that more than one-third of al Qaeda intercepts authorized by a secret federal court were not reviewed with 12 hours of collection as required by FBI Director Robert Mueller. "Our audit highlighted the significant challenges facing the FBI to ensure that translation of key information is performed timely and accurately," Fine said. The audit was completed in July in classified form. The version released Monday was edited to remove sections classified as "secret" by the FBI. Since Sept. 11, 2001, more than 123,000 hours of audio in languages associated with terrorism still had not been reviewed as of April 2004, the audit found. In addition, more than 370,000 hours of audio associated with counterintelligence had not been reviewed. [more
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