Yahoo! News - Audit Finds Large FBI Translation Backlog
WASHINGTON - Despite major increases in money and personnel, the FBI is still failing to translate many al-Qaida surveillance recordings in a timely manner and faces a giant backlog of untranslated material from terrorism and espionage investigations, a new Justice Department audit shows.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, more than 123,000 hours of audio in languages associated with terrorists 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.

The audit found that the FBI still lacks language personnel necessary to do all the needed translation work, and limitations in its technology, especially computer storage capacity, also cause problems that lead to backlogs.

"Three years after the worst terrorist attack on American soil, the overall effectiveness of a major investigative tool in our antiterrorism arsenal is still in doubt," said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. "The Justice Department's translation mess has become a chronic problem that has obvious implications for our national security."

I'm having a hard time even being sarcastic about this anymore. Many reports indicate gaping holes in our security, but yet the Bushies still live in a Pollyanna world of believeing we are "safer" just because the administration says it's true. What is it going to take to wake this country up?