Authors: Sibel Edmonds
Classified Woman (3 page)
My badge and ID would be ready in a few days. I could start on Tuesday. In the meantime, other employees could escort me to and from the unit and the building’s security gates. With that said, she escorted me out.
As soon as I got to my car, I called Matthew to let him know I was on my way home. He asked me how it went. “I think I signed away my entire life to the Federal Bureau of Investigation; but hey, if you have to sign your life over to someone or some organization, wouldn’t you rather it be them?”
O
n Tuesday morning, a few days after I received the call to duty, I showed up for my first workday at the FBI’s Washington field office, located on Fourth Street between E and F Street in Washington, DC. Since my badge and identification card had not yet been issued, I had to check in at security and wait for my unit supervisor, Mike Feghali, to send someone down to escort me upstairs.
That morning I had taken extra time to prepare. I was going to work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and my attire had to reflect that—an assumption proven wrong within the first few days. I had chosen a black light wool pantsuit with a long-sleeved parliament blue shirt, black pumps, and a black suede briefcase; classic.
A few minutes later, I noticed a short man bustling toward me. He was bald and overweight by at least fifty pounds and clad in a shiny-gray polyester suit. His dark olive complexion glistened with oil and perspiration. He greeted me with a big forced smile and introduced himself as Mike Feghali. After checking the status of my entry card and ID badge (another two days for both), we took the elevator to the fourth floor, which housed the FBI’s largest and most important Language unit.
Here were dozens of cubicles and over one hundred agents. Feghali pointed out different areas, identifying the Counterterrorism division, private offices of Supervisory Special Agents (SSAs) and their bosses, Special Agents in Charge (SACs), then he turned right toward a set of wide double glass doors. He touched his entry card to the black square reader. “We are entering one of the most sensitive, most secured units in the entire building … we, and everyone else in the unit, can walk over to any of those Counterterrorism, Criminal, or Counterintelligence units. But those guys, all those agents, cannot enter this unit—the Language unit. If they want to see us or meet with us, they have to call in advance and have someone from our unit escort them inside … their entry cards won’t work over here; ours work everywhere.” This evidently pleased him.
As we entered this “most sensitive, most secured unit,” I found myself in the middle of a square open area filled with over a dozen cubicles only barely separated by chest-high dividers. There were a dozen or more people, each behind a computer screen. Some wore headphones, others were typing; three were gathered around one cubicle deep in discussion, in Arabic.
Feghali pointed. “This is our Arabic unit, now considered the most important language unit within our division. In a few weeks we expect it to double in size and in less than a year it will be quadrupled.” He pointed to the group of three. “That woman on the right is my wife. She works for NSA as a translator, but I arranged for her to be transferred here for a few months on loan. I’ll introduce you to all these people later.” He led and I followed.
The Arabic unit section narrowed into a dark hallway. On the left was a small conference room, and next to it was reception, where sat the administrative secretary, Liz. On the right were three small offices. In the last, the third, someone had squeezed in a tiny round table with three chairs. Feghali pointed to the rooms. “These are LS supervisors’ offices. I am one of the supervisors; the third office is mine. We have three more supervisors. Each supervisor has several language units under him or her, depending on the size of the unit. For example, I have Farsi, Turkish, Pashtun, Urdu, and Vietnamese. Stephanie has Spanish, Russian, and a few others. Same with the other two supervisors; we all used to be Language Specialists.” He turned again and walked forward.
The hallway opened to a huge L-shaped room. Here were a hundred or more cubicles (or rather, modular desks, since they had no real dividers) clustered around the room. Translators sat shoulder to shoulder in front of their monitors, some dressed in jeans and sweatshirts, others with headscarves and saris; almost no one wore a suit.
Back in his office, Feghali explained the difference between three types of people I would report to and have ongoing working relationships with. He was one: an administrative supervisor who handled paperwork, scheduling and assignments; he would not know anything about the content of what I would translate or any other related information. The second group consisted of special agents from the Washington field office (WFO) involved in my long-term and ongoing counterintelligence projects in Turkish, Farsi, or both. The third category was comprised of special agents from FBI field offices all over the country, who would send our unit (since it was the largest) their documents or audio related to their investigations—mainly counterterrorism, with some counterintelligence and occasional criminal operations.
I was to provide translation and interpretation in both Turkish and Farsi. Feghali asked if I had a preference. “Turkish,” I answered, “that’s my primary language.” He nodded. “We don’t have a single Turkish language specialist … In the past, we assigned Turkish tasks to some Persian, Iranian, translators who claimed they understood the language; we later found out that they didn’t.”
I was surprised. Considering Turkey’s geopolitical significance, its well-known involvement in narcotics, money laundering, and illegal arms sales—including the nuclear black market—I found it hard to believe that the FBI did not have a Turkish unit, or even a single translator, for its counterintelligence and counterterrorism operations.
Surprising too was that this would be on-the-job training, or “learn as you go,” as Feghali explained it.
“Are there any documents, manuals, or booklets I can read for training purposes in addition to ‘following’ the translators and watching them translate?”
No. I found that interesting too. He took me out again to introduce me to those I would “follow” and those with whom I’d be working.
First I was introduced to Muala, an Iranian translator in her late forties who had been with the Farsi unit for over twelve years. A few years back, she had secured positions in the same department for her two younger sisters, Ayla and Suheyla. The three worked side by side as Farsi translators, somewhat removed from the other Iranian translators clustered a few feet away. By way of introduction, Feghali mentioned that these three also translated Turkish intelligence as extra assignments for overtime pay. I paid a compliment to Muala in Turkish; she made a sour face and didn’t acknowledge what I’d said. At the time, I shrugged it off.
Afterwards, Feghali walked me over to another Iranian group and introduced me to a delicately built man in his mid-to-late sixties, Behrooz Sarshar, a Farsi translator who had been with the bureau for almost ten years. His eyes showed intelligence and wisdom, reflecting a kind nature and mild temperament. Unlike Muala, he greeted and welcomed me warmly.
Feghali then had one of the more senior supervisors, Larry, set up my access code, password, and username for the unit’s LAN-based computer system. He also showed me the unit’s central filing cabinet, organized by language, where archived copies of everything that had been translated in the past five years were kept. That was about it. He left me with Muala and went back to his office.
Muala didn’t seem too happy. I didn’t blame her; I assumed she had a lot to do and considered this a distraction. She directed me to the archived cabinet where I was to begin reading files at random: that way I would become familiar with how translation documents were titled, formatted and written. I started with Turkish and Farsi files, filled with hundreds of pages. Translations were performed in two ways: verbatim (from foreign to English, word by word, phrase by phrase); and summary (translate only a summary of what you heard or read).
In a couple of hours, I finished my review. I had a good grasp of the format and general flow, but reading the English translation without hearing actual audio in the target language gave me only half the picture. I decided to review an archived translation and listen to the audio in Farsi or Turkish simultaneously.
As I plugged in my headset, Muala came over and asked me what I was doing. When I explained my idea of listening and reviewing the translations simultaneously, she seemed panicky and started going through the files I had selected, a mixture of Farsi and Turkish archived translations. She grabbed the stack of Turkish files and said, “Hmmm, I think it is better to do it for Farsi for right now.” Then she walked away with all the Turkish files. Though I found this a little peculiar, again I shrugged it off.
Around three, Sarshar stopped by my desk and invited me to join him for a cup of tea in the little kitchen area. He asked me about my background, and when I told him about my father’s position in the Shah’s Hospital in Tehran, he asked for his name. To my utter surprise, he not only told me the name of my father’s high school but he actually knew my father, having attended the same.
What a small world!
I thought. From that day on, Sarshar became my closest colleague at the unit.
He pointed toward the door. “Be careful of the three devils,” he said in a close whisper. “They are a little odd and more than a little devious. The rest of us Farsi translators don’t speak more than a word—
hello
or
bye
—to them. Muala is not happy to have you here; she’s threatened.”
I was surprised. “But why?”
“You’ll find out more, later … The problem they’ve got is this: they are not even a little bit proficient in Turkish. Their mother’s ancestors were from Turkey, but the women never lived there, never attended school … they simply don’t have any proficiency…. The special agent in charge of Turkey will tell you about the entire fiasco; he’s a nice guy, his name is Saccher or something like that.”
My jaw dropped. I didn’t believe him. How could that be? The FBI wouldn’t allow people to “claim” proficiency; they had tests for that—didn’t they? This was impossible. Then I remembered the response Muala had given me—the face she pulled—and her later panic at the idea of me going over Turkish files and listening to their sources at once. I decided not to dwell on office gossip but to focus instead on actual work.
My first two days were spent reviewing archived translated files and listening to or reading their original sources. The rest of the time was spent learning the ropes. Sarshar was very helpful; he would take time with a question and show me how to do certain things.
In a few days I would meet Special Agent Dennis Saccher, in charge of my newly assigned unit, Turkish Counterintelligence, and he would go over my primary and permanent projects.
On my third day, Friday, Feghali came by and told me to go home and pack for a two-day trip, a very important counterterrorism assignment.
“What trip?”
“First to Wilmington, then to Philadelphia, and maybe afterwards to New Jersey.”
I thought he was joking. “I’m not trained yet; I still have a long way to go.”
Feghali laughed and patted me on the shoulder. “Woman, they badly need a Turkish interpreter; you’re all we got; you are it, baby. Consider it your
baptism by fire!
”
I pressed him for details, but he didn’t know much. Something about agents holding Turkish-speaking detainees related to 9/11. He gave me a piece of paper with the address of the Wilmington field office and a phone number for the agent in charge of the investigation. They would wait for my arrival that same night.
When I got home, I headed directly to our bedroom and started packing an overnight bag. I explained the assignment to Matthew as I packed and changed into my jeans and T-shirt. His reaction was exactly like mine. “But honey, you’re not ready…. They can’t send you on an assignment like this.” I shrugged and told him they “can and did,” assuring him I would be OK.
By the time I pulled up in front of the FBI Wilmington field office’s nondescript brick building it was almost eleven.
I went inside and gave the receptionist my name and that of the agent given to me by Feghali. Less than two minutes later, a man in his mid thirties, dressed in wrinkled khakis and looking exhausted, came to get me. On the way to what he referred to as “the interrogation room,” he explained that they had detained two men under suspicious circumstances; they were here illegally and did not speak any English.
Inside the room, under harsh fluorescent lights, men were seated around a gray aluminum desk. It was easy to identify the two detainees: each was chained to a chair by his wrists and ankles. The older, in his late thirties, had a dark olive complexion and black mustache; the other, in his late twenties, had fair skin and honey brown hair. Three agents sat across from them; no one was speaking. They all looked exhausted. I was thanked for getting there on such short notice, offered the desk and chair, and given a yellow legal notepad and an FBI pen.
The session started immediately. An older agent, who seemed to be in charge, asked me to interpret his questions and translate their responses into English. His questions were straightforward, and the men’s answers were mostly “yes,” “no,” and “I don’t understand,” with a few that were a bit longer.
The session lasted almost two hours, during which one of the detainees requested a bathroom. One of the agents removed his cuffs and walked him there. I was impressed with the level of respect with which the FBI agents treated both men, and their professional and courteous manner. It was 1 a.m. by the time the session ended. The agent in charge asked me to walk out with him, and after we left the room, asked me what I thought of the men’s answers and their attitudes in general. I gave him my assessment: one seemed a bit more evasive than the other; one was from a particular region known for nationalism but not religious fanaticism; the other seemed of Kurdish descent from that particular region with the following characteristics … The agent listened carefully. Would I come to the Philadelphia field office and do the same thing there? I said I could. I was to meet them in front of the building at eight o’clock, less than seven hours away!
We were joined in Philadelphia by several other men, some of them from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), others from the FBI Philadelphia and New Jersey field offices. From their looks and what they talked, about I could tell they had been working around the clock since 9/11. They seemed exhausted yet eager to get things done, to accomplish something. Their dedication was worthy of respect.
“What we want to do is this: question, interrogate these guys, check out their background, and decide whether they are keepers or not,” one of the younger agents told me. “If not, let them go, and go back and chase the real bad guys until we get ’em.” He shook his head in disgust. “The jerks at HQ have issued an order for us to go and round up as many people as we can; chain ’em, lock ’em up, and send HQ the count. The larger the number the better; they’ve set a quota. They’re not after the bad guys, they just want to show the press and the Hill this number, to be able to say, today we arrested this many; yesterday we arrested that many …”
That surprised me.
The other agent added, “We get these guys on a simple INS violation. What do we do? We have to arrest ’em, sit around and baby-sit ’em while they’re interrogated and locked up, instead of being out there and doing what we’re good at doing.”
This interrogation lasted three hours. Before they began the questioning, the agents first asked me to interpret the detainees’ Miranda rights. One of the detainees shook his head. “How can that be?” he said, confused. “If we don’t have money, they—the government—will assign a government attorney for us; but that doesn’t make sense! If they are government attorneys, they will always represent the government and try to set us up and screw us over! Is this a trap?”
I understood only too well. In countries like Turkey, Miranda rights, due process, or court-appointed attorneys at no cost simply don’t exist. This was a thought-provoking dilemma, similar to a “diminished capacity” or “mental defect” case: having grown up with oppression and become accustomed to it, they could not comprehend or believe the rights being explained to them. In this case, the two waived their rights for exactly this reason.
Almost three hours later, after the session was over, the agent in charge suggested to the others that they have a briefing session with me and discuss my impression and analysis based on the cultural, geographical and education background of these detainees. All agreed.
I then went over each of the three detainees, describing the environment each grew up in, that area’s culture and religious outlook, level of education based on language skills and degree of articulation, and anything else to help these agents assess the level of risk.
At first it felt preposterous for me, a novice, to be providing these experts with my analysis, yet within minutes their willingness to truly listen, their eagerness to find out, and their subsequent to-the-point questions put me at ease. I was impressed with these field agents.
When I finished in Philadelphia it was almost four o’clock. Once on the highway I called Feghali’s office, telling him I was on my way back.
“What!” he screamed. “No—turn around and go back!”
“What? Why? I’m finished.”
He replied without a pause, “Because we already approved the hotel and meal budget for your trip until Sunday—go back, check into a hotel, order yourself a nice dinner, sleep late and drive back tomorrow. Then of course send us the bill.”
I tried to reason with him. The job was over; I could be home by eight. Why waste the money?
He continued in a more irritated tone. “Don’t you understand? Each supervisor has a budget for his translators, for his unit. The larger that budget the more important the unit. I want you to
spend
your budget: hotel, meals, and everything. Consider it your mini rest day; we are not in the business of saving the FBI money, my friend. The motto here is, the more your department spends, the more your department is loved.”
I was getting really annoyed. “Well, I’m halfway there already. I have a paper due on Monday. I’m heading back. I’ll see you next week.” With that I hung up.
This budget quota business didn’t make sense; in fact I hated the whole idea. I told myself to stop thinking about Feghali and be happy for a job well done. Soon I would be home.
The following week, on my first day at work since the trip to Wilmington and Philadelphia, Feghali told me to call Special Agent Dennis Saccher, to whom I now was formally assigned. I could detect coolness toward me; Feghali was still upset with me for not staying the extra night.
I called Saccher’s extension and was asked to go up one floor. Saccher, in his late thirties, stood around five foot ten, stocky but not fat, light brown hair and fair complexion. After shaking hands, we walked through a maze of halls to his cubicle.
Saccher was friendly but to the point. After chatting a few minutes, we talked about political and other important aspects in the target country. He was surprised by how up to date I was. We discussed major criminal activities and entities within and outside Turkey, and their overlapping partnerships with other foreign criminal networks.
He covered the importance of counterintelligence and his areas of investigation. He went over what was considered significant: exchange of money; information exchange involving intelligence, technology and financial activities; activities involving penetration of government; narcotics (particularly heroin); financial and political institutions and organizations; and other areas significant to FBI counterintelligence and counterterrorism operations and national security.
Saccher briefly explained the foreign targets of FBI operations and their possible counterparts in the United States. There were many, divided into primary, secondary, and “not significant” categories. We discussed a bit more, after which he praised my familiarity with the subject area and said he looked forward to my feedback and analysis.
On the way to the elevator he remarked, “I’ve been bugging HQ to hire a real translator, someone competent. I’m sure you’ve already met the three sisters from hell down there. These crooks claimed proficiency in Turkish and talked the administrators into assigning them overtime projects in the language. It didn’t take me long to realize the shoddy work they produced, so I reported it to HQ and asked them to administer proficiency exams … HQ sends them notification asking them to go to HQ and submit to these tests, right? Guess what these crooks did? First they dragged their feet, and then they simply refused to take the test. Of course, they knew the uproar that would occur if they did! Can you believe this went on for two years? Man, am I glad you’re here.”
I was flabbergasted. How could HQ not be able to demand that they take the tests and allow them to continue for two more years?
He shook his head. “Just wait. There is so much shit going on down there; you’ll get to know all about it in no time…. Just watch your back and don’t get close to or involved with these people; keep your head down and keep your distance.”
He asked me to call any time and to shoot for briefing sessions every few days at a minimum. I rode the elevator down with my head spinning.
In the following weeks I had several counterterrorism assignments from different field offices, including New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles, Detroit and others. These were top priority cases with direct relevance to the 9/11 attacks. The FBI had a huge backlog of untranslated e-mails, tapes, letters and other documents. Part of my job involved going over these and related materials—some collected long before 9/11—to connect certain dots and possibly find more clues. Counterterrorism agents from around the country began to call me directly, begging me to expedite their projects: they depended on the translated documents and audios to make a case or drop it, to arrest or release a suspect.
During this hectic period I also worked on my permanent counterintelligence projects involving Turkish targets in Saccher’s unit. Here I had to divide my time between new and real-time intelligence and those not yet translated from years earlier, some dating back to 1996. The LA field office also sent me several CDs of intelligence they wanted me to review.
At once I began to realize the critical role played by language specialists in these investigations. In fact, I had come to see translators as the most important players. So much for boring clerical administrative work!
Field agents, analysts, and other decision makers in FBI offices and HQ depend on translators for their investigations of foreign targets—which means that they need to be able to trust that the translated foreign intelligence received is thorough, accurate and unbiased. They have no way to double-check or assess information given to them by translators, and so must use it as a basis for taking action or not.
If processed and transmitted in time, even one sentence of an intercepted communication can save thousands of lives. A piece of competently translated and analyzed intelligence can, for instance, lead to dismantling a network of deadly criminals.
Imagine, for a moment, that a language specialist is listening to a verbal communication between two targets of an FBI investigation. She or he first must determine whether this bit of intelligence is worthy of being translated, processed and sent to the agent or analyst in charge. If the specialist determines that the information is not significant, she or he stamps it
Not Pertinent
and there it ends. No one—no agent or analyst—ever sees, reads or knows about this particular piece of intelligence.
Now imagine that the specialist indeed has determined that this bit of intelligence is worthy of being translated and processed. The translator now must make a critical decision: Is this important enough to be translated
verbatim
, or can it be translated in
summary
—that is, condensed into a short paragraph or two without details or quotes. Note too that this summary also will deprive any analyst or agent in charge of the operation from seeing and analyzing the entire picture. If the translator isn’t well trained or competent, then she or he may fail to understand the significance of this communication, or pieces thereof, and again the decision makers and action takers will have lost that opportunity.
Anyone determined to penetrate and throw off our intelligence agencies would most likely choose the Language unit—at the heart of the intelligence-gathering mechanism—to block, alter or simply steal sensitive, highly classified intelligence. Think of translators as valves: just as valves in a water system allow water to flow, be blocked or diverted, translators control the transmission of information from its first entry point, the frontlines, to the ultimate action takers, the special agents.
Considering the importance of translators and what they do, the agencies must perform a careful investigation into the background of candidates—including detailed interviews and in-person assessments to determine whether these individuals’ loyalties, ideology, or personality may be in conflict with tasks they will be called on to perform. The agencies also should have a mechanism in place to spot-check, review and audit the work performed by each translator.
Right away I understood the potential for disaster if the job was not done properly. Feeling the weight of my position not only raised my level of awareness and diligence but also made me alert to that of others as well. Very soon I would begin to witness mind-boggling and appalling incidents within the FBI Washington Field Office Language unit that would impact directly on the bureau’s ongoing investigations and, thus, on our national security.
Heeding Dennis Saccher and his warnings, I began to pay attention to my surroundings. My exposure to the routine and daily doings within the department was limited, however; I was still part-time.
I told Sarshar, my colleague, about Saccher’s cautions. He thereupon provided me with an in-depth, detailed account of the crisis. Things were far worse than I imagined.
I was told of frequent internecine sabotage: between the Hebrew division and Muslim Arab-origin translators; between the Indian and Pakistani Muslim translators—all were at war with one another, and it sometimes erupted in actual bloodshed. People were accusing one another of being spies: of spies spying on each other. Classified files were stolen, documents went missing, locks were tampered with. Rearranging how these groups were clustered within the unit seemed to be the only departmental response; that and tepid reassurances.
Soon I began to witness such incidents. I recall one particularly irate Hebrew translator red-faced and screaming that his locked cabinet had been broken into and highly classified information stolen. On his way to the supervisors’ offices, Feghali intercepted him. This was not the first time, the translator raved. He was determined to take this to HQ. I didn’t blame him—I’d have done the same thing myself! Other supervisors crowded around, and he finally followed one of them into her office. That was the last we heard.
Later, during my now customary Persian tea break with Sarshar and his buddy Amin, who had just returned from Afghanistan, two Arabic translators walked in. One of them excitedly recounted the episode and asked what we all thought. I didn’t respond; Amin and Sarshar mumbled something. One of the Arabic translators said, “After all, it is about Israel … He is an Israeli spy. Why do you think he keeps going back there? Sarshar, you know that; he’s been to Israel at least three times in the last year or so.”
With Amin’s help, Sarshar tried to change the topic. Neither one wanted to get into the middle of an Arab-Israeli war. I remembered what Saccher had warned me about and kept my mouth shut.
What I couldn’t understand is why, if we were all supposed to keep our sensitive and top-secret files inside the unit’s Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) and not in our file cabinets, I hadn’t yet seen anyone doing so.
“Because they’re lazy,” Amin responded. “That would mean, if observed, that every time you go to the bathroom, every day when you come in and leave, the supervisor has to handle those documents for you—in and out of the SCIF. With this many translators, that would mean a lot of walking in and out of the SCIF; too much hassle for the supervisors.”
The more I thought about the problem—sabotage and stealing top-secret documents—the more troubled I became. Not only does it put our national security and intelligence at risk, it also jeopardizes the target countries’ intelligence and secrets. What if terrorists got hold of these? What if those acting as middlemen got this information and sold it to whoever was willing to pay? What if one or more of these translators, with this extraordinary, unchecked access, became that middleman? What if some of these translators were in fact moles?
In addition to sabotage and stolen documents, laptops disappeared with alarming frequency, many of them loaded with sensitive case data related to open counterterrorism and criminal investigations. Once every few weeks we would receive e-mails from the supervisors alerting us to missing laptops and asking us for help to establish chain of custody in the event that they were recovered.
These laptops were supposed to be kept in a secured and locked facility. No translator should have been able to access them without first going through supervisors, and then being accompanied by the special agents who were allowed to carry and use these computers during travel assignments or court hearings. Detailed procedures, such as who possessed the key and access to the facility, how to sign the laptop checkout sheet in the presence of a witness, and how and where to maintain these laptops during use, apparently existed only in writing. The supervisors and those in charge evidently didn’t bother to keep the facility locked. The e-mail alerts continued.
I worked for the bureau twenty-five hours a week on average; school took a lot of time and energy. I tried hard to spend every working minute on top priority and urgent tasks and assignments. If I got an urgent call from an agent begging me to get something done, I would stay late until I could complete that project.
One day in early October, I received such a call from a New Jersey field agent. I could hear his desperation. He suggested that to save time I should have the results faxed to him over an FBI-secured fax line immediately after I was finished. (Ordinarily, completed assignments from field offices had to be sent to HQ in hard copy; the administrators then would send it via secure mail to the requesting field agents. That slowed everything. Our Language unit could not or would not send anything electronically.)
I worked quickly until I finished the agent’s documents. Since I was not familiar with the secure fax, I went to Feghali’s office and asked him for instructions. He asked me to sit down. Feghali had something to tell me.
“I see you are working very hard and fast. That’s very good but you need to slow down a bit and take breaks during your work. You don’t want to burn out or collapse in exhaustion. We wouldn’t want that for you either; you have already become a very popular translator. Look what I have for you.”
He handed me a two-page document. It was from the special agent from Baltimore who had supervised my interrogation translation. The commendation letter praised my work, professional conduct, and insightful feedback I’d given them.
“He says he will request you in particular for anything else they may have in the future that deals with Farsi or Turkish. You see, you don’t have to kill yourself, work too hard, to be liked and admired.”
I assured him that I knew my limitations and wouldn’t exhaust myself.
Grinning and nodding to show that he understood, Feghali nevertheless went on to emphasize that it is not helpful to work fast; that doing so may in fact “end up hurting the department.”
I was baffled. I had no idea what he was getting at. Had someone complained?
“What do you mean?”
“Look,” he began (never a good sign), “for years and years the bureau, all these agents, treated us, the translators, as second-class citizens…. Now, thanks to the 9/11 terrorist attack, all that has changed; the terrorists and what they did put us translators on the map.” Feghali continued, “That’s why I say sometimes good things come out of bad things. Some may consider what happened on 9/11 terrible, but we, the translators, see it as a cause to celebrate. Look at these date cookies my wife baked yesterday: see, we are still celebrating the attack; this is our customary celebration cookie. Have some.” He extended the cookie bowl toward me.
I was sick to my stomach. I shook my head and refused. Perhaps I misunderstood; could he have possibly meant that the attack finally opened people’s eyes to the threats we all face? Could that have been it?
Yet Feghali continued in this same disgusting vein. “This is the time for us, for our department to flourish…. This November the FBI is going to present its budget request for our department, and to make the case, they have to show this huge backlog of untranslated material: the bigger the backlog, the more money and more translators for this department. Do you get the picture?”
“But we already have a huge backlog; hundreds of thousands of hours and pages, if you count all the languages.”
“I know, I know,” he said dismissively, “but still … for instance, you worked so hard and too fast to translate this agent’s document, and want to go the extra mile … You say this guy is desperate; well, sometimes desperation is a good thing. Better to have this guy complain to and pressure his bosses and HQ for not getting his translated documents than to make him satisfied and happy … and have him forget about it later. All I’m asking you is to be a better friend to your colleagues: accompany them to lunches and coffee breaks, take regular breaks, and do not work this fast, that’s all.”
This was hateful. I had to get out of his office, right away. I started out when he called me back. Now he held the cookie bowl only inches from my face. “Have a cookie. Don’t refuse my wife’s famous cookies.” I grabbed one and left.
As soon as I found my way clear of his office, I dumped the cookie in the nearest trashcan. Not on my life would I ever eat anything baked to celebrate 9/11. My first order of business was to fax this document to the agent in New Jersey. (I did, with Amin’s help.) What happened in Feghali’s office was sickening. I well knew this was the second time I had defied him; I prayed it would be the last.
The next day I started experiencing problems with saved documents in my computer. The problem continued for days. Typically, I would work on a document for hours, translating it verbatim—which is tedious and time-consuming—and then save it at the end of the day. When I opened that document the following workday, the page would appear but with paragraphs deleted and sentences cut in half, with the other halves missing. I would have to start from scratch. It was driving me nuts. What ordinarily took me two days to finish was dragging into five. To make matters worse, this particular translation was urgent business.
I had never before experienced anything like this. I called Amin, since he was the most technologically savvy in the unit.
Amin checked and tried everything. Nothing worked. Then he had an idea. “How many people know your password?”
“No one, except for supervisors—they have a key password for all our computers.”
This interested him. “Maybe someone who doesn’t like you stood behind you and stole it. I know the three sisters don’t care for you at all. Maybe it was one of them.”
I told him I didn’t think so.
“There is only one way to find out. We’ll report it to the computer and database department downstairs. They can print out the records of all login and logout sessions into your computer. Match that against the hours you worked and
bam!
we’ll know if anyone logged in to your system when you were not here. If it was one of the supervisors, it’ll show that it was from another computer and will tell you whose computer it was from.”
Brilliant. How does one go about reporting this to the database department downstairs? Amin said the best and fastest way is to inform my supervisor and have him report it and request the data. So I went to Feghali’s office and explained the problem, asking him to do exactly that.
“That’s interesting,” he said. I urged that we find out right away.
“I don’t think it is a good idea for you to report this. Let it slide one more time. We don’t want this to turn into a major incident.”
“It
is
a major incident. Whoever did this should be reprimanded, fired. This is sick!”
Feghali replied a little more sharply, “No. I won’t report it this time. If it happens again, I will. Maybe you should consider it a lesson. Maybe you were working too fast and someone decided to warn you, to teach you a lesson.”
It suddenly sank in. My own supervisor had done this—right after I had defied him and sent the expedited translation to New Jersey. The man would halt urgent counterterrorism investigations for a budget increase. If I had any doubts before, I now believed I was on his wrong side—permanently.
In mid October, another Turkish translator, Kevin Taskesen, entered the department. Feghali brought Kevin to my desk, and after a short introduction asked me to train and supervise him. Kevin was in his midforties, overweight and dark with a thick black mustache and a noticeable limp. He was hired as a “monitor.” The bureau divides translators into two ranking groups. The language specialists are those with high scores in both the target language and English: they perform all types of translations (verbatim, interviews, live interpretations) and supervise monitors. The monitors are those with low scores in either English or the target language. Technically (that is, as presented in FBI rulebooks and classification manuals), monitors are only allowed to perform summary translations; they are not to translate verbatim or interpret for court cases or live interviews, and they must submit their final product to their assigned language specialist for approval. In actuality, things never worked that way.
Kevin seemed timid and not very social. He spoke only in Turkish, with me. I tried my best to explain things to him, to demonstrate by having him sit next to me and watch. Saccher also helped and had a briefing session with Kevin in my presence.
In less than a week, Feghali had Kevin performing summary translations of our ongoing counterintelligence project. Kevin didn’t know how to use a computer; he had never typed a word in his life on a word processor. Feghali asked Amin to show him how.
On his first real workday, Kevin stopped by and asked me the English translation for three common words. Thirty minutes later, he came to me with a list of seven or eight words, again, all very simple. Then he was back again. That did it. I asked him to take a coffee break with me.
“You don’t speak much English, do you?”
He shook his head no.
I asked him what he would do when they found out, to which he replied, “They already know.”
“Who is
they
?”
“Feghali, HQ.”
He then began telling the story very matter-of-factly. He was working as a cook in a restaurant in Istanbul when he met his American wife, Cynthia, an English instructor. The couple married and moved to California, where Kevin got a job as a busboy and kitchen helper in a nearby restaurant in Malibu.