Thread: Translator Who Faked Identity Pleads Guilty To Having Secret

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01592.html

Translator Who Faked Identity Pleads Guilty To Having Secret Data

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 15, 2007; A03



An Arabic translator who used an assumed identity to get work as a contractor for the U.S. Army in Iraq pleaded guilty yesterday to federal charges of possessing classified national defense documents, including sensitive material about the insurgency that he took from an 82nd Airborne Division intelligence group in 2004.

The translator obtained U.S. citizenship under a false identity before securing a job in August 2003 with Titan Corp., which supplied translators to the U.S. military to aid in fighting the war in Iraq. The man then used his false identity to get secret and top-secret clearances -- access to extremely sensitive material that is supposed to be given only after thorough background checks -- Justice Department officials said.

Authorities said yesterday in a news release that they do not even know the translator's real name and that they refer to him in court documents under several of his aliases, including "Abu Hakim" and "Abdulhakeem Nour."

The man pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court in New York to having several documents in his Brooklyn apartment after two deployments to Iraq. He earlier pleaded guilty to charges of using a false identity to obtain U.S. citizenship and to gain access to classified military material.

U.S. District Judge Edward R. Korman could sentence him to up to 60 years in prison.

The man's federal public defender did not return calls to her office yesterday.

According to court papers, the translator illegally downloaded classified documents that "detail the 82nd Airborne's mission in Iraq in regard to insurgent activity, such as coordinates of insurgent locations upon which the U.S. Army was preparing to fire in January 2004," as well as plans for protecting Sunnis on their pilgrimage to Mecca that same month. Government lawyers also said that he photographed a classified battle map at a base near Najaf.

Officials did not say what the translator hoped to do with the information, but officials considered his efforts a dangerous breach.

Mark J. Mershon, assistant director in charge of the FBI's New York field office, said in a statement yesterday that the man has been consistent in his lies.

"Through serial deception, an eminently untrustworthy person inveigled his way into a position of trust, and he abused that trust," Mershon said.

The man had worked for Titan Corp., which in late summer 2005 became L-3 Titan Group, a subsidiary of New York-based L-3 Communications. The company has held a significant contract for linguistic services in Iraq and company officials say they have more than 5,000 linguists under contract in Iraq until mid-March. A Washington-area consortium unseated L-3 in December when it was awarded a five-year Army contract worth up to $4.6 billion to provide the linguists beginning in March.

Evan Goetz, a spokesman for L-3, declined to discuss the case involving the translator, saying, "The company doesn't comment on legal matters."

http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/02 ... ses_tr.php

Army Translator Case Raises Troubling Security Questions
By Michael Cutler
This article in today's Washington Post, "Translator Who Faked Identity Pleads Guilty To Having Secret Data," raises a number of troubling questions for our counter-terrorism efforts.

First of all, let us start with the way that the government, especially under this administration is apparently determined to privatize as many functions as possible. Why the military does not employ those people who serve vital functions for the United States is disturbing. By allowing private corporations to provide employees for the government creates an unwieldy system that make accountability more elusive. Additionally, because a private company is involved, the individual employee is probably paid less than if he or she worked directly for the government. The privatization of government functions inserts a "middle man" into the process who gets paid for his involvement. This only benefits the contractor and the politicians but does not, in my judgement, enhance our government's ability to attract the best employees, provide them with incentives to do an effective job by providing an opportunity to work towards a government pension by accruing years of service that would be applicable should that employee decide to change jobs within the government.

Next we need to ask, how did the translator obtain resident alien status and then go on to acquire United States citizenship through the naturalization process? It is really disturbing that the prosecutors are now conceding that they do not even know the true name of the translator who, in effect, engaged in espionage. There have been a number of naturalized United States citizens from a wide variety of countries who have engaged in espionage against our government, using their acquired citizenship as a means of embedding themselves within our nation so that they would be eligible to be granted high-level security clearances to enable them to have access to highly sensitive military information or knowledge about highly important technology with clear national security ramifications.

It is interesting that the unnamed Justice Department officials who were quoted in the article stated: "The translator obtained U.S. citizenship under a false identity before securing a job in August 2003 with Titan Corp., which supplied translators to the U.S. military to aid in fighting the war in Iraq. The man then used his false identity to get secret and top-secret clearances -- access to extremely sensitive material that is supposed to be given only after thorough background checks --..." This is the same sort of statement made when we hear about the way that applications for a wide variety of immigration benefits are vetted, through "background checks." What is interesting about that term is that a background check is not the same thing as a background investigation.

A background investigation is a labor-intensive task requiring that field agents knock on doors and interview relatives, neighbors, friends and employers. A background check generally just involves running fingerprints on a computer along with the name the applicant provides on his application for immigration benefits or for employment. When you are dealing with a large number of people and have a limited number of agents, you resort to background checks which, as we have seen time and time again, often fails to accomplish the purpose of the mission in the first place, to determine the trustworthiness of the applicant as well as to determine if he (she) lied on the application about a material fact, thereby committing fraud.

Next we need to consider the fact that when an alien applies for naturalization, he may legally change his name when he is sworn in as a new United States citizen and, for no extra charge! When he is granted a United States passport, the passport only reflects the name the alien assumed on the day he naturalized. In effect the newly minted citizen can put himself in his own quasi "witness protection program!" He can travel to countries that may be looking for him under his old name confident that his entry will go undetected. Imagine the implications for criminals and especially terrorists! I have raised this particular vulnerability when I have testified at Congressional hearings, yet, to my knowledge this huge hole in the system has not been addressed. This is a vulnerability that will not require an expensive fix, only a bit of ink, to record the previous names the naturalized citizen may have used before he naturalized.

Twisting this story a bit further discloses another worrying fact; he was hired as a translator with access to military secrets at a military base in Iraq. I know that we are living in the age of Political Correctness, and, as I have stated on many previous occasions, I am a strong supporter of being Politically Correct (PC) if the goal is to simply not embarrass or denigrate fellow human beings. However, when we permit being politically correct as a way of obfuscating the truth and the facts as when we refuse to use the term "alien" when we are talking about individuals who are present in our country but are not either citizens or nationals of the United States, then we have entered the land of George Orwell's "Newspeak" and this is simply not acceptable. Here we have an individual who was presumably a citizen of an Arabic country, although the article fails to state his original country of citizenship. He was hired roughly 2 years after the attacks of September 11, 2001 and yet it is obvious that the system failed in its mission to properly identify him. In all fairness, we have certainly seen native born citizens of the United States who have engaged in treasonous conduct. It is also true that the possibility exists that this guy was so thorough that there was no way for our officials to unravel his lies before he engaged in his treacherous activities. The problem is that I know how many reports I have read that made it clear that there is virtually no mechanism within the immigration bureaucracy that possesses real integrity.

The fact that this guy was given the "Keys to the kingdom" which United States citizenship represents, and then had access to an area of critical importance, namely the process by which individuals were questioned by the military will keep me awake tonight! As an INS special agent, I made ample use of translators because I dealt with so many people from so many parts of the world who spoke languages that I hade virtually no familiarity with. The translators who assisted me helped me to interview criminals I arrested. At times these criminals became cooperators and informants. The translators who assisted me became quite aware of what we doing and how we did it. They also became the "voice" of the person for whom they were translating. We depended on the accuracy and integrity of these translators to determine the trustworthiness of informants and potential informants. Many of our decisions were based on what the translators told us the guy we were interviewing was saying. Imagine how much damage a duplicitous translator can do in identifying informants to the bad guys! Imagine what damage a crooked translator can do by painting a misleading picture about a potential informant! The possibilities are endless! For this translator to become a United States citizen and then get himself hired as a translator in a military base in Iraq with access to sensitive information has to make you wonder who he may have been working for and what his agenda was.

The fact that this guy was caught after several years makes me wonder how much damage he may have done to the security of the base, its soldiers and the United States, as well.. There was another story of interest that ran in the Washington Times today about the fact that the United States government has stated that we will admit up to 7,000 Iraqi political refugees into the United States out of humanitarian concerns.

Generally, before refugees are interviewed and vetted before they are permitted to enter our country (or other countries) to make certain that they are not criminals or terrorists. They are also interviewed to try to make certain that they did not lie about material facts. As you might imagine translators are vital to this process. The potential exists that the translator who was prosecuted might have been involved in such interviews or would have been had he not been arrested. He would have been in the perfect position to lie about statements refugees made for a fee. Or he could have lied to conceal the fact that among the refugees seeking to enter the United States were members of terrorist organizations who wanted to enter the United States to conduct a terrorist attack!

This story has other implications. How many more employees of subcontractors working for our military have similarly concealed their true identities and intentions? There are only two good reasons for someone to lie about his true identity. Criminals lie to conceal their criminal histories and terrorists lie about their true names to make certain that their terrorist backgrounds are not discovered. Either way, such individuals represent a threat to our safety and to the security of our nation.

As you read the article and read my commentary I would ask you to remind yourself that the same flawed system that enabled this guy to become a resident alien and then a United States citizen under a false name so that he could steal secret material and possibly do other harm to our nation and our military is the same system that would be called upon to implement the Guest Worker Amnesty Program that the President continues to tout. I have made this point on many previous occasions and I believe it is important to state this again. A Guest Worker Amnesty Program that would provide official identity documents for millions of illegal aliens whose true identities are unknown and unknowable would represent nothing less than a major threat to our nation's security!

Our nation remains vulnerable to aliens who would game the immigration system to acquire a "Green Card" and possibly United States citizenship to embed themselves in our country and hide in plain sight as they prepare to carry out criminal and/or terrorist acts against our nation and our citizens!

By Michael Cutler on February 15, 2007 10:24 AM

Is anyone surprised?