Bad Eggs!

This is coolbert:

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions." - - Claudius - - From Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1603"

First read this blog entry of mine from the recent past. Regarding Larry Wu Tai Chin. Arch Chicom spy during the Korea war, almost sixty years ago now. A man, who while serving as a translator for U.S. forces, did grave harm to the interests of United Nations forces.

"Chin served as a Chinese translator in the US Army during the Korean War . . . He misrepresented the intelligence that he was translating from captured Chinese soldiers . . . He also provided the Chinese with the names of captured Chinese soldiers who were revealing information or intended to defect."

Larry - - a man, while assisting in the interrogation of captured Chinese soldiers during the Korean War, in a deliberate fashion - - "misrepresented the intelligence that he was translating from captured Chinese soldiers"

Larry - - doing much more too! And all of it bad!

NOW, almost sixty years later, history repeats itself? From the New York Post, thanks to Robert and Pamela:

"Another spying scandal at Gitmo"

"A number of Arabic and Pashtu interpreters at the terror-war detention center at Guantanamo Bay are under active investigation for omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of detainee interrogations, among other security breaches"

Deliberate malfeasance and villainy on a widespread scale is alleged. To include:

* Omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of interrogations.

* Slipping notes to detainees inside copies of the Koran.

* Coaching detainees to make allegations of abuse against interrogators.

* Meeting with suspects on the terror watch list while back in the United States.

Contract workers, foreign nationals NOT Americans, translators, native Arabic and Pashtu [Afghan] speakers, NOT doing their job properly. Mistranslating interrogations and deliberately mis-leading American authorities, AMONG OTHER THINGS! American intelligence agencies, military and civilian, fooled in a very big way!

NOT just merely a bad-egg, but a battalion of bad-eggs. NOT merely a single modern-day Larry Wu Tai Chin but an entire battalion of persons who are doing mis-translations of interrogations of captured terrorists undergoing "processing" at Gitmo.

Deliberate and malicious malfeasance of a startling and overwhelming nature? And NOW only discovered and come-to-light a number of years after the fact?!

ONLY NOW!!??

A whole series of quotations and adages are appropriate here? U.S. intelligence agencies and the military "snookered" and big time by "bad-eggs" IN THE EMPLOY AND ALLEGED SERVICE OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT AND DURING A TIME OF WAR!!

As it was with Larry Wu Tai Chin, as it is now at Gitmo.

Can it be suggested that during the time all these extensive [?] interrogations have been going on of captured terrorists, NO ONE has ever thought it wise and necessary to do quality control on these translations? Detect errors early, identify bad-eggs and weed them out.

Well, I guess I should not be surprised. "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me!"

For shame! History has a very bad way of repeating itself. And for American intelligence agencies, so it seems, over and over.

And a remedy is suggested for all this? From the NYPost article again:

"More immediately, it must review key translations on the shelf for accuracy, using trustworthy translators -- and subject new translations to spot-checking in a stringent quality-assurance program."

Right, record these interrogations and have known reliable personnel do quality control checking to see if everything "is on the up and up" A clear and persistent pattern of mistranslation will become evident and you will be able to identify who the "bad eggs" are.

But this has not been done and IS not being done??

coolbert.