Full Transcript

National Briefing On Language and National Security

Sponsored By:
The National Foreign Language Center
The National Security Education Program

Participants:
Ambassador James Collins, Former U.S Ambassador To The Russian Federation
Dr. Robert Slater, Director, National Security Education Program
Ellen Laipson, Vice Chairman, National Intelligence Council
CDR Edward Kane, U.S. Navy, Washington Liaison Office, United States European Command
John Campbell, Deputy Assistant Secretary Of State
Everette Jordan, Department Of Defense
Dr. Ray Clifford, Chancellor, Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center
Dr. J. David Edwards, Executive Director, Joint National Committee For Languages
Dr. Gilbert Merkx, Vice Provost For International Affairs, Duke University
Dr. Richard Brecht, Director, National Foreign Language Center

National Press Club of Washington, D.C.
Wednesday, January 16, 2002
8:30 AM
Transcript by:
Federal News Service
Washington, D.C.

AGENDA

8:30 a.m.	Refreshments
9:00 a.m.	Briefing
Introduction	Ambassador James Collins Senior International Advisor at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld and Former Ambassador to the Russian Federation
Language and National Security	Dr. Robert Slater Director, National Security Education Program
View from the Intelligence Community	Ellen Laipson Vice Chairman, National Intelligence Council
View from the Military: A U.S. Command Perspective	CDR Edward Kane, USN Washington Liaison Office, United States European Command
View from the Department of State	John Campbell Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
View from the Practitioner Level	Everette Jordan Department of Defense
The Role of Federal Language Institutions	Dr. Ray Clifford Chancellor, Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center
The Role of K-12 Education	Dr. J. David Edwards Executive Director, Joint National Committee for Languages
The Role of Higher Education	Dr. Gilbert Merkx Vice Provost for International Affairs, Duke University
Concluding Remarks	Director, National Foreign Language Center

10:00 a.m. Question and Answer Session

JAMES COLLINS: Yes, my name is Jim Collins. I'm former ambassador to Russia, but a great partisan of the need for our nation to be able to communicate with the majority of the people of the world, and that means we have to learn the languages in which they speak.

I think I have only two points this morning. The first is that in an age of globalization, we live in something of a paradox. As the Internet and technology, commerce, increasingly seem to use the English language, and it pervades the international system as the language of those professions and those technologies, we see the spread of English as the universal language.

Now, that's a great advantage to Americans, and it has certainly done much to transform, in many ways, the communication we have with other societies, cultures, and political systems. But there is another side. Through these technologies, through this universalization of communication, we also see that illegal monies can be transferred almost instantaneously, we have new law enforcement problems of narcotics trafficking and terrorism, the Internet carries child pornography, and so forth.

Now, the problem we have is that what this has come to mean is that it's time that English has spread, and it has become a global language. We are also finding that the problems that come through the technologies and so forth are addressed effectively only through the capacity to deal with the people who are coping with these issues in their own languages.

Here I want simply to relate to you briefly some experience I had as ambassador to the Russian Federation, and my other work in that country over the last decade.

When the Soviet Union broke up, we suddenly found ourselves with requirements for a tremendous number of people skilled in a number of languages, such as Uzbek or Tajik or Ukrainian that had never really been on the American screen before. And we needed them because we needed to do commerce. We were involved in a new set of national priorities. The traditional embassy in Moscow had focused on intelligence collection and analysis and national security issues -- very narrowly defined. Suddenly we were involved in programs of I hesitate to use the word but it's a fact democracy and nation building. And we needed people who could go to the far reaches of the former Soviet Union and talk to people about responsible government, how to build a market economy, what was a banking system, and so forth. And not too surprisingly, most of the people with whom we had to talk did not speak English.

Now, we, at that time, made a census around the U.S. government of who was available, and the good news was that we came up with a group of people who, in that first tranche of assignments to the new countries of the former Soviet empire, could in fact conduct that business in native languages. But the bench wasn't very deep, and that was the bad news. And we have struggled ever since, it seems to me, both in Russia and in the other nations, to have a cadre of people, still not very successfully, who can communicate effectively, not just about diplomacy, but about the professions of engineering, of commerce, of trade, of law, in the languages of the people with whom they are trying to do business.

That challenge, and this is my second point, is essentially the one that I believe is going to be with us and growing in this new century and, as we have seen so dramatically, in the aftermath of September 11th. The global problems which affect our security, if you look at it in the broader terms, and which now are incorporated in the concept of homeland security, are demanding more and more the capacity to have language skills amongst people in a wide range of professions such that they can conduct the business of that profession with counterparts who do not know English.

What do I have in mind? If you take law enforcement, law enforcement today requires people who can do everything from read financial statements from banking transactions in Arabic to people who know how to work cooperatively with local law enforcement officials who speak Tagalog in the Philippines. We must find a way to permit the people who have the professional skills to conduct these kinds of activities effectively also to have the capacity to speak in the language of the people with whom they have to work. And we simply do not have it adequately today.

And so, my concluding point is that we are at the beginning of a crossroads in this process. We had many people in the 20th century who studied foreign cultures, who studied some language in school, who saw language and its study as a way to understand another culture. We need to reorient our thinking to see language as a tool, not an end in itself; a tool which allows the professional healthcare worker, economic development expert, policeman, whatever that profession we're going to need in the broad sense by which we are learning to define our own security, to conduct his business effectively with the counterparts that he is going to work with, over a coming career, of a globalized world in which and this I guess is where I would conclude unfortunately the vast, vast majority of people will not, despite our best efforts, speak English. And so, we are going to have to learn Chinese, Tagalog, Spanish, and Tajik.

And I think with that I would simply like to now turn to the panel. We have a group of people, each of whom can contribute some specific thought about the need for language in a field, a profession or an area that is important to our national security. In short, they are people who can speak about our readiness and what is needed to have it improved in the way it needs to be through the use of new techniques and new programs to teach language.

I'd like to start with Dr. Robert Slater of the National Security Education Program. I think you'll find biographies of each speaker in your folders.

Bob, thank you.

ROBERT SLATER: Good morning.

The events of September 11th brought renewed national attention to America's lack of language readiness as a threat to our national security. In retrospect, however, the September 11th tragedy revitalized, but perhaps only temporarily, the recognition that our continued ignorance of world cultures and world languages represents a threat, not only to our safety at home, but also to our role as a world leader.

Almost 10 years ago, in December 1992, a major national newspaper reported on the president's signing of the National Security Education Act of 1991 that established the program I now direct. The article stated, "Today the dawning of new, more multicultural world has spawned a similar anxiety within the intelligence community; the fear that America's mostly monolingual society does not have enough people versed in other languages or customs to protect the nation from foreign threats." It's worth stating that since 1991, American armed forces have been stationed in more than 140 nations, including every country in Latin America, all but two of the 15 successor states to the USSR, nearly 40 nations in Africa and throughout South and Southeast Asia. Deficiencies in language as critical national security are also well documented.

Almost exactly one year before the tragic events of 9/11, Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi convened hearings on the state of foreign language capabilities in national security and the federal government. Federal officials from the departments of Defense and State, as well as from the FBI and intelligence community, outlined important shortfalls and their inherent dangers. As pointed out by deputy assistant secretary of Defense, Christopher Mellon, in these hearings, and I quote, "In the changing world environment, the levels of language expertise that were adequate in years past don't cut it today."

We know all too well that the need for language-competent professionals is acute across the broad spectrum of federal agencies involved in national security. This need extends to issues ranging from the safety and effectiveness of U.S. troops around the world to the protection of U.S. borders, counterterrorism, non-proliferation initiatives, as well as the U.S. ability to compete effectively in global markets. Recent surveys and analysis have indicated that more than 80 federal agencies and offices rely increasingly on professionals who include among their skills intermediate to high levels of language competence.

What will be highlighted by the experts joining us today?

First, we must sustain a sense of urgency about the need for national policies and strategies that address the language and national security issue. Already we have seen a decline in the interest in an issue that received almost daily press coverage in the post-September 11th environment.

Second, we must avoid the all-too-familiar short-term attention burst about language shortfalls that quickly follows crises; Desert Shield, Somalia, Bosnia, to name a few.

Third, we must underscore that quick fixes will not work. Serious problems, particularly those that have existed for decades, require serious solutions.

Fourth, we must view language expertise as an applied skill that a professional brings to the job. It's not enough to have a basic familiarity in this skill. We would not accept that in other skills. It takes years to develop functional language expertise.

Fifth, we must recognize that significant federal investments are needed to address dangerous shortfalls in human capital expertise in the national security community, including language capability.

And sixth, we must recognize that the federal government cannot solve this problem alone by educating and reeducating its existing workforce. We must underscore the need for strategic and accountable federal partnerships, with public and private education that produced the types of expertise needed to address national security needs.

Thank you.

AMB. COLLINS: Our next speaker is Ellen Laipson. She represents the National Intelligence Council and is its vice-chair.

Ellen.

ELLEN LAIPSON: Thanks very much, Ambassador.

I'm also delighted to participate in the discussion today of an issue that is so fundamental to the success of our national security policies and to our effective pursuit of our goals in the international system. My perspective is that of the intelligence community, with the 13 agencies that comprise the intelligence capability of the U.S. government and provide critical information, very often translated from foreign languages, to our decision-makers in the national security agencies.

Foreign language is a key ingredient at virtually all points of the intelligence cycle. Collection depends very heavily on foreign language, whether that information is gathered from a human source or gathered from a technical system. Information then has to be processed and exploited, identifying whether it contains intelligence value, verifying its accuracy, and explaining its contents in clear and unambiguous terms. Linguists are needed not only to translate the original text, but also to help interpret its exact meaning and context. The information is then factored into all-source analysis or is transmitted as a raw report to very senior policy officials. Intelligence professionals across a very wide range of job descriptions actually use foreign language either as a primary skill or as a secondary skill.

The intelligence community currently employs a large number of people in the thousands that have appropriate language skills but, as we discover whenever there's a new national security crisis, their quantity, their level of expertise, and their availability simply do not match the fast-changing requirements of the intelligence mission. At times of crisis we find the capacity of the system to surge and to pull people off of other duties in order to use the skills, whether it's language or others, is often limited and constrained by a paucity of language skills or by people having moved on to other assignments and working on other regions of the world.

The intelligence community faces, of course, the added requirement of its strict security procedures. While a news organization or a non-government organization could pick up a native speaker of a language for a short-term assignment, the government more often than not has to carefully vet people with the appropriate language skills to be able to work with classified material. Now, people in the public may perceive that very often what needs to be translated has no security sensitivity to it, and it is certainly true that much translation can occur in a totally public domain, but I am speaking of items that need to be translated that do reside exclusively in the government and have certain sensitivities attached to them.

In the recent crisis, due to a lot of bureaucratic creativity and a lot of support from Congress for new procedures, we have been able to plus-up on South Asian and Middle Eastern languages over the past few months, and hundreds of new hires are in the pipeline. So, people are addressing the immediate requirement. But if we think over the longer term and think more strategically we should, as Bob mentioned, think about integrating foreign language skills more fundamentally into the professional development of all intelligence officers, whether they're deployed overseas or work in Washington headquarters. Language skills should be given appropriate attention at the recruitment phase, in the career development, and in the selection of senior officers.

But as a practical matter, as Ambassador Collins mentioned, most of us work in a primarily English environment. People bring diverse skills to international affairs without necessarily mastering foreign languages, and career development in this town -- in this ambitious and fast-moving town -- does not always leave time or provide proper incentives for people to learn new languages or maintain the languages that they've already mastered.

So my final point is that I don't see any easy solutions to this, but I do think the attention is well deserved, and managers and government throughout the bureaucracy need to pursue multiple paths to solve the problem at once.

Thank you.

AMB. COLLINS: Thank you, Ellen.

Our next speaker is Commander Edward Kane, U.S. Navy. He is at the Washington Liaison Office for the United States-European Command.

Commander.

COMMANDER EDWARD KANE: Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of General Ralston, commander in chief of the U.S.-European Command, I would like to thank Dr. Slater and the National Security Education Program, as well as Dr. Brecht and the National Foreign Language Center, for inviting USEUCOM to this very important briefing today to help highlight the vital role that linguists and language skills play at USEUCOM.

In order to appreciate the complexity of the language environment, it is important to realize that the EUCOM area of responsibility encompasses a vast geographic region covering over 14 million square miles. It includes 91 sovereign nations, stretching from the northern tip of Norway to South Africa, and from the Atlantic seaboard of Europe and Africa to parts of the Middle East and beyond the Black Sea. Within those boundaries, you will find there are 40 official languages, ranging from Russian to Swahili.

The hundreds of very unique tribal languages and dialects of Africa make the complexity of the language requirements even more difficult. Our requirement for linguists is not merely a need for interpreters. It goes much deeper, to the need for trained analysts who understand both what is being said and the context of its meaning. The latter requirement is an essential factor in our attempts to analyze information communicated in foreign languages so that it can effectively aid decision-makers.

USEUCOM uses linguists on daily basis for a variety of tasks, ranging from translating for mobile training teams working with militaries around the theater to analysts translating and analyzing documents recovered from terrorist cells. The ability to rapidly sift through material and communicate a clear and concise picture of its meaning is critical to our engagement, force protection, and counterterrorism operations.

USEUCOM has worked very closely with DOD agencies and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop a plan to meet long-term requirements for linguists. However, the process required to create a larger pool of qualified linguists is not a quick one. Unfortunately, the events of September 11th have placed added demands on the already limited number of qualified linguists, and once again highlighted the immediate need for more linguists.

The requirement is being driven by the new relationships developed with allied and coalition partner militaries, law enforcement, and government agencies. As a result of these changes, we are finding new demands for linguists to facilitate both the relationship and the quick translation analysis of shared information. A recent review of theater linguist requirements identify the need for over 200 additional linguists to support these efforts.

While our NATO allies, and other countries with whom we are developing and expanding relationships, make every effort to conduct operations in English and aid with translation efforts, we cannot expect everyone to speak English, nor would that expectation be politically appropriate or operationally useful. As the adage goes, something is usually lost in the translation. So it is to our benefit to be able to deal with people and information in their native language.

As a result of the war on terrorism, one of the clearest examples of language skill needs is in the area of document exploitation where we have identified the immediate need for over 30 additional linguists in European, Arabic and Asian languages alone. While technology such as computer translation programs can be of great benefit in these operations, it is not enough. Initial screening or triage of the information must be rapid and accurate in order to make proper use of perishable information. That screening requires a combination of analytical, operational, and linguistic expertise that only trained experts can accomplish.

While the full range of languages required is not yet known, certainly some already identified as critical, such as Arabic and Serbo-Croatian, are among those we anticipate will be the highest demand throughout the duration of Enduring Freedom the campaign and beyond.

As we continue to monitor global developments in order to properly posture our forces to protect U.S. interests in the rapidly changing security environment, we anticipate that our need for skilled linguists will not diminish. Because U.S.-European Command is a forward-deployed, forward-based combatant command, and because our AOR spans such wide geographic and cultural boundaries, we find ourselves in constant need of skilled linguists to help promote our engagement efforts, enhance force protection, and sustain our counterterrorism efforts.

As I've mentioned, the ongoing global war on terrorism has significantly reinforced that need. While we recognize that there is no quick fix, we also know that as the long-term solutions unfold, this critical requirement can easily slip from the top of the agenda without constant attention. We believe that the efforts of the National Security Education Program, in conjunction with other organizations like the Defense Language Institute, will both raise the awareness of the problem and help provide some of the solutions. However, in order to create a full and lasting solution, a larger pool of fully trained and prepared linguists will be required, with a sustained commitment of funding and educational resources.

Thank you.

AMB. COLLINS: Thank you, Commander.

John Campbell, deputy assistant secretary of State for Human Resources is from the Department of State and will speak to the State Department's program.

JOHN CAMPBELL: Thank you, Ambassador Collins.

Also here today from the State Department is Catherine Peterson and her language training team from the Foreign Service Institute, and Stephanie van Reigersberg, who is chief of the Interpreting Division.

The State Department devotes substantial resources to the language skills of our employees. We believe that the most significant factor preventing us from meeting our language proficiency needs is our staffing shortfall of over 1,100 people. Without adequate capacity to fill all the positions, and without a training flow to personnel to ensure training without staffing gaps, we will not be able to meet our goals. The secretary is committed to a three-year diplomatic readiness initiative that eventually will meet our staffing and training needs. The first year of this initiative is now underway, and we are exceptionally pleased with the results so far. But it will take time to recruit, examine and train the people we need.

As international affairs professionals, language proficiency is integral to our work. However, because each of our employees is required to do much more than use a foreign language, we do not have a separate workforce plan for languages. We do have, however, a comprehensive approach to meeting our language needs that fits within our unique Foreign Service system. And our system is unique. Each year we assign one-third of our Foreign Service employees, we reevaluate all language-designated positions, and we complete the language training of employees that may have started two years previously.

Given the staffing shortfalls, we believe that we have done remarkably well in filling our language-designated positions. Of those that were filled last year, 83 percent were fully language qualified. An additional 10 percent were filled with those who had some proficiency. That's the good news. The bad news is that because of our staffing shortfalls, a substantial number of overseas positions requiring foreign language capability were never filled at all.

A word about the civil service interpreters and translators. They use foreign languages about 100 percent of the time. Staff members are recruited from among the most experienced language professionals to meet recurring requirements in the major world languages. The need for additional personnel to handle surge requirements in the world languages, and all needs for speakers of more exotic languages, are met through the careful recruitment and testing of individual contractors who are available on an as-needed basis.

Turning back to the Foreign Service, let me comment on recruitment. We hire based on a wide range of skills. We do not believe that the solution to language shortfalls is to hire only to those language deficiencies. Needs vary from year to year, based on international realities and policy priorities. A year ago, we needed Albanian speakers desperately. Now we need Pashtun speakers. Long-term projections are inexact, and hiring to them would not necessarily respond to changing needs. Nevertheless, we actively seek candidates who posses language proficiency in addition to our other required skills. We recruit at universities with strong language programs and at organizations of professional language teachers. Fellowships that emphasize language skills are also an important recruitment source. Candidates who pass the Foreign Service oral examination are more likely to be hired if they already are proficient in a language.

Let me turn to assignments. Employees are selected for positions based on a range of qualifications, including language. Language waivers are given only when we believe that additional time for training would leave an untenable staffing gap, when other qualifications are deemed more critical, and when other candidates are not available.

We instituted a new pay plan in 1999 to create incentives for the use of hard languages. This has resulted in more officers seeking assignments to hard language posts. The School of Language Studies at the Foreign Service Institute offers some 60 foreign languages, all taught by native speakers for up to 88 weeks of full-time study. I have said that language needs are hard to predict. Nevertheless, bureaus within the Department work closely with FSI to anticipate future language needs. For example, we're preparing now to produce more Chinese, Farsi and Arabic speakers.

At the State Department, as it is often said, we just have people. And without a strong cadre of foreign language-proficient people, we will be out of business. The secretary's diplomatic readiness initiative is now starting to give us the additional people we need to fulfill the president's foreign policy. This increase will make possible maintaining and improving the language capabilities of the State Department.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to comment on language issues from the Department's perspective.

AMB. COLLINS: Thank you, John.

Everette Jordan represents the Department of Defense.

So, Everette, would you you're a practitioner, I think, right?

EVERETTE JORDAN: Yes. Thank you, Ambassador.

Good morning. There are several assumptions by the public-at-large that they make when it comes to talk about foreign language. One major assumption is that the world speaks English, so therefore if there's anything that's important that needs to be said, it will be said in English. In national security matters where it involves threats to U.S. citizens at home and abroad, this is seldom the case.

In the case of adversaries, when someone is planning to do bad things to the American people and English is not their first language, they will not be using English. We shouldn't expect to hear phrases like, "The bomb is planted under the bus" (laughter) in clear, concise English. If there is something that an adversary means to keep from us, steps will be taken to only discuss an issue in esoteric terms or euphemisms that an untrained language specialist may easily miss.

Today's language specialist must be prepared to deal with language in any form that it's received, whether it's written, spoken or situational. Today's language specialist has to deal with issues of irony, of cultural and literary allusion. They must be able to read between the lines. They must be able to improvise when language comes at them in such a way that they've not been trained. The language specialist also knows that in situations where someone is talking about us, or if they are in very high-stress situations, they will not be using English.

In friendly and non-threatening situations which include humanitarian and coalition forces, in situations where we are involved in man-on-the-street scenarios, the host countries, or our allies, have more people who are better at English than we are at any of their languages. We therefore rely on someone else's perspective when translating into English. This puts us at a routine disadvantage when it comes to discerning meaning, intentions and threats against U.S. national security.

The sound educational foundation in language and culture is the first steps towards building a capable language professional, but that's not where the education ends. Education is also required for the higher-order thinking skills that the specialist must employ in order to do a competent job. This job also requires a higher order of language abilities that involve complex negotiation, translation, interpretation and conversation. The specialist must be able to grasp nuance and irony. They must be able to do all the types of things that perhaps you didn't learn in school when they find themselves in a given situation.

A beginning-level language specialist with a four-year degree in language will require an additional three-to-five years in order to gain a level of experience in subject matter expertise required to accomplish the tasks that need to be done.

We do this job with highly trained people and with reliable technology. There is an insufficient supply of both.

Thank you.

AMB. COLLINS: Thank you, Everette.

Dr. Ray Clifford is Chancellor of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. Dr. Clifford.

DR. CLIFFORD: Thank you. The question might be asked should the teaching and learning of foreign languages be of national concern. The answer is yes. The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States specifically states that the Union was formed to assure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense. In today's world, defense requires capability in foreign languages. As Everette has pointed out, our enemies do not speak English when they are talking to each other about us.

Now this shortage of foreign language skills in the United States is not a new phenomenon. The problem has been identified many times in the past, but interest has always waned before systemic improvements could be implemented. I'd like to give a short history of the last century of foreign language teaching in the United States.

Almost 100 years ago, World War I created a distrust of things foreign, including foreign languages. In 1923, the Supreme Court actually had to overturn laws in 22 states that restricted the teaching of foreign languages. 1940. The National Report on what the high schools ought to teach, found that the high schools' overly "academic" curriculum was causing too many student failures. Foreign language instruction was among the subjects recommended for elimination. Foreign languages were not only difficult, they took so much time that new courses could not be added. 1954. The National Interest in Foreign Languages reported that only 14.2 percent of high school students were enrolled in foreign languages, and most U.S. public high schools, 56 percent, offered no foreign language instruction at all.

1958. In response to Sputnik, the National Defense Education Act was passed to prepare more and better foreign language teachers. Immediate improvements were evident, then funding waned and progress ceased. 1975. The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement conducted a study looking at foreign language teaching in eight nations. The study found that "the primary factor in the attainment of proficiency in any foreign language is the amount of instructional time provided." It is also interesting to note that in the United States the researchers could not conduct the study as planned because they could not find enough 12th graders who had studied even four years of French.

1979. The President's Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies reported, "Americans' incompetence in foreign languages is nothing short of scandalous, and it is becoming worse." 1983. The Commission on Excellence and Education heard testimony that in the United States foreign language instruction had yet to attain mediocrity. 1999. A senior DOD official summarized the situation with the statement, "Perhaps the greatest challenge we face is the general apathy toward learning foreign languages."

The recommendations that we could make today are the same that have been made in each of these other reports. The changes required for systemic long-range improvements are still the same, the requirements are still the same. The following three recommendations, for instance, are drawn from the 1961 edition of the third edition of The National Interest in Foreign Languages.

First, implement eight and ten year sequences of foreign language study in the public schools. Second, require demonstrated proficiency, not high school units in a foreign language, for entrance to college, and demonstrated proficiency in a second foreign language, often non-Western, for graduation. There's your recommendation. It is now possible to actually implement that because of work done by ACTFL in the assessment of foreign language proficiency. Third recommendation, from that report, establish a federally-funded National Language Foundation parallel to the National Science Foundation.

Now there are also short-range, lower cost initiatives that could be implemented right now. For instance, we could build on the few pockets of excellence in academia by giving additional funding to improve programs at flagship universities where they are producing graduates with language capabilities. Second, increase the number of armed services personnel authorized to attend not just basic programs, but intermediate, advanced and specialized programs at the Defense Language Institute. Third, authorize NSEP participants to attend DLI intensive language programs to attain significant levels of language competence in less-commonly taught languages in relatively short periods of time.

Fourth, provide ROTC scholarships to language majors and to those with demonstrated proficiency in foreign languages. Fifth, authorize the option of proficiency-based, rather than literature-based, language majors at the service academies. Sixth, exempt regionally-accredited language schools, such as the Defense Language Institute and the academies from future BRAC initiatives, so they can focus on improvement of their language programs. Seventh, fund recurring iterations of the 2003 Foreign Language National Assessment of Educational Progress to maintain visibility of the language problem and measure our progress in solving it.

Thank you very much.

AMB. COLLINS: Thank you, Dr. Clifford.

Our next two speakers will take, in turn, the role of kindergarten-12, and then the role of higher education. Dr. David Edwards, the executive director of the Joint National Committee for Languages will talk about K-12.

DAVID EDWARDS: Thank you, Ambassador Collins.

That the knowledge of other nations, other languages and other cultures is essential to our national security seems relatively evident after the events of September 11th. How we acquire and sustain that knowledge is not nearly so readily evident. I've been asked to talk about the nation's elementary and secondary schools' ability to provide language competence and language resources.

Regarding our nation's schools, the languages that they offer, and the nation's security, there are really two overwhelming issues that need to be addressed, and both of them suggest that we have to radically change the way we approach education in the United States.

First, to build the kind of expertise the government needs in intelligence and defense and economics, we have to recognize that language learning is long-term, serious and difficult. As most of the other nations of the world already know, we have to begin the process in the elementary schools and continue it the whole way through graduate school if we're to do it well.

My second point is an even more interesting one. We have to change our approach to educating the group that is probably our greatest resource in this area heritage language speakers. American education treats the knowledge of a language other than English, as a problem, an obstacle to be overcome, rather than as a resource that we can build on. The attitude is almost learn English, lose your native language, and then when you go to college you can study a study a foreign language.

There are some exceptionally good reasons to begin language education in the elementary schools, such as ease of acquisition, enhanced cognitive development, and transferability of reading and writing skills. But I really don't have time to talk about them here. What is important here came out of the hearings that Bob mentioned in October 2000, before Senator Cochran's subcommittee. Policymakers, the people who make our foreign policy and are responsible for our national security, all agreed unanimously before that committee that we have to begin the process of learning languages early. It's the only way we can build the pipeline that the nation needs.

When we in education say this, it's self-interest. When the nation's policymakers say it, it's in the public interest.

The second day of Senator Cochran's hearings focused on solutions to the government's language needs and one of the witnesses was Bob Slater from the National Security Education Program. One of the things NSEP was created to address specifically was the nation's language needs and how to develop the expertise the nation needs. But to do it adequately, NSEP would probably require a trust fund 10 or 20 times bigger than the one it already has. And even here, NSEP requires that individuals and institutions come into the program already possessing basic and essential skill levels, in order to build on those skill levels.

Also in that sub-committee hearing the education community testified, including the study abroad community. And what was said was essentially that American education can meet the government's needs if you'd give us the time, the resources and the teachers.

And that would be my final point. Foreign language and ESL teacher shortages are among the worst in the nation. And without the teachers, we can't provide the education. We cannot address the government's language needs without addressing the nation's language needs. And that requires addressing language's educational needs. Language study has to become a basic part of the education curriculum, beginning in elementary school and continuing through the entire education process. And it has to use the resources we have in place, including the large number of heritage language speakers now in our schools.

Thank you.

AMB. COLLINS: Dr. Gilbert Merkx is Vice Provost for International Affairs at Duke University.

Dr. Merkx.

GILBERT MERKX: I'd like to make five points. The first four of them, I think, will sound a little bit optimistic, and the fifth point will discuss the challenges or the weaknesses in the system that we face.

The first point I'd like to make is that the system of foreign language and area studies that exists in the United States is unique among other nations. It's unique because almost every other nation, the French or Russian model, of concentrating this expertise in national academies or government agencies is found. In the U.S., the system is distributed between higher education and government agencies. So we have a functional partnership that has emerged which is really quite remarkable. There are more than 30,000 language and area specialists in American universities, and the higher education system of this country is an integral part of the national security system because of that.

Essentially what our system provides is a broad base of language training at the university level, augmented by other experiences such as study abroad and the presence of foreign students, which helps internationalize the campus. It trains I'll discuss in a second some of the more specific functions -- it trains schoolteachers, it provides knowledge. But essentially, the higher education system provides a broad base, and then the government provides specialized applications of knowledge and of language skills to deal with specific national security problems.

That relationship is analogous in many ways, the relationship that exists between higher education and the defense community, with respect to science and engineering. Universities provide the broad base of science and engineering research, basic research, and the Defense Department is interested in practical applications of this for security reasons. What is unique about the U.S. is that this relationship developed also in the foreign language and area studies field, where in most other countries that relationship has been limited only to the basic sciences.

Now the history of this unique system has been alluded to. It's a history, someone said, of boom and bust. But I'd like to just refer to some of the high points in this history, because I think they point the way for us the future.

We were left World War II really presented the most effective model of this cooperation in academia and government, particularly in the operations of the OSS, which involved recruitment of large numbers of anthropologists and social scientists and linguists from campuses who really developed for the first time an effective intelligence system in the U.S. that became the forerunner of the CIA and the DIA. After World War II, however, much of the cooperative relationship was simply abandoned, and what remained was what existed in the specialized agencies of government. One major accomplishment we had from World War II was Fulbrights, which were essentially a way to recycle lend-lease loans and soft currencies, and that became a major window between the U.S. and the rest of the world that was academic in nature.

The second major crisis after World War II was of course Sputnik, which led to the National Defense Education Act. I will always credit Elliot Richardson for playing such a key role in getting that through and helping to design it. That has been enormously effective and has set a model, which I'll come back to.

Then we had later we had the Higher Education Act, which in some ways improved or changed in DEA. And then we had, in the Bush administration, the creation of the National Security Education Program, which was another major step forward in rebuilding or strengthening the relationship between higher education and government.

Let me just mention, specifically, four components of the higher education (audio break, tape change) -- at the K12 level, but through study abroad and through exposure to international issues in colleges, we do recruit students and get them interested, and are able to train them in languages and area studies. Many of those, in fact, most of the people, I would be I'm fairly certain most of the people in government agencies that deal with foreign language and security issues came out are in those fields because of their university experiences.

Secondly, we train the teachers who work in K12 education, and therefore the higher education system is essential as we move to do something about the perilous state of language education in the K12 system.

Third, we directly train many of the specialists who produce the knowledge. I'm not talking here about general education recruitment and pipeline, but I'm talking about training people who really do speak Uzbek or Tagalog or Aymara and do basic research. And finally we produce a vast body of broad knowledge that provides a context for foreign language and for intelligence. One of the best things about the American system is that we know that foreign language learning is best achieved if it's contextualized in culture and area and geography. And that is the way the American model works.

Now the challenges, the bad new pieces. First of all, we are about to lose my generation of foreign language and area scholars, which is the largest one, which is the Kennedy-Johnson generation, which was recruited and trained when NSEP was well-funded I mean, and NDEA was well-funded. And has been mentioned, there was a collapse in the Nixon period which extended pretty much through until the 1990s in funding for this partnership between government and higher education.

Secondly, the edifice that does exist, which is pretty impressive but nonetheless fragile, cannot be counted on to stay. It will only be there so long as there is some encouragement on the part of the federal government. If you think Washington politics are bad you should be spend some time in a university, especially around budget time, and see how people fight over positions and money. I can assure you that many of the best language programs, particularly for less-commonly taught languages, will disappear at American universities if they are not sustained by an appreciation of the fact they're important to the federal government, and that very small amounts of money come in from outside to encourage those university investments.

Finally, on a slightly more optimistic note, it seems to me that we once again, because of these events of the last year, have a chance to rethink and re-look at the broad partnership between government and higher education in terms of meeting our nation's security needs. I think much more can be done on both sides. I think that we have finally passed we've left behind the events of the ill-feeling that was created by the Vietnam War period, when there was such huge distrust between government and academia, which led to, partly led to the disinvestment in NDEA.

We have an opportunity to look for mechanisms such as NSEP and the Higher Education Act, ways in which we can infuse resources, begin this long-term period of rebuilding. The opportunities are there because the model we have in place is excellent. It just really needs attention and care. I would add, among other things, to the list of specific DOD initiatives, I think that the foreign area officer program, which is a partnership with higher education, should be vastly expanded, for example.

And I'll stop there.

AMB. COLLINS: Thank you, Dr. Merkx.

Richard Brecht will conclude with some remarks. He's the Director of the National Foreign Language Center. But I'm going to ask one minute of indulgence to make one point.

AMB. COLLINS: As I went down the list of participants this morning, one thing strikes me that perhaps is old thinking. And that is that the national security community that's defined here is fundamentally associated with abroad, that is, beyond the shores, overseas, the things that happen outside the United States.

I happen to believe that what September 11th did was to put us squarely in the rest of the world and eliminate those oceans. And I would submit that it's very important to underscore, again and again in the thinking of people that this is all about the security of the United States. And the threats to the United States no longer come only in the form of traditional combat or the kinds of issues that our intelligence community, armed forces and security structures traditionally dealt with over there.

What is going on today, as I tried to mention at the beginning, is that globalization is a two-way street. We hear a lot about globalization as that of an American imperial imposition of all of our values and language and McDonald's and everything overseas. The fact of the matter is that the pipeline works just as well the other way, as we are seeing and as we have seen. And it does not always contain only benign and beneficial results. What this means, in a sense today, is that Governor Ridge and the kind of issues that he is dealing with are going to demand an exponential growth in the capacity of professionals who deal with the safety and health and security of the American people, who can work on issues and problems and professions in this country employing foreign languages.

And so I simply give you, one of my own I'll conclude with this experiences.

I was in the middle of the Bank of New York scandal, in the many ways, as ambassador to Russia. What we found out was that you have entire drawers full of Russian computer documents, of bank transfers and all of this kind of thing, and you have very, very few people who are capable of dealing with that kind of material, effectively, in the attorney general's office in the state of New York. Now that's a problem that's going to grow, and we have seen it, I think, perhaps, in the saddest and most dramatic form in what happened in New York on September 11th. But I can assure you that it is going to be increasingly the case that these global issues are going to be American issues, and they are going to come in the form often spoken in another language.

So, with that, Richard, I leave the floor to you.

MR. BRECHT: Thank you very much. I will speak briefly.

To the extent that language is a vital factor in national security, it is a federal responsibility. Accordingly, the federal government must insure that its offices and agencies have sufficient linguistic expertise. Traditionally, it has discharged this responsibility through a two-pronged approach. First, by establishing its own language training education facilities and, second, by implementing a series of legislative acts supporting students, scholars and programs in our schools, colleges and universities.

Nevertheless, September 11th has made clear, once again, that the U.S. government's language capabilities remain grossly inadequate. The terrorist threat, like the other political, social and economic aspects of national security in the 21st century, involves most regions of the world with cultures and languages that few Americans recognize, let alone study.

As a result, we need more linguists in more languages at higher levels of proficiency than ever before. To insure a federal language capability that meets these requirements will take a long-term commitment and a comprehensive and focused strategy directed at language in the federal work force concerned with national security. This new strategy must mandate, in our view, the following. That actual federal language requirements be rigorously determined and regularly reported. That government language schools expand their programs to instruct more linguists in more languages at higher proficiencies. That these government language schools recruit from the education system and the U.S. heritage communities linguistically competent professionals with existing skills that can be enhanced and specialized to meet required federal tasks.

That technology be developed and integrated to play a stronger role maintaining and strengthening language skills of practitioners in the field. That students with language skills from successful elementary and secondary school programs and the heritage communities be identified and provided incentives to continue their language study and then to apply for federal employment. That a network of selective schools, colleges and universities be assembled that accepts the responsibility of educating and graduating students with certification at high level proficiency in the languages required by the federal government. That colleges and universities maintain and expand their graduate education and research capacity to support the teaching and learning of a broader range of languages -- of low demand languages, including the languages of the current crisis.

And, finally, that American citizens with language competence be recruited into a national language reserve and made available to federal agencies through an online federal skills registry.
Implementing this new strategy will take a long-term commitment and significant resources on the part of the federal government, as well as rigorous planning and coordination between the government and education sectors.

NFLC, the nation's primary resource dedicated to language policy and planning stands ready to move that strategy forward.

Thank you very much. What I will do now is open the floor. I ask you please, because this meeting is being transcribed, to identify yourself and your organization, before you state your question.

You may direct your questions at anyone at the panel. Please.

Q: Lane Aldrich from the Army Foreign Language Proponency Office.

I have a general indictment for everybody on the panel I think. You seem to have willfully ignored the role of the military, the military linguist and the output of the Defense Language Institute in supplying linguists for the United States. There's a lot of us out there.

MR. BRECHT: Ah, language is a wonderful thing. What people say is not always what people hear, and to the extent that you have not heard or we have not said -- your point is well taken -- there are a lot.

Would anyone on the panel like to comment further?

MR. JORDAN: I would say, Lane, that in my remarks I talked about peacekeeping and coalition forces. This is the military; these are our people there. The relative skill levels of the people coming right out of the Defense Language Institute often is not high enough to get right into things, and that's where the experience comes in and just time on task. I do not believe that we ignored the military by not stating the U.S. military, but we did describe the activities of the person in a military setting.

Q: I have a question and a comment following up. Michael Lemmon, Dean of the School of Language Studies at the Foreign Service Institute.

I wanted to build on Ambassador Collins' key point that what we're talking about is national defense in the holistic sense within homeland defense, as well as addressing challenges abroad. And how do you get what you all are discussing here today raised to the political level where it can be addressed and sustained? And one suggestion I would have is that you follow what Jim suggested. You bring in the homeland security net of agencies and players, both within the administration and on the Hill.

Secondly, that you bring in the folks who are key in terms of following up on all the wonderful suggestions that all of you have raised, particularly, by the way, Dave Edwards' point on K through 12 training, and that is, within the administration, the OMB ought to be an integral part of this.

Secondly, on the Hill, you got the appropriators involved in this. It's not just getting the folks who are looking at the issue in terms of all of its brilliance and need, but then convincing those who have to make the tough funding decisions, both within constructing budget and the executive branch and then getting that budget approved on the Hill. Those are your stakeholders and they've got to be rallied by what Jim noted in terms of language capabilities being fundamental and integral to homeland defense and the national security more broadly.

Thank you.

MR. BRECHT: Gil, would you like to comment?

MR. MERKX: We do, in effect, have a number of advocates in Congress who have really played an important role in protecting legislation. Representative David Obey in the House has been a key supporter of foreign language and area studies training. He's been supported by Chairman Regula. On the Senate side, Pete Domenici has been a long-time supporter, and Senators Specter and Harkin have been very supportive of this kind of legislation. Senator Cochran, Senator Bingaman from New Mexico. There are other senators. But the reality is that -- and we've tried to work closely with these friendly congressmen, congress people, and universities can be more active in lobbying. Obviously, if you're in a federal agency, you can't work the Hill the way we can work the Hill.

But nonetheless, it's still a constant struggle because of the orientation of Congress over decades has been primarily domestic and not oriented towards national security, except in terms of military appropriations. And so I think there's much more to be done. I think your point is very well taken. All I can say is that we are trying. And Dave has been trying for a long time.

MR. BRECHT: David Edwards.

MR. EDWARDS: I think part of what we're seeing here, and I certainly hate to talk about September 11th as an opportunity, but to a degree it is sort of what happened with Sputnik. It is underlying the nation's needs here. But I would remind everyone, Sputnik didn't go up and we automatically poured money into math, science and foreign languages. Sputnik went up and the MLA lobbied hard. Elliot Richardson stepped into the breach. A number of leaders stepped up to say if we're going to do well in the space race, we have to have the skills. I think we have to have the leadership stand up now and find that leadership, or convince that leadership that they need to stand up and say this is the time for us to make these adjustments. I think it's time for another National Defense Education Act, frankly. I think that's the only way we're going to address education's needs, and we've got to start, as I said, at the basic levels.

MR. BRECHT: Yes.

Q: Hi. John Young with InsideDefense.com.

I had a question sort of since this is a language and national security. A lot of people who actually have studied languages, usually that means that they have spent time in those countries. And this is more for Ms. Laipson than anybody else, I guess. How hard -- has there been any changes made in the way you go about doing your background checks of those folks, because from what I've been understanding from some of the folks I've talked to in the intelligence community is that they are saying languages really it's good to have, but it's really not something that's used for advancement, number one. Number two, if you have a language capability that usually means you spend time in that country, which means, for a security background checkers' perspective, you may have had contact with people that may or may not be friendly to the United States. And that may have been totally innocent contact or not, that may still affect one's chances of getting into the intelligence community.

And how hard is that now, as you're going through -- as you're getting -- obviously, you're getting more people through the pipeline. What percentage of those people are being kept in, and what percentage are being sort of weeded out?

MS. LAIPSON: I think that's a legitimate issue in the sense that the security procedures sometimes appear to be undermining the goal of getting people into the system that have the right skills. But I think on both scores, I would differ a little bit with how you have characterized the situation.

In terms of new hires that I'm aware of in most of the big agencies over the past, say, two years, foreign language skills have been given a lot of emphasis. So sometimes it is reported to us what percentage of new hires are coming in with foreign language skills, and the numbers are pretty respectable at the kind of 40 percent level.

Now, there are, of course, many jobs that do not require foreign language as the primary skill. So I think there is being given a fair amount of emphasis in terms of new hires. And, secondly, it is true that in the past if you had spent a lot of time overseas and you were overseas in a kind of very unstructured or undocumented way, it is a kind of security background investigator's nightmare of how do I know what this person was doing when they were wandering in secondary cities of Russia for two years, or something. And that is a legitimate problem. But my impression is that a lot of effort has been made to get over that. And we are, on a regular basis, giving security clearances to people who, you know, have been to China 20 times, been to Russia 20 times, and have never had a clearance before. So it can be done.

It does require a lot of effort on the part of the applicant to provide the necessary information. And then, of course, there are other means of whether it's requiring a polygraph or requiring other kinds of inputs to your background investigation to mitigate for the time that if a candidate may have been overseas that they can't document, they don't know the names of all the people they talked to, et cetera. But a lot of work has been done to try to make the system more efficient. There is a certain percentage of people that simply won't make it through the process, but many people can make it through.

MR. BRECHT: Yes, Carolyn.

Q: Carolyn Brown, Library of Congress.

My question has to do with trolling for allies. And I'm wondering in this age of globalization in business, if there's been a systematic attempt to identify those people in the business world -- there may not be a lot of them -- but those people in the business world who understand the issue because they've had to draw on language skills in order to do their business?

BRECHT: David?

MR. EDWARDS: That issue has come up a number of times and surprisingly, there's a lot of support out there in the part of the business community and there are a lot of CEOs in particular who will speak to the needs for international skills. What surprises me is that it doesn't translate politically. I was absolutely convinced in the late '80s and the '90s that Toyota was to be the Sputnik of the '80s, if you will. It never materialized. Politically, the reaction has been if business wants it, business can pay for it. And so I don't know if it's a horse to ride. It certainly is one we need to know is there.

MR. BRECHT: Yes, Glenn?

Q: Glenn Nordin of OSD. I appreciate your remarks today about language is a tool in the total professional tool kit. That leads to the statement that there are two types of professionals. There is the professional language specialist, the interpreter/translator, who devotes their lives and their careers to those activities. And then there is the other, the diplomat, the businessman, who uses English in daily work. Neither one are professionalized in the United States today and there are no and diminishing requirements, or there are little, few and diminishing requirements for admission or for graduation requirements demanding those skills with a proficiency demonstration. Is it legislation that is needed? Is it organization that is needed, because we have now heard this, and the litany of the history, as presented by Dr. Clifford, shows us we've been at this a long time and we still haven't figured it out.

I need input from the panel as to that one.

Thank you.

MR. BRECHT: John.

MR. CAMPBELL: Well, the State Department's response to exactly that problem is to assume responsibility for providing the language training itself so that there is no language requirement for entry into the Foreign Service. There is a language requirement for tenuring, and there is a language requirement for a great many assignments. The only way we're able to meet that need is to do the training ourselves.

MR. SLATER: Which is, just to follow up on that, essentially a full-circle response to your comment, Glenn, that the system is in default, which is why we're here. The attitude on the part of the federal government since I've been involved in this issue is basically one of assuming that it has to do the job itself because there is nobody available. It becomes a vicious self-fulfilling prophecy. And until we break that cycle, we continue to be in the same mess we're in today, that federal training institutions have to make that assumption. They're not at fault; they're dealing with basically a system that's in default. Have to make the assumption there aren't enough language-trained professionals available in the market, so they have to train their own people. So what inevitably you have is a system that perpetuates itself instead of looking at longer term, more strategic solutions to the problem.

MR. BRECHT: And Glenn, let me add, you asked what do we need. We've talked about it. One of the things we certainly do need is leadership. That's number one. We do need a strategy and a policy, and probably we need legislation. But the point of leadership and a policy is vital, and that policy and leadership is not going to come from the education sector. It's not going to come from the federal sector and the DLI, Lane, and so on, with all their wonderful programs. It has to come from us all. It has to be an integrated solution which uses the language education system to support the federal efforts.

In the long-term, the federal government should not be responsible and have to start from scratch to add language to the professional capabilities of its employees. It is only appropriate that the education system provide a base on which they can add the specialized language capabilities and maybe the higher level proficiencies that are required. But to the extent we're asking the federal agencies, however fine they are, and the Defense Language Institute and the Foreign Service Institute, however fine those programs are, it is impossible in the period of time you have for an enlistment or for a career to start from scratch and to produce the high level capabilities, proficiencies that we need. That's why it's a partnership, and that partnership, though, requires that academe be responsible.

In order for academe to be responsible, which they must be, we believe, and Gil has made the point, we need the federal agencies concerned with national security, particularly now, to lead. We need leadership so that the people on the campuses and in the schools and on the school boards can say, look, this is our responsibility. It's not something that's nice to do.

Q: Hi. Sandra Lawford with the Academy for Educational Development.

And in our role as administrator of the Graduate Fellowship Programs of NSEP, one of the problems that we grapple with constantly is the universe of applicants that we're able to attract into the program and the dearth of applicants who come from minority communities, people of color who are not building their skill levels at the K through 12 level, don't have it at some of the historically black and other institutions that serve minority people. I'm wondering if there is any thinking from the panel on some long-term strategies for making sure that the issue of language and national security is shared by the entire American public?

MR. EDWARDS: I wish there were an easy answer to that. I really do. I think what could happen, an optimistic view of the current environment politically in this country right now, is that we may see some things like the Homeland Security Education Act, which has just been introduced by

Senators Akaka, Durbin and Thompson -- again, a bipartisan bill -- may begin to address some of these problems.

One of the things I fear has happened in terms of addressing education, particularly with reauthorization of elementary and secondary, is again policy-makers are seeing it as a university problem and will put the money into the university programs and forget all about the pipeline, because the foreign language assistance program, which was a little elementary program, almost got eliminated and almost didn't get funded. So we've got to do again, I think we can get leadership, but we've got to do some education.

MR. BRECHT: Everette.

MR. JORDAN: I'd also like to add that on several occasions I've gone on recruiting trips to some of the historically black colleges and universities to talk to them about foreign language abilities. And it is sometimes with strange looks that I get responses for someone wanting to take a language. By and large, the languages that are taught at those universities are Latin, Spanish, French, and perhaps a smattering of German, and in the needs of your federal organizations now, we're looking for the less commonly taught languages, not so much the Spanish, the French and the German. It is difficult to get those programs to fund real esoteric language -- esoteric languages over an extended period of time, because it seems like such a -- you could say a foreign issue. And it's enough that I've been told that we're doing Spanish and French and German, what do you want?

And so after I told them that what we want is Hebrew, Arabic and Pashtu (laughter), you know, it doesn't find good purchase yet. So we will continue. We start today and we move out again to readdress those universities that do give language and to show that it is possible for people of color to work in the language field and to succeed. To have a job as a language person and still eat is what I like to tell them.

MR. BRECHT: John.

MR. CAMPBELL: There're also small things that can be done. FSI, as part of its general outreach, approaches historically black colleges and universities, high school districts that are predominately minority, invites language teachers, language students to FSI to see what you can do in terms of the application of technology to language learning. Students, high school students, particularly, often get very, very excited about it. Now, this is not grand and glorious. But over time as we do more and more of this, it will have some impact.

MR. BRECHT: Please.

Q: I'm Stephanie Van Reigersberg from the State Department. I run the office that hires and sends the interpreters to work with our nation's leaders. And I was struck by many things in this morning's presentations, but I want to make a couple of comments. One has to do with what I think has got to be the emphasis given to heritage language people. I don't think from what I've observed in the last 30 years of recruiting linguists that most students who do not major in a foreign language are ever really going to acquire language as a tool and they're certainly not going to qualify to work where language is the main tool of the job, such as being an interpreter or a translator. I think that as I look back on the last 30 years of testing interpreter candidates, it's very clear to me that the attempt made in our private and public schools to annihilate any knowledge of the language spoken at home has been very successful, and I think we've got to overcome that.

I've tested people who speak with their grandparents in any number of the kinds of languages that we need, but who don't have the faintest idea how to discuss any subject that you would read about in The Washington Post. I remember very clearly after what we fondly called the Polish interpreter incident in our office (laughter), Mr. Brzezinski sent a very nasty memo ordering us to go to Chicago and find what he supposed to be at least several thousand competent Polish interpreters instead of this dreadful person that I had decided to send. And, of course, we jumped to since he was the head of the NSC at the time, and we found exactly zero Polish interpreters after some months, if not a couple of years of attempt.

My other comment has to do with money. I think that absent from the discussion today was an underlying problem that I have seen, and that is that language knowledge is not rewarded financially at all. People do not earn an appreciable additional amount of money for their knowledge of foreign languages. I have fought to get GS-15s for my highly competent diplomatic interpreters, and they still are earning very much less money than the equivalent people at the World Bank and the UN, et cetera. So that's a struggle. How do you convince people who can do a lot of other things, who can go and work in international banking environment to work for the government if the government wants them to be GS-9s, 11s and 12s. So I think that is another thing that we have to take on.

Thanks.

MR. BRECHT: Thank you. David?

MR. EDWARDS: Underscore your last comment and I know -- I've talked to a number of people in this room who are recruiting at the education conferences. The bottom of that money food chain are teachers, and that's who we need most. And what's happening right now is you all need teachers and you're raiding academe, and then business is coming and raiding you all. So we've got a cycle going where the beginning point is really getting hurt.

MR. BRECHT: I apologize, but I'm going to close the meeting. I would like people in the room to note one thing. Look around. We haven't introduced people. To have senior members of the military here, you have no idea how important that is, and Commander Kane. It is a vital thing. When I spoke of leadership, it is vital that the leaders and the policy leaders in the military, in intelligence and education focus the attention of the public

General Smolen.

GENERAL ROBERT SMOLEN: If I would have one comment to offer, I think that we in the military share many of the same concerns that were expressed here.

Perhaps the one thing we're missing that I believe you addressed is the issue of who is in charge of taking the overall lead? Many of us have a lot of very specific parochial interests and in order to really make progress we all need to know who is in charge; who can be held accountable. If someone does not have the express responsibility for progress, we will continue to work this problem for a long time with a lot of very well meaning people. We will probably not receive the results that we all hope for unless we all agree that someone or some agency needs to be the leader and we agree to act in support of a measurable goal with metrics that tell us how we're doing. I know that's a difficult thing, and sometimes we struggle with it in the military as well. We need a strategic plan. We know that we need to do better in working how we manage careers of people who have language talents, and we're trying to do that a little bit better. They have largely been centered in the intelligence community. And I think we've come to realize in the many and varied missions that we're now called upon to do that the language capability and the cultural awareness that goes with that is vital to our success. And as we interface with more and more nations than we have in the past, we have to be able to understand the language, the nuance, and the culture in order to make the American presence not be perceived as arrogance.

So the challenge I think is how do we anoint someone as our czar in charge of fixing this? What metric do we want to strive for? And then perhaps as importantly, what resources, cooperation and time are each of us willing to have to give to that person so that they can actually make some progress?

Thank you for inviting us to be a part of today's discussion and we look forward to being a part of the team to work this important issue.

MR. BRECHT: That's not the last time we've heard from that gentleman. Thank you very much. I will close the meeting. I wanted you to see that, and I could point to some other people in this room who I won't point to in these communities who are very, very important to the results that we're hoping to get. It is very clear. In 1957, we were frightened to death by a force of technology and idealism that frightened us into the National Defense Education Act.

Now, as David said, in 2001, what's the result that we're going to see in 2002 with regard to 1957 and 1958? What is the answer? And I'm looking at a young -- you also missed this second row. The first row remains empty, a lot of former students. The second row is filled with young and devoted people who are staff to members on the Hill. We welcome them. I know they've listened very carefully. They haven't asked any questions. I'm sure that doesn't mean they know everything, but I know it means they're absorbing all this information, and their help is vital.

I wanted you to understand who's in this room better than you did before we leave. I want us to understand that it is '57, '58 and 2001 and 2002.

And I'll leave with one final point. We need a focus. We do need the leadership, and we need a focus and in my view -- and I'll speak for me -- the focus is language, national security and the federal workforce. That's the leadership point that will draw the rest of the country into the language issue.

I thank the panelists, and particularly Jim Collins, our chairman. Thank you very much, all of you, for coming and if you would like to address questions to the panel, I'm sure they'll stick around for a few minutes to answer your questions.

(Applause and End of Event.)

(END OF EVENT)