At last! Signs of intelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency.

A recent article explained that the CIA was ramping up efforts to enroll more foreign language speakers to increase the 13% of all employees who speak a foreign language today.”

CIA Director Leon Panetta said after his confirmation earlier this year that expanding foreign language proficiency among new and existing staff is a top priority. “I’d like to … get to a point where every analyst and operations officer is trained in a foreign language,” he said. “Foreign languages are extremely important … to understanding that part of the world that we have to gather intelligence from.” usatoday

This article goes on to say that, today, more than 7 out of 10 members of our covert operatives speak ONLY English.  On the backup analyst teams, more than 8 out of 10 speak ONLY English.  How dumb can we get?

Previously I wrote about the $48 Billion our budget allocates for “intelligence gathering” and recommended that it would be far simpler and cheaper to just ask.  Of course, we cannot do that if we cannot communicate.  I find it very hard to understand how we’ve had administration after administration with a level of arrogant, shameful, self-centeredness, that thought we could gather any level of quality intelligence without speaking other languages and understanding other cultures. Our failure to have 100% of frontline intelligence gathering employees speak the language and understand the culture of the country about which we seek ‘intelligence’ is inexcusably stupid and ineffective.

I’m grateful and would like to believe that we may have turned a corner with some common sense adults in positions of leadership.

…then I read today in the Nation (subscription required), that 60% of President Obama’s ambassadorial appointments are payoffs to big contributors…Our new ambassador to Japan does not speak Japanese, and is representative of the appointments.

My high hopes, dashed.  How hard would it be to say thank you to big contributors with a nice autographed picture, and then appoint someone who is familiar with the culture, speaks the language and has professional training as a negotiator /mediator/ facilitator appointed to the positions of Ambassor.  Doesn’t that sound like the grown up thing to do?