02 February 2010

Language Skills Rare In CIA

Just 13% of CIA employees speak even one foreign language. In many foreign intelligence agencies, a majority of agents speak two or more foreign languages. The CIA is often forced to borrow foreign language speakers from the Department of Defense's special forces units who often can speak multiple foreign languages.

This is one more reason that the CIA as an institution doesn't deserve to continue to exit. Most of the CIA's employees could be transferred to the Department of Defense or the Department of State as part of the normal bureacratic structure of those agencies, and the small portion of the CIA's operations that would not fit well in either agency could be made a part of a smaller, more focused intelligence agency rebuilt from scratch without the dubious institutional legacy of the CIA.

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