Thanks to my friend Mike for bringing this piece to my attention. It's old news that we did not (and still do not) have enough translators to keep up with the volume of arabic material coming into our intelligence services. But it was new to me that a personal animosity between a Senator and the former head of the CIA might have been partly responsible.

This story from FrontPageMag in September, 2003 is an eye-opener:

No Hablo Arabic: Clinton's Failure on CIA Translators
By Richard Miniter (FrontPageMag.com via Washington Times, September 4, 2003)
http://frontpagemag.org/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9672