More than 123,000 hours of FBI audio intercepts that could provide information about terrorist acts have yet to be translated, according to a recently released report.
The report summarizes a classified federal audit of the FBI completed in July for the Justice Department.
One of the problems the audit identified was limited computer storage capacity. The audit revealed that because of this, some recorded audio is being deleted before it can be translated and analyzed.
Another problem for the FBI, says Director Robert Mueller, is finding qualified candidates who can pass security checks to work in intelligence.
The FBI is currently recruiting linguists for Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, and Pashto to help with the backlog. Also, funding for FBI language services has increased by $48.5 million in the three years since the September 11 attacks.