FBI HIRING: Suman Palit shares a personal experience.

Reader Patrick Hoffman adds:

Read the post about the FBI and its language woes, and the response regarding using DLI as a source of linguists.

Having attended DLI and having learned Persian/Farsi for the Army, I can tell you that the number of persian linguists that DLI educated was small but not insubstantial.

Equally interesting, however, is the fact that given all the government knows about me and my service record, that I doubt any serious attempts to reach me have been made. (Not that I think I’d be much help, since my skills have degraded through lack of practice, and I have a job that pays more than they’re likely to pay.)

Just a thought, but the FBI seems to be rather passive in this regard. Or perhaps just passive/aggressive.

Reader Stan Brown, meanwhile, suggests that the FBI should have a reserve system analogous to the military’s, with retired law enforcement officers, lawyers, etc., that it can call on either for specialized skills (e.g., languages) or to fill chairs doing routine tasks like background checks in an emergency so that ordinary agents can take language lessons, etc.