By David Morgan WASHINGTON, May 11 (Reuters) - The U.S. government, in dire need of intelligence agents skilled in the languages and cultures of the Muslim world, is struggling to recruit from American ethnic communities grown wary of its policies. Relations with many minority communities, first soured by a post-Sept. 11 crackdown on Muslim immigrants, have been further strained by uproars over the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. interrogation practices and President George W. Bush's now-suspended domestic spying program, experts said. "Right now, there is a great degree of mistrust," said Christopher Whitney, executive director for studies at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, which conducts research on U.S. ethnic communities. "America has a need for their skill sets. But a lot of them are mistrustful of the government's intentions (and) how their skills would be used," he said. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group report in December said intelligence officers in Iraq are often unable to understand information from local informants because they lack language and cultural skills. Even at the CIA, the premier spy agency whose recruiting program is seen as a model for other agencies, only 46 percent of jobs requiring proficiency in one or more of 10 "mission critical" languages, from Arabic and Farsi to Chinese and Korean, are filled by people judged to be fully proficient. "We're looking for language capability, deep cultural expertise. We're looking for Arab Americans, Afghan Americans, South Asian American, Persian Americans," said CIA Associate Deputy Director Michael Morell. U.S. intelligence chief Mike McConnell's office is in the early stages of a new outreach program to first- and second-generation Americans from Middle Eastern and Asian families who might serve as linguists, analysts or spies. McConnell's staff has a raft of plans and ideas for the push, from generous hiring bonuses, scholarships and loan repayment aid to mentoring programs and special focus groups to facilitate security clearance. The administration has even come up with a plan to invest in high school and elementary school language programs to help ensure that the children of immigrants retain their family's language skills. "It's a matter of strategic imperative," said Ron Sanders, chief human capital officer for the 16-agency U.S. intelligence community that stretches from the CIA to the Coast Guard. But officials say recruitment faces a series of hurdles including an onerous security clearance process. U.S. antidiscrimination laws also prevent agencies from approaching prospective candidates because of their backgrounds as Muslims, Arabs, Pakistanis, Iranians, Koreans or Chinese. Agencies instead advertise for skill sets and target schools with relevant programs. STRATEGICALLY VITAL The pool of qualified candidates is also small. There are about 6 million people in the United States who speak mission critical languages, but many are not U.S. citizens and others either lack qualifications or are ensconced in high-paying private sector jobs. Sanders and other senior officials said concerns about U.S. security policies have not come up in focus sessions or interviews with Middle Eastern or Asian-American recruits. But officials recognize the need to engage ethnic communities to 'demystify' the nature of the intelligence service through meetings with community leaders whom they hope to persuade to encourage people to consider intelligence careers. "In order to be able to recruit from a particular heritage community, we need to have a relationship with that heritage community. You can't just wander in, set up your recruiting booth and wait for the lines to form," Sanders said. That is good news to Muslims such as Arsalan Iftikhar of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who says the Bush administration needs to engage ethnic communities more vigorously. "The silver lining is that this divide has slowly begun to close. But there's still a lot to be done," Iftikhar said. "There is still a misnomer that the war on terror has become a war on Islam. We all know that not to be the case. But it's important for our administration to take active steps." Iftikhar said the FBI has made progress using its 56 field offices for outreach efforts in local communities. Thanks partly to that effort, the FBI has received about 1,000 applications in the past few months from people of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent wanting to become agents. FBI officials believe that to be a marked improvement over previous periods but could not provide comparative figures. As a rule, only a small handful out of every 100 agent applicants for positions requiring critical language skills prove fully qualified for the job, the FBI said.
