WASHINGTON — The CIA will spend millions of dollars over the next five years to improve intelligence gathering, upgrade technologies and enable analysts to work more closely with spies in the field, under a plan laid out Monday.
The plan renews the agency's year-old goal to increase the number of analysts and overseas operatives fluent in other languages, the lack of which has been a problem that has plagued military and civilian intelligence officers throughout much of the last decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
CIA Director Leon Panetta said he intended to reinforce the agency's foreign language capabilities by doubling the number of clandestine officers enrolled in language training and tripling the number of analysts in that training. A year ago, fewer than a third of CIA analysts and overseas spies were proficient in a foreign language, and that percentage still holds today.
The exact numbers and specific languages are classified, but agency officials have said they are lacking in key languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Pushto, Urdu and Persian.
Panetta also said he will get more advanced technologies and software to help gather and sift through the vast amounts of intelligence coming in.
Exact spending totals were unavailable. The CIA budget is classified.
Panetta said the changes would help the agency battle emerging national security dangers better, including terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and cyberthreats. U.S. intelligence agencies have come under fire in recent months for perceived lapses that let a suicide bomber infiltrate a CIA base in Afghanistan and an alleged would-be bomber to board a U.S.-bound flight on Christmas.
A major goal, Panetta said, is to put more CIA analysts in the same location as the intelligence operatives, which has worked well for the agency in war zones. Historically, the two groups were separated, but that has been changing. By working in the same place, officials say, analysts and spies can exchange information and guidance more efficiently.
Currently, analysts and operatives work together in war zones and in teams at CIA headquarters, but Panetta said it should happen more widely. In their limited work together, the analysts and spies have combined on such critical issues as counterterrorism, counterproliferation and Iran.
U.S. intelligence officials have said such combined operations overseas helped officials identify the site of a previously undisclosed uranium enrichment plant in Iran, near the holy city of Qom.
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