Cassio Furtado reports at length on the current and historic overseas role of the FBI in the Sunday Philadephia Inquirer. See, FBI Finds the Going is Tough Overseas.

Furtado says that FBI agents' "lack of skills and uncooperative nations hamper the agency as global demands on it have grown."

"In an effort to attack terrorism, drug trafficking, organized crime and other threats at their roots, an unprecedented number of FBI agents now are working overseas."

"But the bureau's effectiveness is limited by a shortage of agents with language skills and foreign expertise, and by relationships with foreign governments that range from reluctant cooperation to outright obstruction. And some of its activities raise concerns among civil-liberties groups."

Furtado uses Saudi Arabia's and Yemen's non-assistance in the FBI investigations into the 1996 Khobar Towers and 2000 USS Cole bombings as prime examples.

He also reports on the concerns of civil liberties organizations:

"Because the bureau sometimes obtains information from interrogations that violate U.S. legal standards, human-rights groups say the FBI has been complicit in human-rights violations. Critics contend that in Pakistan, for example, agents have participated in raids and tolerated detentions that breach U.S. norms."

That concerns us as well.

Furtado reports that there are currently FBI agents based in 44 countries and operating in 52.

"The FBI's critics say its agents often are culturally hidebound. "They operate in the Middle East like they're in New Jersey, and that doesn't work," said a senior U.S. official who has worked with them, who spoke on condition of anonymity."

"Today, the FBI looks harder for internationalists. Nonetheless, it "never has enough agents or linguists who speak... critical languages" such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Farsi or Vietnamese, an official from the investigative services division, David Alba, told a Senate oversight subcommittee in 2000."

"The FBI appears to have been most effective in Kenya, Tanzania and Pakistan - all countries where English is widely spoken. " After discussing how cooperative efforts between the FBI were fruitful during the Daniel Pearl murder investigation and in apprehending Ramsey Yousef, Furtado notes:

"U.S.-Pakistani cooperation has been troubled, however, by reports that FBI agents have received intelligence from interrogations in which Pakistani questioners used torture, and have joined raids in which those captured have disappeared without a trace into the Pakistani detention system."

"Although the United States signed the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture, which bans participation or complicity in the torture of prisoners or other forms of mistreatment, it would be nearly impossible to hold the United States liable for the actions of its partners in the war on terrorism."

Apparently, some U.S. officials see no problem here. Amnesty International disagrees.

"Amnesty International's 2002 human-rights report says police forces use torture in 18 of the 44 countries where the FBI has offices."

"Government officials should be very clear in condemning this," Amnesty official Vienna Colucci said. "Otherwise it sends a signal that they support it."

We agree with Amnesty. But we also wonder what is taking the FBI so long to hire and train new multi-lingual agents. Surely there is a pool of young men and women in this country with these skills. We'd bet large numbers of them have applied. We wonder how many of their applications are being held up in red tape and why it takes so long for applications to be approved. Does anyone have a good answer?