Studying Languages of Enemies and Allies

Five years ago, in a ceremony at the old Custom House on the waterfront here, civic leaders unfurled a flag declaring this pine-dotted city of 30,000 the “Language Capital of the World.”

It was a bit of boosterism for a community that feared the military might close its Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, one of the world’s largest linguistics training schools, located on the Army’s Presidio.

Since Sept. 11, however, Monterey’s reputation as a center of language instruction seems more than secure. Because the institute trains Department of Defense personnel for sophisticated combat and intelligence operations, it probably will play a vital role in actions America undertakes in its new war on terrorism, an unconventional struggle against a shadowy opponent.

In this war, some of the roughly 2,700 students at the institute could become as important as warplanes and aircraft carriers. The FBI already has issued requests for people who speak Arabic and Farsi to help in intelligence gathering.

“This conflict will require a lot of intelligence gathering,” said Rick Francona, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Air Force and a graduate of and former instructor at the institute.

“I’m sure there are Arabic speakers [trained at the institute] en route” to the Middle East right now, said Francona, 50, who worked as the personal interpreter for Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf in the Gulf War.

If so, institute commandant Col. Kevin Rice won’t discuss it. At a public appearance last week honoring victims of the attacks on the Pentagon and New York, Rice explained, “I don’t want to raise my head high and be a target.”

The institute was opened in 1941 to teach Japanese to American soldiers. During the Cold War, Russian was one of the most popular languages.

But in the last decade, Arabic has grown in importance, although one language that is not taught is the Dari variant of Farsi, the primary language of Afghanistan, the country believed to be harboring prime terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden. Rice said he expects Dari to be quickly added to course offerings.

“Arabic and Persian Farsi are of most importance because we have allies and enemies” in that region of the world, said Alfie Khalil, who has taught Arabic for 22 years at the school.

Today, the institute has a faculty of about 750. Its library contains thousands of foreign television programs and 80,000 volumes in 40 languages. Each day, news from nations around the world is piped in so students get a sense of colloquial usages.

Khalil expects an influx of students studying Arabic, and said the command has told instructors they will be expected to work harder to get ready for the coming conflict. In the Gulf War, the institute produced phrase books and pocket cards containing simple commands in Arabic, such as “halt,” and “put your hands up.”

“We can produce those on short notice,” he said.

Students are frequently called the best and brightest because the training is so rigorous. “This is a pretty elite segment of society,” Francona said.

Interested soldiers, sailors and Marines must pass a battery of tests before being admitted. Once at the school, they take six hours of classroom instruction each day and do two to four hours of homework each night.

The program lasts from 25 to 63 weeks, depending on the language. The toughest languages, called Category 4, are Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Korean and Arabic.

Coping with the academic demand “is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” said one student, a slender young man with a Marine haircut who was relaxing over a beer one night last week at the Mucky Duck, a local pub. The student, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, holds two degrees in engineering.

“We’re ready” for whatever jobs come their way, he said.

In peacetime, the nature of those jobs has ranged from working with Korean merchants during the riots in Los Angeles to teaching Russian to American astronauts scheduled to join the crew on the Mir space station.

But in wartime, graduates can be found analyzing intelligence data, acting as translators or even leading CIA missions into hostile territory, as Francona did when he rescued the family of an Iraqi nuclear scientist seeking asylum after the Gulf War. (When Francona wrote “Ally to Adversary,” a book about Saddam Hussein, the CIA censored details of the rescue, although the scientists has since spoken publicly about it.)

Francona said it takes three years to become proficient in an Arabic language, so even if the Department of Defense initiated a Manhattan Project-style campaign of language instruction it would take time to produce many new Arabic speakers.

However, the institute has shown an ability to move swiftly when its mission is changed. During the Bosnian crisis, it developed an emergency program to teach the basics of the Serbian language. “They called it Turbo Serbo,” Francona said.

Rep. Sam Farr (D-Carmel) is a booster of the institute. As a former Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia, he learned the value of speaking another language. He likes to quote a Spanish saying: “For every language you learn, you gain another soul,” he said.

Farr said the services have been slow to develop language skills in rank-and-file troops. But that is only part of a much bigger disinclination to learn foreign languages.

“We as a country don’t learn foreign languages because we’ve never had reason to,” Francona said.

But as the world has become more like us, we have become more like the world. “When you look at the number of foreign deaths (at the World Trade Center), you get a glimpse of our foreign language needs,” Monterey City Manager Fred Meurer said.

“What we have just realized is the threats are at home now,” he said.

As a result, the institute--with a campus of more than 500 classrooms, 1,200 language lab positions and 17 permanent dormitories--has become a very serious place. The gates of the once easygoing Presidio are now barricaded, and cars that once breezed through are stopped and inspected.

Monterey has had a long and intimate relationship with the institute, partly because the 395-acre Presidio essentially bisects the city from the hills to the sea. In years past, about 1,000 cars a day drove through the base to get from one side of town to the other. That relationship started to change last year after the attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole, which was bombed by terrorists while refueling in Yemen. That caused American installations worldwide to tighten security.

The Secretary of the Army announced plans earlier this year to begin restricting traffic through the Presidio. Not many in town liked the idea. They feared traffic would snarl along the two perimeter roads skirting the base. Town hall meetings were held.

Even Meurer joined the chorus of critics. “I was personally critical of the need for this level of security.”

The debate ended on Sept. 11. The tightened security has had “a traumatic impact on the city’s circulation pattern,” Meurer said. By and large, people are “being very patriotically patient.”

The institute and the Naval Postgraduate School nearby contribute $250 million in payroll each year to the area economy. Without them, the city might be as historic and lovely as it was when the Spanish moved their provincial capital here in 1775, but it would probably not be able to support its outstanding restaurants and meadow-like golf courses.

The institute, in turn, has changed the personality of this area. Its influence can be felt far beyond the British-style pubs where students hang out. Many businesses around town are owned by members of the various ethnic communities that have settled here. Nearly every weekend there is some kind of celebration for one group or another, Farr said.

“This is the smallest city with the largest international community” per capita, he said.

Monterey is also home to AT&T; Language Line Services, a company that helps businesses and agencies in need of over-the-phone interpretation and document translation. Launched in 1982 with the help of an instructor from the institute, the company now employs more than 2,000 linguists and offers service in 140 languages.

Once when he was touring the AT&T; facility, Farr said, a Chicago police officer called in with a purse snatch victim who spoke only Korean.

“You’d expect it to be in Washington or New York,” said Farr, whose congressional office uses the service. “All this ties into why Monterey declared itself the language capital.”