He has been charged in connection with a plot to damage a power grid somewhere in the northwest US, as well as planning to legally manufacture and sell guns.Īlong with Paul Kryscuk, 36, Liam Collins, 23 and Joseph Maurino, 25, Duncan researched and discussed a previous attack on a power grid by an unknown group. Years ago, directions from the Defense Department and the NSA were vague: teach Russian.He served as a Russian linguist for the Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune in electronic communications, though it is unclear if he passed on classified information to a foreign government.Īuthorities arrested him in October 2020 and executed a search warrant at his apartment in Boise, where they seized an external hard drive.Ī federal prosecutor later informed a judge that investigators uncovered what 'appeared to be classified material'.ĭuncan has not been charged with any new indictments in relation to the classified documents. In the past few years, as the school has worked to increase its students' proficiency, it has also changed how its languages are taught. ![]() "Moreover, the military service routinely allows students who do not attain a level-two proficiency to proceed to the next phase of training - technical school," the report said. The General Accounting Office in 1994 criticized the school - and the Defense Department - for allowing as many as a third of its students to graduate and then work for the NSA without mastering their language. In recent years, the school has sent many graduates off to their top-secret posts without having reached a level-two proficiency. "Achieving it is no small accomplishment for students who begin their studies with no previous experience in their target language," Devlin said in an October newsletter. Reaching proficiency level two, therefore, has become a "difficult goal." Devlin, commandant and commander of the school, said at a seminar in May that a shortage of linguists in the military requires the school to train more students in basic courses, with less emphasis on advanced training. The goal - established by the NSA and the Defense Department - is for students to speak at a proficiency "level two," which means being able to understand facts and current events, have conversations, ask questions and speak in past, present and future tenses.īut Col. Denise Travers, associate dean of the European I department. "They always seem to think they can cut the training," says Lt. But funding has often been in short supply. In 1981, federal lawmakers said a shortage of military officers fluent in third-world languages posed a threat to the nation's intelligence capabilities and urged the Department of Defense to spend more money on language training. By the 1970s, it was mostly teaching Russian. In 1946, it was renamed the Army Language School and moved from San Francisco to the Presidio of Monterey, at the foot of John Steinbeck-country hills of garlic and artichoke fields.ĭuring the Vietnam War, the school taught an eight-week Vietnamese "survival" course to more than 20,000 military personnel. The school began teaching Japanese to Army soldiers in 1941 in preparation for World War II. Hundreds of people could die if one of our linguists doesn't get the facts right." "Remember, our guys are going into the intelligence community. "Our guys have to get the facts right," Gale says. Though the mood is similar to that of a typical, though slightly rundown, college campus, students are constantly reminded that there are life-and-death consequences behind their lessons.īecause here, language training isn't about ordering moussaka properly in Thessaloniki. Roderic Gale, the school's enthusiastic associate provost and dean of students. "NSA is the biggest sponsor for our students," says Lt.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |