Perspective: Pressed in Iraq, US Army turns out interrogators

Airmen participating in the Combat Interrogator Course at Fort Huachuca

FORT HUACHUCA, Arizona, Dec 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. Army has stepped up its training of interrogators to get a clearer picture of Iraq, where attacks on American and Iraqi targets have been running at unprecedented levels -- almost 1,000 a week.

The number of soldiers going through a 93-day course to become Human Intelligence Collectors, the army term for interrogators, has quadrupled over the past three years -- from 265 in 2003 to 1,070 in 2006 -- and is projected to rise to just over 1,500 by 2009. The increase reflects an urgent need to plug gaps in intelligence.

"We needed to change, adapt and expand the training here," said Major General Barbara Fast, who commands the U.S. Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. "We have significantly increased our humint (human intelligence) capability and will increase it even more."

According to the bipartisan Iraq Study Group's December report, "our ... government still does not understand very well either the insurgency in Iraq or the role of the militias." It said there had been too little investment in intelligence gathering and analysis.

The army, by far the biggest branch of the armed forces, has about 37,000 military intelligence soldiers, about a quarter of whom are in human intelligence. That is a larger share than in the past, when the U.S. intelligence community focused on satellite imagery and monitoring communications.

"But especially since Sept. 11," Fast said in an interview, "we know how important it is to understand that which cannot be seen or monitored."

The training at Fort Huachuca is designed to mimic Iraq as closely as possible -- complete with Arabic-speaking Americans playing the role of the Iraqis dressed in robes and keffiyehs, the checkered headdresses widely worn in the Arab world.

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