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Not Just Another Summer Job

SUMMARY

Four college students who study Arabic spent their summers interning in the NSA's Follow the Money Branch, where they helped to translate communications and documents pertinent to the division's focus on terrorist financing.

DOCUMENT’S DATE

Sep 27, 2006

PUBLICLY AVAILABLE

May 29, 2019

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DYNAMIC PAGE -- HIGHEST POSSIBLE CLASSIFICATION IS TOP SECRET // SI / TK // REL TO USA AUS CAN GBR NZL (U) Not Just Another Summer Job FROM: (S//SI) Chief, Follow the Money (S2C22) Run Date: 09/27/2006 (S//SI) Summer language interns help translate Arabic related to terrorism finance targets. (S//SI) The next time you ask a college student how they spent their summer vacation, they may tell you they learned SIGINT! International Security Issues' Follow the Money Branch (S2C22/FTM) recently hosted four summer college Arabic language interns to support its terrorism finance mission. The interns came from West Point, Duke, Georgetown, and Tufts Universities and provided translations of facsimiles from a number of FTM's Islamic charity targets. Collectively they produced over 260 translations in their 5-week tour! (S//SI) The group concentrated on graphic material that included faxes, e-mail messages, and SMS (Short Message Service) exchanges of FTM's various terrorism finance targets. In all, the efforts of the four interns resulted in four reports dealing with such issues as reactions to the recent UN designation of an international Islamic charity as a supporter of terrorism, and to nongovernmental organization activity in Lebanon during the recent armed conflict between Israel and Hizbollah. Equally significant are their 260 translations -- a major contribution to NSA's knowledge base. These translations will contribute even more as the discovery process or new lead information helps to establish links between known terrorist finance targets and their network of supporters. (U//FOUO) This marked the second year that FTM has worked closely with , NSA's Summer Language Coordinator and Middle Eastern Language Center Chief to host interns from the Summer Language Program . While the interns require mentoring and, in that respect, take a toll on scarce language resources within the branch, watching and mentoring a shy and intimidated college junior transform into a productive and interactive member of NSA's intelligence production mission is priceless. "(U//FOUO) SIDtoday articles may not be republished or reposted outside NSANet without the consent of S0121 (DL sid_comms)." DYNAMIC PAGE -- HIGHEST POSSIBLE CLASSIFICATION IS TOP SECRET // SI / TK // REL TO USA AUS CAN GBR NZL DERIVED FROM: NSA/CSSM 1-52, DATED 08 JAN 2007 DECLASSIFY ON: 20320108