Feb 16, 2007  |  By: ELIZABETH A. PERRY  | COMMENTS     

An official from the U.S. State Department called Rep. Gary Ackerman’s (D-N.Y.) office Feb. 7 to tell him they were considering his suggestion to rehire some of the gay linguists discharged from the military under the Defense Department’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

“They said it was a good suggestion,” said Jordan Goldes, a spokesperson for Ackerman. “And they are already giving it serious consideration.”

Ackerman, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice discussed the issue during the State Department’s 2008 budget hearing on Feb. 7. During her testimony, Rice expressed concern about the lack of qualified linguists in the armed forces. Ackerman, a longtime opponent of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” suggested having the State Department hire back gay linguists, because unlike the Defense Department, it doesn’t have such a policy.

“It seems that the military has gone around and fired a whole bunch of people who speak foreign languages such as Farsi, Arabic, etc., after they trained them in their foreign language school for 63 weeks,” Ackerman said. “Presumably they all passed all kinds of security clearances. Many of them told on themselves and were fired.”

Rice told Ackerman she would look into it. She said the military has quadrupled the number of employees in the critical languages area, but that they would like to train them to higher levels of competence.

Ackerman used the hearing to humorously address homophobia in the military.

“For some reason, the military seems more afraid of gay people than they are of terrorists,” he said. “They’re very brave with the terrorists. If the terrorists ever got a hold of this information they could get a platoon of lesbians to chase us out of Baghdad.”

Steve Ralls, communications director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, said Ackerman’s remarks may have been tongue-in-cheek, but his point was serious.

“He did it in a humorous way to make a serious point,” Ralls said. “There were 300 linguists who were fired because of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ Five dozen of them were Arabic translators who could make a significant difference on the ground.”

Ralls said that with the exception of uniformed military personnel, the State Department has the authority to hire back gay and lesbian personnel. He said he thinks it is bewildering that the Defense Department continues to believe gays and lesbians are unable to serve with distinction in the armed forces, especially when they are doing the same jobs in the civilian sector for more money.

“The only leg still propping up ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is homophobia and stereotyping,” Ralls said. “There are no professional reasons to exclude gays and lesbians.”

The network sent out word to its former clients asking them to consider interviewing for the positions.

“We plan to present [Rice] with a roster of qualified linguists who are interested in pursuing the opportunity,” Ralls said.

Former Army Sgt. Bleu Copas, who is gay, studied Arabic for 18 months with the Defense Language Institute and called it the most difficult subject he’d ever studied. 

“Every bit is different from English, every concept,” Copas said.

Copas said linguists are employed in several different areas of intelligence work, with some intercepting and translating radio and cell phone communications, while others worked in interrogation. He said linguists are essential to military operations in order to get accurate information.

He was working as a military translator when someone hacked into his e-mail and outed him.

Copas said that immediately after he was honorably discharged in January 2006, he received a couple of job offers from civilian contractors offering him six-figure salaries. He said it was highly likely that had he taken one of the positions, he would have been back at the same building in Iraq, working with the same people and doing the same job for $100,000 more than he made in the military.

Despite everything he has been through, Copas said there is a chance he might consider going back to serve as a linguist if asked by the State Department. He is finishing up his master’s degree in counseling at East Tennessee State University.

“Personally, I still have a bit of a bad taste,” he said. “My contribution was not deemed credible enough in one part of the government, but it is credible in another. That is very hypocritical.”