Intelligence: August 26, 2002

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A comparison of CIA and FBI files, conducted by the two agencies, showed that they were using slightly-different spellings of the names of some Arab terrorists and suspects (Arabic does not translate directly into English, only phonetically, a process subject to interpretation and more art than science) and hence did not connect some of the pieces of information they each had. This problem has yet to be entirely solved but analysts are using work-arounds invented on the spot to link the files.--Stephen V Cole