FBI Director Robert S. Mueller made an unusual plea Monday, seeking to recruit people who speak Arabic, Persian or Pashtun--the language of western Afghanistan--to help with the nation's probe into last week's hijackings.
But even though the jobs pay as much as $38 per hour, filling them won't be easy.
Not many native English speakers are fluent in these Middle Eastern tongues, and many native speakers of these languages are wary of working with the American government.
Leaders of Arab and Iranian American groups said they want to be helpful and some even welcomed the outreach effort. But many also are worried that anyone who signs up might somehow come under suspicion, given the wide-ranging nature of the investigation.
"Our community should definitely cooperate . . . [but] there's a lot of mixed feelings about the authorities," said Hussein Ibish, spokesman for the American Arab Anti-Discrimination League.
Other Iranian Americans privately questioned whether the recruitment campaign wasn't just an FBI attempt to infiltrate Middle Eastern communities. A few disagreed, but said the timing of the request was suspect.
"It's not like they didn't know terrorism was out there in Middle Eastern countries," said Nikoo Nikoomanesh, 20, of Beverly Hills, a UCLA student majoring in history. "I doubt they really have any deficiencies [in language expertise]."
In Los Angeles, the director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council described the FBI request as "kind of scary," although he too was "encouraging people to cooperate with law enforcement short of espionage."
"We are somewhat surprised they didn't have that level of expertise before this tragedy took place," said Salam Al-Maryati.
In Los Angeles, the desire to help apparently overshadowed concerns about untoward consequences. The FBI office here on Monday received inquiries from about 50 people who called or showed up at the agency's office in Westwood, spokesman Matt McLaughlin said.
A Persian-language talk show on KIRN 670-AM radio interrupted a discussion of drug abuse to talk about Mueller's effort, and callers interested in helping the FBI complained they couldn't get through on the toll-free number set up by the FBI, said host Shahrzad Ardalan.
One likely site of recruitment is Southern California. About 900,000 Arab Americans live in the U.S. and roughly a third of those live in Los Angeles and Orange counties. It is estimated that there are about 1 million people of Iranian descent in the United States, about half of whom live in Southern California.
