Bassem Youssef, a U.S. citizen of Egyptian origin who joined the FBI in 1988, received top-notch performance evaluations and was praised for his work in Saudi Arabia after the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing.
But after 9/11 he was blocked from duties that could have used his Arabic skills, he said in a complaint filed in a court at the District of Columbia. The only FBI agent who can conduct polygraph tests in Arabic, Youssef was prevented from serving as a translator when an Arabic speaker walked into an FBI field office claiming to have information about Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. The man eventually stopped cooperating with the FBI.
�PNS News Aug 27, 2003