Paula Roberts, the head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s human development directorate, will be the next chief human capital officer of the intelligence community. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said Roberts will oversee the design, development and execution of human resource strategies and policies to support the 16 agencies in the intelligence community. “Paula will continue our efforts to build a diverse workforce with the technical and linguistic skills and cultural understanding necessary to help us meet our wide-ranging mission requirements,” Blair said in a statement released today. Roberts has worked at NGA since 1978, and joined the Senior…
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My avatar is going to look like George Clooney, and I can’t tell you the computer skills we needed to make that happen. Retiring — and remarkably candid — intelligence chief human capital officer Ron Sanders on an upcoming “virtual” job fair that will let job seekers adopt avatars and chat live with agency officials.
Ronald Sanders, chief human capital officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is leaving his position. The ODNI announced his departure yesterday, but spokeswoman Vanee Vines said the office would not answer any other questions until Thursday, when Sanders will speak to reporters. Sanders joined the ODNI in 2005, and began working on a pay-for-performance system for all 16 intelligence agencies in the government. But the Defense authorization bill Congress passed last year put those plans on hold, at least until the end of 2010. Sanders also pushed intelligence workers to spend some time working at other agencies,…
President Obama just issued the following statement regarding yesterday’s suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan’s Khost Province that killed seven CIA officers and at least one other person: To the men and women of the CIA: I write to mark a sad occasion in the history of the CIA and our country. Yesterday, seven Americans in Afghanistan gave their lives in service to their country. Michelle and I have their families, friends and colleagues in our thoughts and prayers. These brave Americans were part of a long line of patriots who have made great sacrifices for their fellow citizens, and for…
A suicide bomber killed eight Americans yesterday at a CIA base in Eastern Afghanistan. The Washington Post reports that most — if not all — of the victims were CIA employees or contractors. At least one Afghan also was killed, the Post said. The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack in Khost, near the Pakistan border. The Post said the bombing is “believed to be the deadliest single attack on U.S. intelligence personnel in the eight-year-long war and one of the deadliest in the agency’s history.” In 1983, eight CIA officers were killed in a devastating truck bombing of…
How much does the (civilian) government spend on intelligence? $49.8 billion last year, according to Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, who released the 2009 spending figure earlier this morning. That figure includes only the non-military intelligence budget. Blair said in a conference call earlier this year that the entire intelligence community budget is $75 billion — suggesting that the military intelligence budget, still technically classified, is about $25.2 billion.
ABC News today reported that strife is growing between CIA Director Leon Panetta, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, and the White House, and said Panetta might not be at Langley for much longer. The CIA and Obama administration are officially denying any shakeup, but ABC says Panetta let loose a profanity-laced tirade at the White House last month over the Justice Department’s possible investigation into CIA torture of terrorism suspects and threatened to quit. And that’s not all: In addition to concerns about the CIA’s reputation and its legal exposure, other White House insiders say Panetta has been frustrated by…
The intelligence community has talked about using open-source data for years, but a George Mason University doctoral candidate and his cohorts are taking the concept to the next level. The Wall Street Journal last week reported that Curtis Melvin and about a dozen other “citizen snoops” — some of whom are former military analysts — have spent the last two years using Google Earth’s satellite images to map out the infrastructure of North Korea. It’s not easy, since North Korea is perhaps the most secretive country on the planet. Melvin and others sift through news reports, photographs and eyewitness accounts,…
Charles Freeman, who was President Barack Obama’s pick to be chairman of the National Intelligence Council, is blaming a so-called “Israel lobby” for orchestrating strong online opposition to his appointment. Freeman was criticized for his connections to the Saudi-funded Middle East Policy Council, past statements critical of Israel, and his perceived leniency on the Chinese government’s repression of political dissent. Freeman released a statement Tuesday after taking himself out of the running: I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy…
The Senate last night voted to confirm Leon Panetta as the CIA’s new director. Panetta and new Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair have promised to reduce the size of the intelligence community’s contractor work force, and pledged to bring interrogation positions almost entirely back in house.