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CIA to make sweeping structural changes with focus on cyber operations
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CIA director John Brennan on Friday announced a major organizational overhaul of the intelligence agency, including the creation of an entirely new fifth wing to be known as the “directorate of digital innovation”.
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The changes were designed to improve handling of cyber threats and the use of digital technology, streamline management, enhance recruiting and training and encourage intra-agency information sharing, Brennan said in a memo posted on the CIA website and in a briefing with reporters.
“Never has the need for the full and unfettered integration of our capabilities been greater,” Brennan said in the memo, comparing the restructuring to the agency’s post-9/11 “response to the emergence of global terrorism”.
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In addition to the creation of the digital directorate, Brennan’s blueprint establishes 10 new “mission centers” to pool expertise and operations on a particular region or threat. Four longtime agency directorates – the organizational bones of the agency, historically – would remain in place, although two would take on different names.
The reorganization announced Friday follows major shifts in the CIA’s role and operations after 9/11, when the agency took up drone warfare and was reinvented, in some analyses, as a paramilitary organization.
Tim Weiner, author of the National Book Award-winning Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, questioned what Brennan’s reorganization meant for the agency’s core mission.
“Intelligence is not about corporate structures,” Weiner said. “Intelligence was defined by Sun Tzu in The Art of War 26 centuries ago: ‘Know your enemy.’ That’s the job of spies. That requires knowing foreign languages and going out into the world and talking to your enemies.
“Putting out a powerpoint that creates a new flowchart for the architecture of intelligence is above that problem.”
The blueprint leaves two directorates unchanged: the directorate of science and technology, and the directorate of support, which handles administrative work. The national clandestine service, which runs covert actions, will become the directorate of operations, which was its name before. The directorate of intelligence will be renamed the directorate of analysis.
President Barack Obama had previously moved to create new structures to take on cyber threats, announcing last month the establishment of new “hubs” for the government and big technology companies that would allow the government to advise the companies on threats. The Obama administration has also asked for the companies’ participation in creating “backdoor” access points in their products for possible government use.
The US secret service, which is charged with protecting the life of the president among other assignments, undertook a major personnel overhaul in January, removing four of eight assistant directors.
