![]() This generation’s experience was one of teams of analysts, operators, technologists, digital experts, and support specialists coming together to transform intelligence collection and analysis in support of new operational customers such as foreign liaison partners, U.S. Their experiences over the past two decades were forged in war zones and in joint operations centers where the imperative of mission success - to disrupt individuals and networks - required the deconstruction of antiquated stovepipes and priorities. This generation of intelligence officers joined to fight al-Qaeda (and later ISIS) and help win the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many who joined CIA after 9/11 didn’t do so with the goal of exclusively supporting senior policymakers. It is because the organization itself has not placed enough importance and value on the work it does to support a diverse set of customers other than the president. The main driver behind the low morale is not President Donald Trump. But CIA’s core product isn’t the PDB itself, it is the insights that help make decisions across government, and there are plenty of customers other than the president eager to consume those. Few businesses would thrive and retain their top talent while waiting for a customer to eventually realize the value of their product. You can imagine then how depressing it must be to the organization when a president doesn’t value the product you cherish. Each new spy recruited or technical surveillance gadget created is motivated with the ultimate aim of capturing secrets that end up in front of the president. ![]() Support to senior policymakers has culturally become intertwined with the Agency’s reason for being. Ask analysts what metric is valued most in career advancement, and they’ll tell you it’s how many PDBs you’ve written. ![]() The most common refrain I hear from colleagues about why they left CIA over the past several years is “I no longer saw a path for me there.”įor over 70 years, CIA has prioritized a strategic product above all others-a daily compilation of written articles akin to a classified newspaper called the President’s Daily Brief (PDB). But the fraught relationship between CIA and the Trump administration is only part of the story and risks overlooking ongoing challenges within the Agency itself. Indeed, Intelligence Community morale is at an all-time low. It would be easy to draw a causal relationship between the last four years of the Trump administration’s open hostility toward the Intelligence Community, its politicization of intelligence, and the president’s apathy for the analysis put in his briefing book each morning and these departures. I joined this group of alumni when I took my final steps across the famous marble CIA seal this summer. He did acknowledge, however, that what those stats won’t tell you is who is walking out the door.ĬIA has lost much of the post-9/11 generation of intelligence officers who played key roles in some our nation’s greatest national security successes over the past two decades. If you ask CIA senior leaders if they have a retention problem, they will likely point to perennial low attrition rates-as Chief Operating Officer Andy Makridis told me in his office last year.
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