Politics

CIA Director Announces Sweeping Reorganization of Spy Agency

Published

9 years ago

March 7, 2015

In this Dec. 11, 2014 file photo, CIA Director John Brennan speaks during a news conference at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. Brennan has ordered a sweeping reorganization of the spy agency, an overhaul designed to make its leaders more accountable, enhance the agencys cyber capabilities and shore up espionage gaps exacerbated by a decade of focus on counterterrorism. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

KEN DILANIAN, AP Intelligence Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Director John Brennan has ordered a sweeping reorganization of the CIA, an overhaul designed to make its leaders more accountable and close espionage gaps amid widespread concerns about the spy agency’s limited insights into a series of major global developments.

Brennan announced the restructuring to the CIA workforce on Friday, including a new directorate devoted to boosting the CIA’s computer hacking skills. He said the move comes after nine agency officers spent three months analyzing its management structure, including what deputy CIA director David Cohen called “pain points,” organizational areas where the CIA’s bureaucracy does not work efficiently.

Briefing reporters with Cohen at CIA headquarters this week, Brennan said the changes are necessary to address intelligence gaps that the CIA is not covering. He lamented that there is often no single person he can hold accountable for the spying mission in any given part of the world.

“There are a lot of areas that I would like to have better insight to, better information about, better access to,” Brennan said. “Safe havens, denied areas. Whether because we don’t even have a diplomatic presence in a country, or because there are parts of countries that have been overrun and taken over by terrorist groups and others.”

The changes come against a backdrop of evidence that the CIA’s focus on hunting and killing terrorists since the Sept. 11 attacks has led to an erosion of the espionage and analytic capabilities the agency built during the Cold War. The CIA, along with other U.S. intelligence agencies, wrongly assessed the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2002 and failed to anticipate the rapid collapse of Middle East governments during the Arab Spring in 2011, among other shortcomings.

The agency’s greatest public success of recent years — the 10-year effort to locate and kill Osama bin Laden in 2011 — may have taken longer than it should have, according to evidence made public in the recent Senate report on CIA interrogations. Internal CIA surveys have cited bad management and bureaucratic frustration as factors in driving talent away from the agency.

Under Brennan’s reorganization, the CIA would break down the wall between the operations and analytical arms, a system that typically has required the case officers who recruit spies and run covert operations to work for different bosses, in different offices, than analysts who interpret the intelligence and write briefing papers for the president and other policymakers.

The new plan would blend practitioners of those separate disciplines into 10 centers devoted to various subjects or areas of the world. There are a handful of such centers at the moment, including the Counter Terrorism Center, where analysts and operators have worked side by side for the last decade targeting al-Qaida with espionage and drone strikes.

Under the new plan, each center would be run by an assistant director who would be responsible for the entire intelligence mission within that jurisdiction, including covert operations, spying, analysis, liaison with foreign partners and logistics.

The system of CIA stations, headed by a CIA station chief, will remain in place, Brennan said. Most stations are in U.S. embassies, and various CIA case officers in embassies may be working on different missions for different centers.

The changes do not require congressional approval and will be undertaken within the CIA’s current budget, CIA officials said.

Critics of a blended approach have raised concerns that combining analysts with operators could compromise the objectivity of the analysts, who are tasked with coldly interpreting intelligence in which they have no stake. It may be harder for an analyst to cast doubt on a source recruited by a case officer he knows personally, the theory goes.

The head of the CIA’s operation arm retired abruptly in January after voicing concerns about the plan, say two former CIA officials who know him but spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss internal agency matters. Brennan said the undercover officer’s decision “was not a result of this,” but he did not dispute that the officer had opposed some of the changes.

“Any time we’ve put analysts and operators together, the result has been a more powerful product,” said John McLaughlin, a former CIA analyst who became acting director, and who advised Brennan on the restructuring.

Brennan is retaining the old structure of CIA directorates. But he is changing some names, including restoring the old moniker “Directorate of Operations,” to the spying arm, the name it had before being rebadged the National Clandestine Service in 2005. For analysts, what used to be called the Directorate of Intelligence will be renamed the Directorate of Analysis. Two others, the directorates of support and science and technology, remain.

The directorates will manage human resources and set tradecraft standards, Brennan said, while the centers carry out the intelligence missions.

In another evolution, Brennan is creating a fifth directorate, the Directorate of Digital Innovation, which will focus on the new world of computer networks that has changed the way espionage is conducted. Brennan avoided the term “cyber,” a word used by the National Security Agency, the country’s premier digital spying service. The CIA’s mission of human spying now almost always has a digital component —even something so simple as backgrounding a potential asset by hacking into databases — and Brennan said the agency needs to intensify its focus on it.

The CIA will also significantly boost its leadership training and talent development efforts, which have been compared unfavorably to the military, Brennan said.

The reorganization is already drawing fire from some quarters. Paul Pillar, a former CIA analyst who famously dissented from the case for war in Iraq, expressed concern that the costs of the changes would outweigh the benefits.

“I worry that this plan may be another instance of the all-too-common pattern, among senior managers in both governmental and private sector organizations, to try to leave a personal mark by reorganizing the place,” he said in an email.

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MAYOR BREED ANNOUNCES $53 MILLION FEDERAL GRANT FOR SAN FRANCISCO’S HOMELESS PROGRAMS

San Francisco, CA – Mayor London N. Breed today announced that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has awarded the city a $53.7 million grant to support efforts to renew and expand critical services and housing for people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco.

Published

5 days ago

April 20, 2024

Oakland Post

Mayor London Breed

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Contact: Mayor’s Office of Communications, mayorspressoffice@sfgov.org

***PRESS RELEASE***

MAYOR BREED ANNOUNCES $53 MILLION FEDERAL GRANT FOR SAN FRANCISCO’S HOMELESS PROGRAMS

HUD’s Continuum of Care grant will support the City’s range of critical services and programs, including permanent supportive housing, rapid re-housing, and improved access to housing for survivors of domestic violence

San Francisco, CA – Mayor London N. Breed today announced that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has awarded the city a $53.7 million grant to support efforts to renew and expand critical services and housing for people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco.

HUD’s Continuum of Care (CoC) program is designed to support local programs with the goal of ending homelessness for individuals, families, and Transitional Age Youth.

This funding supports the city’s ongoing efforts that have helped more than 15,000 people exit homelessness since 2018 through City programs including direct housing placements and relocation assistance. During that time San Francisco has also increased housing slots by 50%. San Francisco has the most permanent supportive housing of any county in the Bay Area, and the second most slots per capita than any city in the country.

“In San Francisco, we have worked aggressively to increase housing, shelter, and services for people experiencing homelessness, and we are building on these efforts every day,” said Mayor London Breed. “Every day our encampment outreach workers are going out to bring people indoors and our City workers are connecting people to housing and shelter. This support from the federal government is critical and will allow us to serve people in need and address encampments in our neighborhoods.”

The funding towards supporting the renewal projects in San Francisco include financial support for a mix of permanent supportive housing, rapid re-housing, and transitional housing projects. In addition, the CoC award will support Coordinated Entry projects to centralize the City’s various efforts to address homelessness. This includes $2.1 million in funding for the Coordinated Entry system to improve access to housing for youth and survivors of domestic violence.

“This is a good day for San Francisco,” said Shireen McSpadden, executive director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. “HUD’s Continuum of Care funding provides vital resources to a diversity of programs and projects that have helped people to stabilize in our community. This funding is a testament to our work and the work of our nonprofit partners.”

The 2024 Continuum of Care Renewal Awards Include:

$42.2 million for 29 renewal PSH projects that serve chronically homeless, veterans, and youth
$318,000 for one new PSH project, which will provide 98 affordable homes for low-income seniors in the Richmond District
$445,00 for one Transitional Housing (TH) project serving youth
$6.4 million dedicated to four Rapid Rehousing (RRH) projects that serve families, youth, and survivors of domestic violence
$750,00 for two Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) projects
$2.1 million for three Coordinated Entry projects that serve families, youth, chronically homeless, and survivors of domestic violence

In addition, the 2023 CoC Planning Grant, now increased to $1,500,000 from $1,250,000, was also approved. Planning grants are submitted non-competitively and may be used to carry out the duties of operating a CoC, such as system evaluation and planning, monitoring, project and system performance improvement, providing trainings, partner collaborations, and conducting the PIT Count.

“We are very appreciative of HUD’s support in fulfilling our funding request for these critically important projects for San Francisco that help so many people trying to exit homelessness,” said Del Seymour, co-chair of the Local Homeless Coordinating Board. “This funding will make a real difference to people seeking services and support in their journey out of homelessness.”

In comparison to last year’s competition, this represents a $770,000 increase in funding, due to a new PSH project that was funded, an increase in some unit type Fair Market Rents (FMRs) and the larger CoC Planning Grant. In a year where more projects had to compete nationally against other communities, this represents a significant increase.

Nationally, HUD awarded nearly $3.16 billion for over 7,000 local homeless housing and service programs including new projects and renewals across the United States.

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Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024

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6 days ago

April 19, 2024

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Barbara Lee

Congresswoman Barbara Lee Issues Statement on Deaths of Humanitarian Aid Volunteers in Gaza 

On April 2, a day after an Israeli airstrike erroneously killed seven employees of World Central Kitchen (WCK), a humanitarian organization delivering aid in the Gaza Strip, a statement was release by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA-12). “This is a devastating and avoidable tragedy. My prayers go to the families and loved ones of the selfless members of the World Central Kitchen team whose lives were lost,” said Lee.

Published

1 week ago

April 17, 2024

Oakland Post

Congresswoman Barbara Lee

By California Black Media

“This is a devastating and avoidable tragedy. My prayers go to the families and loved ones of the selfless members of the World Central Kitchen team whose lives were lost,” said Lee.

The same day, it was confirmed by the organization that the humanitarian aid volunteers were killed in a strike carried out by Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Prior to the incident, members of the team had been travelling in two armored vehicles marked with the WCF logo and they had been coordinating their movements with the IDF. The group had successfully delivered 10 tons of humanitarian food in a deconflicted zone when its convoy was struck.

“This is not only an attack against WCK. This is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the direst situations where food is being used as a weapon of war. This is unforgivable,” said Erin Gore, chief executive officer of World Central Kitchen.

The seven victims included a U.S. citizen as well as others from Australia, Poland, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Palestine.

Lee has been a vocal advocate for a ceasefire in Gaza and has supported actions by President Joe Biden to airdrop humanitarian aid in the area.

“Far too many civilians have lost their lives as a result of Benjamin Netanyahu’s reprehensible military offensive. The U.S. must join with our allies and demand an immediate, permanent ceasefire – it’s long overdue,” Lee said.