Major Overhaul Set for C.I.A., With Thousands to Be Reassigned

[Valin]

NY Times:

MARK MAZZETTI

MARCH 6, 2015

 

LANGLEY, Va. — John O. Brennan, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is planning to reassign thousands of undercover spies and intelligence analysts into new departments as part of a restructuring of the 67-year-old agency, a move he said would make it more successful against modern threats and crises.

 

Drawing from disparate sources — from the Pentagon to corporate America — Mr. Brennan’s plan would partly abandon the agency’s current structure that keeps spies and analysts separate as they target specific regions or countries. Instead, C.I.A. officers will be assigned to 10 new mission centers focused on terrorism, weapons proliferation, the Middle East and other areas with responsibility for espionage operations, intelligence analysis and covert actions.

 

During a briefing with reporters on Wednesday, Mr. Brennan gave few specifics about how a new structure would make the C.I.A. better at spying in an era of continued terrorism, cyberspying and tumult across the Middle East. But he said the current structure of having undercover spies and analysts cloistered separately — with little interaction and answering to different bosses — was anachronistic given the myriad global issues the agency faces.

 

“I’ve never seen a time when we have been confronted with such an array of very challenging, complex and serious threats to our national security, and issues that we have to grapple with,” he said.

 

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[Valin]

CIA to build cyber espionage unit

Brian Bennett

Mar. 6 2015

 

In a reorganization of the nation's premier spy agency, the CIA is creating a special division to conduct digital espionage, the latest government agency to respond to the growing use of cyber hacks and attacks around the globe. The new directorate will try to penetrate the ranks of foreign hackers and other adversaries who try to penetrate or sabotage crucial U.S. infrastructure, as well as help American spies overseas steal digital secrets and cover their tracks. “The digital world touches every aspect of our business,” CIA Director John O. Brennan told reporters at CIA headquarters. He acknowledged that the agency had been slow to adapt to the challenge of digital espionage.

 

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The new home for the CIA's cyber espionage effort will be called the Directorate of Digital Innovation. It will have the same level of authority as the four long-standing directorates responsible for clandestine operations, analysis, spy gadgetry and logistics. The division will help the CIA reorient how it collects intelligence. “We don't want to invest a lot of time, resources and energy” recruiting sources to steal secrets that are freely available online, Brennan said. The new cyber push threatens to put the CIA in direct competition with the mammoth National Security Agency, which specializes in breaking codes, vacuuming up conversations and communications, and analyzing huge troves of digital transmissions.

 

But officials said the CIA will focus less on collecting so-called signals intelligence and more on how to use digital tools to convince adversaries to spill their secrets, and to help protect American operatives. Along with crunching large amounts of data to help identify and approach new spies to recruit, officials said the CIA can improve its ability to trace the “digital dust” that potential targets leave when using an ATM card, renting a car, moving through a city with a cellphone, or other activities.

 

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