Mike Wertheimer may be the most dangerous man in U.S. intelligence. You would probably never guess it, judging from his lengthy and opaque title — assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analytic transformation and technology. A perfect testament to the well-worn bureaucratic tradition of offering little insight by tossing around a lot of words. […]

My colleague at Government Executive magazine, Katherine McIntire Peters, has a good story about the exodus of senior officials in the Homeland Security Department’s upper ranks. Senior Homeland Security Department employees left their jobs over the past two years at rates significantly higher than the average for other Cabinet-level departments, according to a report released […]

For one year and 51 days, the nation’s top intelligence official has been without a second-in-command. When Gen. Michael Hayden stepped down as the principal deputy director of national intelligence, in May of last year, to become the CIA director, it effectively left the intelligence community without a chief operating officer. But today, Director of […]

In a discussion about surveillance cameras in New York City this morning, Diane Rehm devoted some air time to turnover and vacancies in the senior ranks of the Homeland Security Department. (See yesterday’s post.) DHS Spokesman Russ Knocke joined by phone, and said that, in April, the department was permitted to hire an additional 73 […]

A congressional report out this morning leads off with a story I wrote about the Homeland Security Department’s reliance on politically appointed leaders. Spencer Hsu has a good piece in this morning’s Washington Post about that report and the administration’s failure to fill about a quarter of the top leadership posts at DHS, “creating a […]

Intelligence agencies must decode a human capital crisis. When Tom Waters decided to become a spy, the first thing on his mind wasn’t how much he’d get paid. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Waters, then a 36-year-old business consultant living in Tampa, Fla., packed his bags for a business trip to Montreal. His […]

The graybeards of spycraft are smiling: After two years of turnover and uncertainty in the top ranks of the U.S. intelligence establishment, which saw such outsiders as a former congressman and a career ambassador elevated to high posts, four of their own are now in control or soon will be. In what one former official […]

Colin Powell has won his campaign to reform management at the State Department. Does it matter?On Jan. 22, 2001, Colin Powell assumed command of an army in tatters. That cold Monday morning, his first day on the job as secretary of State, the celebrated former general strode into headquarters in Washington. A crowd of employees […]