Woodward Publishes OpEd on CIA’s “Brennan Plan”
John Woodward, Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published an Op-Ed in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review on the CIA’s ongoing bureaucratic reorganization.
Woodward, a former CIA officer who served in the Clandestine Service and the Directorate of Science and Technology, discussed the reorganization in the Op-Ed, entitled “The CIA’s Massive Reorganization Continues Under the Radar: The Brennan Plan,” published on May 22, 2016.
Woodward emphasized that “a significant but largely unnoticed transformation has been percolating for the past year — CIA Director John Brennan’s restructuring of the agency. The Brennan plan is the most far-reaching organizational shake up since the CIA’s creation in 1947. If fully implemented, this restructuring will drastically change the way espiocrats perform their duties.”
According to Woodward, the Brennan plan shifts the traditional power center of the CIA — away from separate operational, analytical and technical components focusing largely on strategic intelligence — to 10 more tactically oriented mission centers focusing on regional and transnational issues. The affect of this reorganization on intelligence is not clear. Perhaps it means a faster, more nimble approach, as Brennan contends. But long-range thinking, source protection and analytical objectivity might be the first casualties.
You can read the entire Op-Ed here.
Woodward is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. During his twenty-year CIA career, he served as an operations officer in the Clandestine Service and as a technical intelligence officer in the Directorate of Science and Technology, with assignments in Washington, DC, East Asia, Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. Learn more about him here.