Five questions the Senate must ask Biden’s pick for CIA director

The Senate confirmation hearing for President Biden’s nominee for CIA director, William Burns, is pending. It offers a critical opportunity for people to learn how the Biden administration plans to reform and retool the CIA, a most venerable and unique espionage institution.

After four years of a very opaque Trump administration — at least, that is, in terms of the former administration’s openness and its CIA leadership team, which shunned the spotlight — we should want reform at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. I hope that Burns and his deputy director, David Cohen, will return to the practices set by former Director Leon Panetta. Their increased media accessibility and open engagement with Congress would be beneficial. As would their improved outreach to the public. One thing is for certain: Change is needed as the agency grapples with the rising information and technology age. “Reform or risk irrelevancy” must be the buzzwords at Langley in early 2021. With this in mind, senators should address these five questions toward Burns.

First, what is your vision for the proper organizational structure at CIA, including the roles and responsibilities of the directorates and mission centers? Former Director John Brennan’s modernization plan was not tweaked under the most recent director, Gina Haspel. In my experience before retiring in the summer of 2019, it was very confusing to function in a “matrixed” organization. As a senior operations official, the lines of command were not clear, and I had multiple bosses. This was frustrating. It slowed down decision-making and operational initiative and frequently left relevant stakeholders excluded as senior officers jockeyed for primacy. The issue at hand: Will Burns re-empower the directorate chiefs, such as the deputy director of operations and deputy director of analysis?

Second, do you value differences? Put another way, will diversity and inclusion be more than just a new tab on the agency website? Real diversity and inclusion first means harnessing the power of our racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual differences to gain an operational and analytic advantage. Just as important, it means fostering a truly inclusive environment in which employees feel they belong. That means being empowered and being heard. A side note — what it does not mean is championing the oft-mocked employee climate survey results to measure the satisfaction of the workforce. The marks given by that survey were high at times, as the surveys ultimately were not anonymous. Much of the workforce did not take them particularly seriously. The CIA must do better on valuing differences, or officers will leave for companies such as Google or Facebook that put a premium on diversity and inclusion.

Third, will you embrace and accelerate the adoption of technology to fill mission capability gaps? When Bellingcat investigative journalists seem to have done more to uncover Russian malfeasance than the CIA and National Security Agency combined, we must take a strong look at how open-source investigative organizations such as Bellingcat have accomplished their successes. Much has been written on “geo-fencing,” the bread and butter of open source tools. The CIA must embrace these tactics and take advantage of the massive amounts of publicly available information. Artificial intelligence must be used on a systematic basis. A truly collaborative relationship with the private sector, in which tools are at times far more advanced and innovative than what the U.S. government possesses, is imperative. A revised, flexible, and more balanced risk paradigm must be followed to include the modernization of policies and procedures for adoption and acquisition of new technologies.

Fourth, how much covert action is too much? Recognizing that the White House is the driver of covert action, Burns likely will have the ability to refocus the CIA on its core competencies: stealing secrets and producing top-flight analytic products. I was a product of the post 9/11 CIA, and my career was defined in the counterterrorism field, much of it in covert actions that were required to protect the public. Times have changed, however. The key questions for Burns to ask his staff upon arrival at Langley should include: Do we know what Vladimir Putin is thinking each morning? When will the next North Korean nuclear test take place? What are China’s plans against democracy protesters in Hong Kong? If the CIA cannot definitively answer these questions, and I fear that it cannot, then our collection priorities must be adjusted to meet the intelligence gaps of 2021.

Lastly, how will you take care of the workforce in the face of the mysterious health issues that have plagued U.S. officials since 2016? There has been much written on allegations of microwave attacks on diplomatic and intelligence personnel around the globe. Burns must tackle this issue head-on, in two bins. First, proper care must be provided to CIA personnel who have been affected; the CIA previously behaved poorly in denying our officers medical attention they deserved and even telling them that they were making up their silent wounds. I experienced this firsthand. Given his long record of taking care of his people at the State Department, Burns can quickly regain the trust of the workforce by making this issue a priority. Funding must be secured from Congress to ensure that medical care at such venerable institutions as Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is available.

There must also be a thorough effort to determine culpability for these attacks, and then firm sanctions must follow. No amount of resources or time should be spared. We should treat this in the same manner were al Qaeda attacking our officers. I fear that the continued uncertainty of what has reportedly occurred will affect CIA officers’ willingness to serve abroad. And if such attacks are continuing, as Sen. Jeanne Shaheen publicly stated in December 2020, it is even more important to tackle this issue with tenacity.

Burns appears to be the right man at the right time for this most critical job. His ability and willingness to answer these questions from the Senate will go a long way. Our elected representatives and the public need confidence that the CIA will thrive as an indispensable organization into 2021 and beyond.

Marc Polymeropoulos is a former CIA senior operations officer. He retired in 2019 after a 26-year career serving in the Near East and South Asia. His book Clarity in Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the CIA will be published in June 2021 by Harper Collins.

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