http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35070-2004Dec29.html By Katherine Pfleger Shrader Associated Press December 30, 2004 Counterterrorism agencies are shopping for talent at job fairs, dangling generous scholarships and luring staff from each other in a race to overcome a shortage of analysts that may only get worse in the new intelligence reorganization. The problem existed even before Congress and the White House approved an intelligence restructuring this month that has created positions for people whose skills are already in high demand. There is no consensus among the nation's 15 intelligence agencies on where staffing needs are the most acute. But few dispute that many more analysts are needed, particularly in the departments and agencies created since Sept. 11, 2001. The nearly two-year-old Department of Homeland Security is a prime example. "If you had a hundred, we'd take them," retired Army Lt. Gen. Patrick M. Hughes, the agency's top intelligence official, said in an interview earlier this year. "We have to look, search, test, assess. . . . We need people, but we need good people." To find them, Homeland Security and other agencies are heading to job fairs, often looking near military bases where civil service is part of the culture and people may have security clearances. They are also trying to snag people from the private sector. Congress is also offering sweeteners. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) created the intelligence community's answer to the GI Bill and other military scholarships. Under the program, undergraduate and graduate students can receive as much as $50,000 for two years of tuition if they agree to take needed jobs in an intelligence agency for as long as three years. This year, slots for 150 students were divided among the agencies, using $4 million from Congress. About $6 million will be available next year. Being an analyst is almost an academic profession -- part taught, part absorbed, part intuition -- that requires weighing volumes of information and boiling them down into reports for policymakers in the executive branch and in Congress. Among the most classified and most important reports are national intelligence estimates, which draw on information from across government and are written by top analysts at the National Intelligence Council. It was the council that produced the October 2002 estimate on the threat posed by Iraq, with its overblown assessment of weapons stockpiles. Statistics on precisely how many analysts are needed are hard to come by. Almost universally, agencies say such numbers are classified. President Bush ordered the CIA in November to double the number of analysts it employs. The agency would not say how many new jobs that directive opened up. Beginning several years ago, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which studies imagery from spy satellites and other systems, started hiring about 900 analysts, spokesman Dave Burpee said. Most will join the agency between next year and 2009. In addition, the Defense Intelligence Agency plans to hire 1,000 mid-level to senior civilians next year, mostly analysts, in jobs with starting salaries between $53,000 and $74,000. And the National Security Agency, the nation's code breaker and code protector, hopes to hire more than 6,000 people by 2009, on top of the 1,300 hired by the end of September. The secretive agency would not say how many will be analysts. DIA spokesman Donald Black said there has been more competition to hire analysts since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, especially people who speak languages such as Arabic that are needed at the CIA, the FBI and elsewhere. Security clearances narrow the field even more. "You don't have a limitless pool to draw from," Black said. Agencies also hire away analysts from each other. "Sure, there is intense competition within the government," said Homeland Security spokeswoman Michelle Petrovich. "The pool that we are looking for is probably going to be fairly limited and in high demand." During a series of hearings into the bombings of the USS Cole, the U.S. embassies in Africa and other attacks, Roberts concluded that the shortage of experienced analysts was the intelligence community's most glaring deficiency. Before the 1998 attack on the Navy destroyer Cole in a Yemeni port, one intelligence analyst had found information that led him to conclude that such an attack was possible. But the warnings were not heeded, Roberts said. Most specialties require analysts to invest seven to 10 years to get a true handle on their subject. Cultures and languages can require extensive immersion in a region, which cannot be gained from sitting behind a desk in Washington. Mike Scheuer, who headed the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999, said the intelligence services need to find more experts on Islamic extremism, like the legions of analysts available during the Cold War to deal with the Soviets. _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/
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