Technology Turmoil

Since then, the directorate has undergone reassessment and reorganization, but it survived. An October 2000 realignment combined duplicative activities, revitalized research and development, re-emphasized customer service and better integrated information technology and workforce planning into the directorate's activities. In April 2001, the directorate was further bolstered at the behest of CIA Executive Director A.B. Krongard, who sought to pull all directorates more in line with the agency's mission. Nevertheless, the DS&T may face an uncertain future.

The directorate has become increasingly less able to harness the fast pace and vast increase of communications created by the explosion in information technology over the past 20 years. According to Joanne Isham, who served as deputy director for science and technology for 19 months, until August 2000, DS&T faces a significant challenge in recruiting and maintaining a workforce skilled in the technologies required to address critical intelligence issues.

Ruth David, deputy director from September 1995 to September 1998, placed a major emphasis on exploiting advanced information technology, pioneering the concept of "agile intelligence" and, with Isham, initiating the search for a new way for the CIA to harness emerging technologies. "The need for agility comes in several dimensions," says David, now president and chief executive officer of Anser, a nonprofit research institute in Arlington, Va. "Priorities shift very, very rapidly, and there's a need for the intelligence apparatus to be able to shift very, very rapidly as well. Information technology that has driven changes . . . in terms of behavior of adversaries, also works as an enabler in allowing the business [of intelligence] to be done differently."

The next chief of DS&T, Gary L. Smith, retired director of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, served only from April 1999 to January 2000. According to intelligence expert Jeffrey T. Richelson's The Wizards of Langley (Westview, 2001), rumor had it that "Smith was never welcomed into the agency's inner circle."

Isham, who took charge of the DS&T in January 2000, did not have science or engineering academic credentials, but she had been a career CIA employee since 1977, serving in a number of jobs, including director of congressional relations. Under Isham, the directorate formed an office of advanced information technology. Recently, the CIA's chief information officer took over most of that office's responsibilities.

The latest change in directorate leadership came in August 2001, when Donald M. Kerr, assistant director for the FBI's Laboratory Division, was named to the post. Kerr, a physicist, previously had served as director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. In addition to heading Los Alamos, Kerr had served as a deputy assistant secretary of Energy and had been an acting assistant secretary for Defense programs as well as for energy technology.