[Infowarrior] - Looking for a Few Good Spies

[Richard Forno]

Obama Administration Looks to Colleges for Future Spies

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 20, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/19/AR2009061903501_pf.html

To the list of collegiate types -- nerds, jocks, Greeks -- add one  
more: spies in training. The government is hoping they'll be hard to  
spot.

The Obama administration has proposed the creation of an intelligence  
officer training program in colleges and universities that would  
function much like the Reserve Officers' Training Corps run by the  
military services. The idea is to create a stream "of first- and  
second-generation Americans, who already have critical language and  
cultural knowledge, and prepare them for careers in the intelligence  
agencies," according to a description sent to Congress by Director of  
National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair.

In recent years, the CIA and other intelligence agencies have  
struggled to find qualified recruits who can work the streets of the  
Middle East and South Asia to penetrate terrorist groups and criminal  
enterprises. The proposed program is an effort to cultivate and  
educate a new generation of career intelligence officers from  
ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds.

Under the proposal, part of the administration's 2010 intelligence  
authorization bill, colleges and universities would apply for grants  
that would be used to expand or introduce courses of study to "meet  
the emerging needs of the intelligence community." Those courses would  
include certain foreign languages, analysis and specific scientific  
and technical fields.

The students' participation in the program would probably be kept  
secret to prevent them from being identified by foreign intelligence  
services, according to an official familiar with the proposal.

Students attending participating colleges and universities who agree  
to take the specialized courses would apply to the national  
intelligence director for admittance to the program, whose  
administrators would select individuals "competitively" for financial  
assistance. Much like the support provided to those in the military  
programs, the financial assistance could include "a monthly stipend,  
tuition assistance, book allowances and travel expenses," according to  
the proposal. It also would involve paid summer internships at one or  
more intelligence agencies.

Applicants to the intelligence training program would have to pass a  
security background investigation, although it is unclear when they  
would have to do so. Students who receive a certain amount of  
financial assistance would be obligated to serve in an intelligence  
agency for the same length of time as they received their subsidy.

Students in the military programs typically participate for all four  
years of college, but the intelligence program would seek to recruit  
sophomores and juniors.

Through grants to colleges and universities, intelligence agencies  
have been building partnerships with academia and specific professors,  
some of whom in past decades served as channels for recommending  
applicants to the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The  
intelligence community already has a Centers of Academic Excellence  
Program that funds programs in national security studies at more than  
14 colleges and universities, with a goal of having 20 participating  
schools by 2015. The programs receive between $500,000 and $750,000 a  
year.

The intelligence officer training program would build on two earlier  
efforts. One was a pilot program, first authorized in 2004, for as  
many as 400 students who took cryptologic training and agreed to work  
for the National Security Agency or another intelligence agency for  
each year they received financial assistance. That program will be  
replaced by the new one because cryptology is not as needed as it once  
was.

A second program provided financial assistance to selected  
intelligence community employees who agreed to study in specialized  
academic areas in which officials believed there were analytic  
deficiencies.

Named the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program, after the Kansas  
Republican who chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,  
over the past four years it has provided funds to some 800 students  
and current employees.

The director of national intelligence would make the Roberts program  
permanent under the new proposal and expand it beyond analysts to  
include personnel in acquisition, science and technology. It also  
could be used to help recruit employees by reimbursing them for prior  
education in critical areas.