In the decade since 9/11, the CIA has experienced a high turnover rate, with dozens of upper-level managers leaving the agency for private security and intelligence firms, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
The paper said at least 91 of the CIA’s managers have left for the private sector in the past 10 years, with several different managers filling high-level posts during that period.
All five of the division chiefs who were in place at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks are now gone, the Post said.
And as veterans leave, they are replaced with younger officials with less experience.
The wave of departures has “raised questions about the impact of the losses incurred by the agency,” the paper said. “Veteran officers leave with a wealth of institutional knowledge, extensive personal contacts and an understanding of world affairs afforded only to those working at the nation’s preeminent repository of intelligence.”
One former senior official who left government service after 25 years said there were simply more opportunities for advancement in the private sector. Private intelligence firms have been growing since the Sept. 11 attacks.
CIA spokesman George Little said “any suggestion that there isn’t world-class, senior expertise at the CIA is flat wrong.”
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