Brain Drain in the Intelligence Community?

Ed O’Keefe’s Federal Eye blog this morning had an enlightening post about how many of the leaders in the intelligence community are baby-boomers poised for retirement. In fact, there was a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing yesterday that highlighted these concerns. To be more precise, the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission put out this written statement:

“With regard to the intelligence community, the Commission recommends that the Director of National Intelligence accelerate the integration of effort among the counterproliferation, counterterrorism, and law enforcement communities to address WMD proliferation and terrorism issues; strengthen expertise in the nuclear and biological fields; prioritize training and retention of people with critical scientific, language, and foreign area skills; and ensure that the threat posed by biological weapons remains among the highest national intelligence priorities for collection and analysis. We also call on the President and Congress to build a national security workforce for the 21st century; we need to attract and retain people with critical scientific, technical, cultural and linguistic skills in all agencies.”

One of the key tenets of the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) is to recruit young people into the intelligence community. The organization gives out many scholarships and always explores opportunities for partnerships with colleges and universities. For more information about the Foundation’s scholarship program, click here.

You can also see this post on got geoint? www.gotgeoint.com