Ellen McCarthy: A Journey From Analyst To The Most Senior Echelons of the Intelligence Community

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Hello, I'm Bob Gourley, the Chief Technology Officer of OODA LLC. Today on the Oodacast, Ellen McCarthy, a distinguished executive who has served at the highest levels of the US Intelligence community. An extensive career in and around the intel community. Ellen's career in the intelligence world began at the Office of Naval Intelligence. She then moved to North Norfolk at the Atlantic Intelligence Command where we first met. She moved back to D.C. and would later lead all intelligence activities at the U.S. coast Guard as their Director of Intelligence. Ellen then joined the Department of Defense's Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence where she worked on strategy and human capital management. Later, Ellen led the non profit public private partnership known as ensa, the Intelligence and National Security alliance where she helped a broad community continued to exchange lessons across boundaries. Ellen returned to government service as the Chief Operating Officer of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. Later, she led the firm Nobless as its president. Ellen was then appointed the Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research where she led an organization famed for the highest quality of analysis in the US Intelligence community. Ellen, welcome to the oodacast.

Thanks, Bob. Really good to be here.

Great. And Ellen, that was my version of your bio as a high level overview. Did I get that about right?

You did. And I'm sitting here thinking, wow, how did I get all that done in the last five years?

I do want to dive a bit deeper into some of your experiences, but I want to start at the foundational story. Would you tell us why you decided to pursue a career in government service and specifically in the intel community to begin with?

Sure, Bob. You know, I would love to say, you know, from the time I was a little girl, I always dreamed of working in the intel community. But I'll tell you, that really wasn't what it was. I actually started. I was, I was working at the Capitol newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, and my dream was to someday become the publisher of a magazine called Proceedings. And so, you know, my dream was I wanted to publish Proceedings. I wanted to have a golden retriever, and I wanted to have a house and a sailboat on the Chesapeake Bay. And that really was what I wanted. Of course, a colleague of ours, Bill Hamlet, got my dream job and he's perfect for that position. So I'm awfully glad he's there. But it was the publisher of the newspaper who, when I shared this with him, he said, well, you know, have you thought about you're a great critical thinker. You know, I was writing articles for the newspaper. Have you thought about, you know, working in the intelligence business, maybe Naval intelligence, and, you know, maybe you should go get a master's degree. And so it really was somebody who sponsored me and said, you know, maybe let's try a master's program at University of Maryland. And then, as I did that program, he introduced me to some folks in the Navy side of the house. And so, you know, it's so funny that there'll be a theme throughout our discussion today is it's not only knowing, you know, being good at what you do, you know, being excellent at your trade craft, but also having a network. And in this case, Phil Merrill, the publisher, newspaper, really changed my world. I thought I would go do it for a couple of years, but, you know, you know, Bob, that this is a field, this is a career path that sort of takes you. You don't choose it. Once you're there, it's very hard to let it go. And. And so as I look back now, over 30 years, while I may not have made it to proceedings, it has been just a wonderful ride so far, you know.

That's awesome. Yeah, see, I never knew that about you. That's a great foundational story. I did run into you shortly after you moved to Norfolk, Virginia. The Atlantic Intelligence Command. That was a great place with a dynamic mission. And when I think of the AIC and those days, a lot of good people come to mind.

That was a good crew. It was so Sharon Frenchie, Dave Cooney.

Lawrence Lyn Wright, Brian Sawyer, so many other greats.

It was crazy. And, you know, who knew when we were down there, I mean, I just thought that was always the way it was. But, you know, now as I look back, what a fabulous team.

Yeah, it really was. I wonder, did you take away any leadership lessons from that stage of your career?

Well, you know, it's funny. The reason I left, you know, I was at Suitland at oni, and I went down to Norfolk for a couple of reasons. But I'll tell you, a really big reason was in Sioux Lin. You know, we did great work. I mean, I actually think that Naval intelligence analysts are some of the best in the community. When you think of sort of who has moved up to senior leadership positions and where they got their start, you know, it really, I think it was the principle of lessons we learned, just as all source analysts at Navy. But I was writing things, and I never really got a sense of who was I writing for. You know, I just didn't get that feedback. And so going down to AIC and then working for Sync Lamp and for the other service elements that were attached to Atlantic Command at the time, it was just very satisfying. You wrote something and you got immediate feedback. It was good, it was bad, it helped, and I loved that. I mean, for me, that was self actualization, was knowing that you were actually having an impact on a policy or on an operation. And you had to be very creative in terms of how you delivered that intelligence. You really were very aligned to your client or your customer or the war fighter, however you want to term that person. And so I learned there that really becoming an expert at the, at the folks that you are supporting or partnering with is more important than actually being excellent at your trade craft. So being really customer focused. And, you know, the other lessons I learned were, you know, I was given a lot of freedom, you know, and in those days, we weren't necessarily told what to write about, but the expectation was that you were going to write messages or write products that, that were going to have an impact. Again, you thought about your customer and you could pretty much. There was really no bad jobs. You could make any job your job. You could tailor it the way you want it to. I was blessed to have had some great bosses and leaders and mentors down there. But there was one boss in particular who I won't mention now, who was not the most inspiring. It was interesting. It was a point in my career I always thought my boss was smarter than me. And this was the first time I said, I don't know if this guy. I don't, you know, I don't know about this guy. But I'll tell you what I did learn was how to continue to operate successfully even when you did have a leader who was not necessarily the most inspiring. And that was, you know, by really fostering some strong relationships with your colleagues in the office and also developing relationships with others in the command and really expanding your network, which was a great way of sort of following chain of command, but also staying inspired and happy.

Ellen, you bring back a lot of memories. And I've seen and worked for the same kind of boss. In fact, from there probably took away the same kind of leadership lessons. And there's also times when I saw that, well, there's a leader I will not be if I ever get in that position. Because you see other people in that same position who have a different approach that lead by creating a common vision and aligning people and encouraging and they can still be very demanding, but in a way where you understand why you're doing it. And I think people work as hard or harder and deliver more under that kind of environment.

I agree. And you know, also leadership by being present. You know, for me, those were, you know, setting a strategy, you know, identifying the elements of the strategy, assigning people to actually implement those elements and then holding them accountable has been the best model for me. And then being there, you know, I'll never forget Admiral Wilson when he was the J2. You know, it was not unusual for him to walk out at the end of the day and sit down, put his feet up on the desk and just talk to you about how things were going or if he, or if we sent him a message and he liked it. He used to put a smiley face in the corner. I know that sounds so simple, but I tell you, your day could get made if you came back and there was a smiley face written in the corner of a product that you had delivered to him. So those things really mattered. And I will tell you, he in particular was somebody that I definitely tried to model throughout my career.

Yeah, that's a very good point. And he was a good guy, great leader, I'm sure still is today. And he would give broad guidance like just do the right thing for people he trusts. That's kind of his guide.

Well, you know, my other, the other thing that I, in fact, I still stay in contact with him and I still have followed this I'll never forget at a mid career course at Damn, which I got the opportunity to participate in. His advice to us was work hard, play hard, sleep smart. And I took a quote away from that. Sleep last. But he really did say sleep smart. And I'll tell you, he certainly lived by that. You know, that it's, you know, love what you do, but also recognize that what you do also enables you to play golf or to go sailing or to go for a run. And he certainly followed those principles and it worked for him. So I just, I just, I just took the lessons.

Right. And now the time you were in Norfolk, that's like 93 to when. When did you depart there?

I came back to D.C. it was 99, something like that. 99, yeah.

What a period of change. There's so much that went on in that time frame.

Oh my gosh, the wall fell. You know that. So another reason that I came back to dc, went to Coast Guard was. And you'll. This is a name you'll remember. Denny Harmon. Denny Harmon was down in Norfolk and I had been running a group of analysts down there. I was actually deputy director of the Analyst and Analyst Branch at AIC at that time. And I said to him, you know, I was still a GS12. I'd been a GS12 for an awfully long time. I'll tell you another thing that I learned down there. And I wish. I wish more analysts here would enjoy the ride as opposed to looking to where you want to go. And so I will tell you that I loved every moment of time when I was down at aic. But when I asked him, I think it's time that I think about doing something different, he said, ellen, you got to go back to D.C. and you may have to get out of analysis for a while. If you really want to look to running something, you really need to understand policy or understand budget or understand people. I'll tell you again, it was somebody who helped me make that move. It was a guy named Tim Duvall, who had been the Navy liaison at Coast Guard Intelligence, and put a word in for me to his boss, who said, I think it's time Ellen McCarthy might be a good fit for your next Navy intel liaison. And sure enough, as a result of Tim Duvall, I moved back to D.C. and started doing intel operations for the Coast Guard. And so. And so funny, all the Navy people I worked for said, why would you want to go to Coast Guard? They don't shoot anything. The Cold War was over. Drugs were a big mission area at that time. It was the Coast Guard that was shooting a lot more than the Navy was in those days.

Right? Yeah. And, you know, when. When people think of Coast Guard, I think it depends on where you live in America, what you think of the Coast Guard. Because the Coast Guard is everywhere. They're on, like, every major waterway, and they're doing safety at a low level and, you know, small craft all the way up to policing the coasts. And they're global. They're all over the place.

So in terms of their port security mission, they do that all around the world, and they have access to ports that the Navy to this day would dream of getting into. And so people said, why do you want to go to little old Coast Guard? Well, as it turned out, it was probably one of the best moves I've ever made, because it was just before 9 11. So you talk about that port security mission, 911 occurs, and all of a sudden, that little port security mission is kind of important. As we were reviewing who was coming and going from ports, who was providing assistance to customs and the Other thing is the Coast Guard has this incredible sort of intel law enforcement, Title 10 military side to it. It's very. It's got sort of three heads in addition to its maritime security role and people. But it was so, so learning that and understanding how you deliver intelligence to an organization that one minute may be wearing its Title 10 hat and the next minute be wearing its law enforcement hat was fabulous.

And then you became the Director of Intelligence at the Coast Guard.

It was Intel Ops. Yes. So they. So what happened was Dennis Hager was then the head of the intel program, a Navy guy, and his charter was to get Coast Gu into the intelligence community. And I was doing policy and strategy at that moment, and so had worked with some great hosties to figure out how can Coast Guard become an element in the ic. Dennis Hager leaves, a woman named Fran Townsend comes in. That's an interesting story. And we had spent two years working the Hill and working the community management staff trying to get the Coast Guard into the ic. She literally picked up the phone and made a call to then Porter Goss. And within like two months, we were part of the intelligence community. I then moved up into the Intel Ops position because there was a lot that came with being an element in the ic. Part of the things that we said we were going to do was to create some unique collection programs, which we did to establish an intel branch or an intel designation within the enlisted corps of the Coast Guard. I mean, there was a lot of things to. We had budget that was both Coast Guard and GDIP or NIP that was managed through, through the Navy. So we had an. We had an analytic cadre at Suitland, but we also had two analytic cadres located at the sort of fleet equivalents for the Coast Guard and land area and PAC area. And so it was just such an exciting time to be able to take this small, small office of, you know, under 100 people and really build it into a. No kidding, intel capability. And I really, I had the opportunity to go visit about six months ago to see where they are now. And it is just incredible. They now have, they now have a SIGINT capability. They have a. They have folks that specialize in SIGINT who now sit at nsa, very involved in cyber. A very impressive CI capability. It's pretty impressive. I'm very proud.

And I can only imagine that your experiences in support to this dynamic mission of submarines, supporting good guy submarines against hostile submarines must have served you well as you moved into this position where you're still taking intelligence and Serving operational decisions.

Oh, it was very exciting. I mean, so we were doing a counter drug mission, which of course is applying all the lessons that we learned at Navy as we were during the Cold War, hunting submarines. It's, you know, I'll tell you, the method that we used to track submarines can pretty much apply to any target. And so, you know, it was really fun to come in now to the Coast Guard, which and sort of help, you know, lay the foundation for what would become the method their analysts used to target bad guys on merchant ships or counter drug guys or terrorists. And so I'll tell you, the Coast Guard emulates the Navy in terms of sort of its methodology, how it operates. And not surprisingly, they're very close partners. So it's been fun. Plus, I've got to tell you, I had wished that one of my two kids would have joined the Coast Guard or gone to the Coast Guard Academy. If I come back, that's something I will do because just a small, smart, they're smaller than the New York City Police Department. Very mission focused. Just a great group.

Cool, great. And Ellen, after the Coast Guard, you went back to Department of Defense to the Undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, is that right?

Yes, yes.

And that was still early in that organization's life lifespan, correct?

Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you, it had just been around for a few months, you know, that that move came. And again, theme people, Tish Long was there as a deputy undersecretary. Lynn Wright, who would then move on at some point to be the Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence, was actually her executive assistant. And my boss at Coast Guard, Fran Townsend, had moved to the White House and she as the counter Homeland Security advisor. And she literally picked up the phone and called then Under Secretary Cambone and said, you should hire Ellen. You're just standing up. And again, the theme, it's not just what you know and, and how good you are at it, but it really is sort of your network, your people. And you know, I was, I've just been so blessed to have had great bosses and great mentors. But it was actually Fran who advised me. You know, Ellen, you need to get out. You need to, you know, you need to get out of Navy, out of Coast Guard, you need to start working under, making connections on the private sector side, which I'll tell you, not only did I go to the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence because of her, but she also suggested that I start attending these events that were run by a group called sassa. And it was the predecessor to insa. And so that was very hard for me. I was very comfortable in my little DOD Navy, Coast Guard world. But I would start attending SASSA events. I remember my first couple events. I would head into the bathroom and hyperventilate because there's so many people. I didn't know anybody, but she was absolutely right. I needed to get out. And USDI was a great place to get out, too. So.

And at usdi, so I can see how, you know, a good, strong endorsement by a mentor gets you a conversation. They select you, you get there. But now you're given these tasks that no one's ever done before. And can you describe what you did there?

Yeah, you know, it was. It was. I got to tell you another. It's been a great ride. My first task was actually there was not a charter that I. So I was working in the policy and strategy shop at usdi, and they still hadn't established a charter. And as you know, in the Department of Defense, everything is very much driven by strategy and doctrine and instructions and directives. And so there was never a charter for USDI that actually laid out what it was, who it was, what authorities did it have. It still was just sort of this amalgamation of different offices. Steve Cambone stood it up. Tish was there, deputy Undersecretary for Policy and Resources, and a bunch of people had tried to put their charter together. But I'll tell you, it was a very interesting time because usdi, there's a lot of folks that said they wanted it, but really it was this new thing, and its focus was really about bringing together the Defense intelligence components and working integration across DIA and NSA and NGA and the Service intelligence components. So I'm going to tell you, I felt very proud to have led the charge in drafting their first charter, the first directive that laid out who they were. It involved a lot of diplomatic skills that I didn't even even realized I had in terms of working with other offices within the Pentagon and the Office of the Secretary of Defense and even within USDI and the four does these, who all had this view about what it was that they were supposed to do. And I'll tell you, so I actually got the charter vetted, and Tish actually went to Secretary Rumsfeld and they signed off on it. And so that, I mean, I'm very proud. I pretty much set the direction for USDI from a policy perspective. You talk about timing. It was also when the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Protection act was then passed on the Hill, which created this thing called the Director of National Intelligence. And, you know, there was always this view that DoD and CIA were not going to be supporters of this new construct, the Office of the dni. But it was my job working with TISH to actually identify how that law was going to impact the Department of Defense and all of its authorities, and then to come up with some ways that we could start working with the Office of the dni. Very interesting times. Again, everybody was sort of trying to figure out where their place was in the universe. And the Intelligence Reform act was a very interesting start. We certainly could talk hours on this. But it was interesting as I sat down and reviewed the authorities that resided within OSD and the authorities that resided within the DNI. And I'll tell you, DoD still retained a lot of authority. So now it was about, how are we going to work together now it was about creating those relationships and diplomacy.

Ellen, when I think of people like Tish, I think experience and operational support. She cares about this mission of intelligence to decision makers. That's been her whole story. When I think about you and your background, it's that same thing. Intelligence support to operational missions and driving decisions. So you guys are exactly the kind of people that I think we needed the formulation of usdi.

Yeah. I'll tell you, the last thing I did at USDI was not at all what I thought I was going to do. Usdi, but to your point, was stood up an office called the Human Capital Management Office. And it was actually Cam Bone and then Undersecretary Clapper who said, you're going to do this. I remember saying to Clapper, I'm not the HR lady. Under Secretary Clapper. And he said, oh, yes, you are. Because I always viewed myself as being the person who delivered intelligence to decision makers, but I never thought of myself as the people person. And I'll tell you, Clapper was absolutely right. As it turned out, I really am the people person. And so we. So I spent a significant amount of time creating professional development programs. We built a new personnel system at the time called dsip. Don't hate me for it. You know, as it turned out, I think everybody or everybody who ever has a desire to lead big organizations needs to spend some time working in the HR world, because really, your people are. It's not just. I'm not just saying this, but developing people, training people, motivating people is going to drive the successful leaders and the unsuccessful leaders. You'll know who they are. Yeah.

And the tough part, though, is finding the balance. How do you Know, because like in the corporate world, just like in government, you have to manage cost. There's overhead, and the amount that you focus on HR and things like that, people look at that as overhead. So if that grows too big and you're not profitable, there's a lot of pressure to shrink that. And same in government, maybe even more so. There's. We need to smartly manage our people and let people know they have career paths and a room to grow and how to get promoted. But the more you devote to that, the less resources you have to devote people to operational missions.

This is the one area that I think we still struggle as a community really is on the hiring and professional development and succession management. I'll tell you D6, the defense civilian intelligence personnel system. This was actually something Congress directed that the Department of Defense developed back in the 90s. And essentially it was a pay for performance system. Now that's a concept that is very foreign to anybody who has spent any time in the government. You know, GS scales, you stay in a place and you move up from grade to grade to grade. But the reality is, I think Congress got this one right, you know, which is if you do good work, if you have an impact, you know, if you, if you provide value, that's how you get promoted. But I'll tell you, that's very hard to do in a government bureaucracy, and especially one where you had so many people that were very comfortable with the GS scale. If I stay here and continue to make the donuts, I'll be a 9, and then I'll be at 11, and then I'll retire at a 14. And I'm really just here because of the stability. Well, I've got to tell you, I think for any of us who've been in government for the last 10 years, there's not stability in the government anymore. If you've lived through sequestration or you've lived through government shutdowns or you've seen that there are opportunities outside the government that can provide you mission focus and a better salary and a better quality of life. You know, it's very different now than when you and I started, you in the Navy and me and the Naval Intelligence civilian. And so I really believe how we manage and develop and promote our people needs to be and how we, how we provide security clearances for people needs. We've been talking about it, but I still think there's so much more we need to do.

Yeah, I agree. And you know, Ellen, my career took a more of a technology slant and I was big into technology. Now I always said I like people and technology, just not in that order, but you know, but really, I know it's about the people.

The people. Well, I'll tell you, it is. As I sit here, having rotated again out of government, especially at inr, it really is about the people. Because there, as you know better than anyone, Bob, there are so many, so many exciting things going on in the private sector right now when it comes to AI and machine learning and, and cybersecurity. I mean you go to the RSAs and the, you know, the, just the technology and the development and the innovation is just eye watering in terms of what's happening. It's so exciting. And. But then you look at Ric and you say, well, why is it so hard to bring in those capabilities? And at the end of the day, it's not because of the technology, it's because of the people. You know, we're very risk averse as a, as a community. I think it's good that we're a risk aver. We have very important. We have people's lives that sort of sit on our analysis and on the things that we do. I think we need to lighten up a little bit. I mean, again, I think we need leaders who are willing to take some chances and willing to try some new things.

I want to dig a little bit deeper into that in a moment, but first I wanted to ask about a couple other of your major career steps because every one of these are positions where you have had an opportunity to make great change, including your role at ensa. What do you view ENSA as?

The Intelligence and National Security Alliance I mentioned. I started at sassa. I would go to SASSA events and then it would change and grow to become the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. It was so funny how that opportunity came. I was actually sitting on the board insa. John Brennan was the chair and they had had a leadership change. And he was talking to the board about this leadership change and he said, would anybody be interested or does anybody have a name, you know, that, that, you know, would, might want to come in and consider taking on this job. And I very hesitantly raised my hand and said, you know, I might do this. Interesting enough, Clapper was the Undersecretary of Defense. And when I told him this, he said, ellen, it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Why would you want to go do that? And I think the reason he said why was because INSTA was going through some challenging times. It was, you know, and it was a lot of it was also just related to where the IC was at the time budgets were being cut. As you remember, the wall came down. President Clinton was in place. The intel budget took a significant cut. I'm not sure we managed the resources we had to the best that we could have. And it was a very tough time for the IC and then for the private sector that supported it. You know, they're just. There was budget cuts in this area. So even businesses were, you know, were having a hard time supporting the IC, you know, pre 9 11. And so insa was certainly feeling those stressors. So I said, so I threw caution to the wind and I went because I thought, well, this might be kind of interesting. I looked at the people who had been leading sassa. Jim Clapper had been the president of sassa. John Brennan was the chairman of the board. The people sitting around that table were the Tish Longs and people that I had such high respect for. Admiral McConnell had been the chair. And I thought, you know, I might get a chance to learn from these leaders who are now leaders in the private sector. You know, up until that point, I did not have very close relationships with the private sector or contractors like so many in the community. They view the contractor corps sort of being the separate thing never to be considered. But this was my first chance to really understand how the critical role the private sector plays in terms of IC operations and to learn what motivates them and really to provide a safe place where government and private sector can sit down and talk about things, whether it's smart change or technology or cyber or, you know, just security clearance that this is a place that you could do it. It sort of straddled both sides. Sides. It was safe. And I'll tell you, and I got a chance to run an operation. And so ANSA was not doing so well at that time. But I'll tell you that I knew that we could turn things around because we had people like you, Bob, who were willing, who were very loyal to INSA and had some great ideas, great brand, great people, great mission. So helping it succeed was not going to be that hard. Set a strategy, identify where you want to start. We started with cyber, look for customers. Melissa Hathaway was in the White house doing the 90 day cyber review for President Obama. She said, I'd love to get your help. So it was picking the areas where you were strongest, putting the best people against that, narrowing our vision and succeeding, showing great value. And I'll tell you that it was actually the 90 day review that Melissa Hathaway ran for President Obama. We put together a council at INSA to support that paper. She rolled out the paper at an INSA event. Everybody wanted to hear from Melissa Hathaway. And it turned out that that was the beginning of what would really move INSA to. I mean, again, you look at where INSA is today and for those of you listening, if you're not, you should look. I mean, it's just an incredible organization. So what a great ride. And again, I got to understand the private sector, what motivates them, what they do. And when I went back to government, I was able to bring all of that with me. And I will tell you how valuable that was.

And you went back to NGA as the Chief Operating Officer.

Yeah, that was that role.

It sounds operational.

So at the time, you know, NGA has gone through a few organization changes, but at the time, Tish Long was the director. So again, she's the one that made the call. She was looking for the number three in the organization. There was a director, a deputy director and a chief operating Officer. And we were really, no kidding, responsible for everything from day to day operations of NGA to implementing her strategy. Tish is somebody who's very. She sets a strategy, sets a vision, sets goals. And it was my job to make sure that the budget and the people and the requirements were all realigned to the objectives that she had laid out and her strategy. And, and that was very. That's new for a lot of intel organizations. So I mean, it was literally everything from the air conditioning to implementing her strategy. It was a big job, but I had some great people. And I'll tell you, I love doing things. So it was easy when she just said, ellen, these are the things I want to get done. Go. I got to do it. And so we were doing everything from realigning budget to a portfolio, portfolio construct so we could actually start resourcing some of the things she wanted to do. My private sector contacts proved to be very timely given that NGA was more and more ramp. Ramping up its acquisition of commercial imagery. You know, the private sector commercial imagery field was exploding. And so that was. It was just great times for us to be able to understand and learn from folks in the private sector. What were they doing? Who are they doing for? How could we leverage their capabilities? How could we leverage their products? That was a big job, but a fun job.

But at one point it was time to go and you left and then you became president at Noblesse.

Well, it was Actually, Noblesse had a subsidiary company called Noblesse NSP National Security Partners Mitigation kind of situation. So it was, it was a very interesting business model, Bob. So Noblesse itself is a nonprofit. It's an offshoot of Mitre, Mitre Tech. So very R and D focused, very technology focused. Noblesse was the for profit subsidiary entity. So any, any profit we made would get folded into Noblesse to continue with its IRAD programs. And Nobless NSP was very focused on data analytics and cyber Threat Intelligence. So actually it was interesting. They weren't necessarily the same thing. Data analytics and supporting some things that CIA was working on at the time and FBI and then Cyber Threat Intelligence was on the Air Force NSA side. And so, you know, I got to run a company. It was an interesting time for this company because Noblesse had purchased nsp. It had been literally four separate companies that had been smushed together and then sold. And so I got to use some of the things I learned from being the HR lady in terms of how do you bring together four different cultures? How do you motivate people to focus on a smaller pipeline? They had a pipeline that was about as wide as it could be. And so given my time at insa, it was about focusing on the things, the value that NSP could provide its customers and really focusing our time on maybe two or three opportunities, vice 100 opportunities. So this was actually a great chance to. And it was a P and L, A profit and loss. And I'll tell you that I learned that I actually liked the P and L model. A lot of folks in the government think that making money is a bad thing. Making money is an incredible measure of how you're doing.

It's the American way. That's what we're here to protect.

Well, it really is, but it's also a measure of the value you're providing. So if you take away, you know, it's not just about making money for money's sake. It's about providing, providing a service or providing a resource to somebody who needs it so they can do better. And so it's so hard to measure value when you're in the government, although I have some ideas on that in the private sector, you know, it's much easier. It's are you making money? And in this case, it was money that was then getting folded back into noblest to develop new capabilities. So I. It was a great three years.

Cool. And Ellen, I want to talk about the Department of State and your role there. The Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and research. Now, I think a lot of people watching and listening might not really have heard of this organization. Let me give you my view of this group and of course I really want to hear from you since you led it. But you know, from the early 80s I had heard about this group and the reputation was here's a cadre of experts at Department of State that knows something about every country in the world. Maybe that wasn't true, but you could ask a question of you name the country and they've got two people that have studied that for their entire career and they know the culture, the leadership, the actions, and they have this deep expertise. And through my whole career this organization had that reputation among the people in the rest of the intel community. Then after 9 11, the reputation grew even more because these guys were just right again and again and again on topics like Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. When I was back in government, I got to see some of their technology infrastructure. I love tech tools and analytical tools. And I go there and I see that their greatest analytical tool is the brain. They get data into the brain of these smart people and think. So maybe it's not the most famous organization in the intelligence community, but it's certainly one of the most highly regarded. But now let me ask Ellen, what really is the intelligence and research organization in Department of State?

Well, I. Bob, you just, I mean, I don't have much to add to that because pretty much everything you described is what INR is. I thought the same thing and I had a chance to course be there for the last two years and it's all that and more. I always thought that they sort of chose to be this small boutique capability embedded in State. But I'll tell you, I actually learned that, you know, so it was our 75th anniversary as an all source civilian intelligence organization. So as I was doing the research on sort of the roots of inr, it really was the Research and Analysis Branch from the oss. Our INR is the only continuously operating component of the O, which disbanded in 1945.

The OSS is a very famous Office of Strategic Services led by Wild Bill.

Wild Bill Donovan. Yes. And so I will tell you that I've spent the last two years reading everything I can about the OSS and Wild Bill Donovan because now it explains everything about who INR is and how it operates. And you know, interestingly enough, when those 1600 analysts went to State, State didn't want them because they said things that the policymakers didn't want to hear and because they, they viewed themselves, the diplomats, to be, to be truly the, the elite, to be educated, the ones who knew. But these analysts were so good. I mean they, they literally were so studied and so expert and they would come in and tell the policymaker things they didn't want to hear. And so A group of 1600 analysts in 1945 ended up at 300 when I started. And I'm sitting here thinking, well, how did that work? You know, why is it they were over 75 years, their budget has gotten smaller, the numbers of people have gotten less, but they're still delivering this, they still are just really good. And, and so what I learned was that there really is. And you had mentioned that what motivates the Tish's and the Ellens and the Bobs are delivering intelligence to a decision maker. So what motivates INR is delivering intelligence to the policymaker and they're co located with them in the building. So they'll do anything they can to make sure that the policymaker, the Secretary of State, the unders and the assistants and the desk officers get their views on things. The problem is, is that they're not as integrated as they were in the past because the world has gotten so much more complex. And you talked about the architecture at State which is not particularly impressive. And so they were still delivering intelligence and leather bound briefing books every morning just like you and I did it back in the 80s. So it was almost as if time had stopped. And so INR was small and boutique, not by choice, but just because it needed, it needed someone with some background in the intelligence business to say, wait a minute, you know, there are things we can do to help you. You know, there's capabilities we can bring in. Let's go ask, you know, we've got this office of the dni. Let's go to the office of the DNI and say dni, we need some help here. I mean we are the number one producer of the President's daily brief per capita. You tell us we punch above our weight. Help us out here. You know, we've got, you know, to articulate where we needed more investment and then to ask for it and to move out on it. So I'll tell you, I think inr, of all the places I've worked is absolutely the best in terms of the quality of analysis and the expertise and, and their mission to support the, or to partner with the policymaker. But they are the most hugely under resourced organization in the IC. And I'm not suggesting that they become another CIA or DIA, their sister. All source organizations of 15,000 people. But they do need a few more people and a few more resources. And I'm happy to go into some detail there for you.

Well, it's so fascinating and you got me excited about the history. I want to keep learning about this too. And I guess I should ask, do you intend to write anything about their history?

So it's funny, it's funny you should say that. I do. I will. I've said. I really will. I'm very. So I've read so much about them and really. And the latest thing I read actually was about Sherman Kent, of all people. Sherman Kent, the father of intelligence analysis from CIA's perspective. Sherman Kent was actually one of those researchers in the research and analysis branch. He came to State Department and spent two days and said, this is just not my, this is not my thing. These people. How do I go from working for Wild Bill Donovan and saving a country to being in State where I'm just going to be not listened to, ignored. And so he went off and created the CIA and created this whole new analytic method about policy and analysis and keeping analysis pure, keeping it separate. You know, interestingly enough, I think maybe the days of Sherman Kent are kind of over. I think INR is a great example of that, that there's something to being embedded with a policymaker and understanding what he or she is thinking.

That's exactly what I wanted to ask you about, Ellen, because I feel the same. And you know, there's analogies back to our old world of operational Navy intelligence. We were right there with the same guys who are ordering submarines around, around. So it's an instantaneous feedback. And Sherman Kent's model was maybe it's right for the time and maybe it wasn't the Cold War, but it was very much separate. It's. I will speak truth to power and not be intimidated and be separate and would love.

So I saw. So I will tell you, Bob, that's exactly. And I'll tell you that I think at inr, it was really a chance to practice all the things that I had had a chance to do over the course of 30 years, starting with, with the Navy. And, you know, we, you know, really pushing INR to be even more integrated with its, its customer. And it's hard to do when you're so small. But that the reality is, is that, that, that we, we knew we do need to be sitting in the policy offices. We do need to be sitting in the room as policy is being formulated. We do need to train our analysts to, to, not to. To not sort of become swayed by the policy, but to take great pride in maybe having an opposite opinion, much like INR and the OSS did when it came over to State. And so I actually think that the community has to start thinking more this way. If I was the director of CIA or the DNI, I might go to CIA and say, you analysts at CIA, you need to leave McLean. You need to flood the halls of State Department. You're a technology guy, Bob. The one thing I noticed during my time there was we spent an extra extraordinary amount of time correcting policymakers. So the Wuhan virus, you know, the secretary, the Assistant Secretary for East Asia were very focused on the Wuhan viruses, while they should be given sort of China's role in all of that. But we knew it was not the Wuhan virus. And so we needed to come up with ways to make sure that we were giving them the intel that we had that would support their policy. So that we're not saying, look, you're dealing with bad data. Look, look at the good data. And so what's happened was, is that because the policymakers and the decision makers are. They're buried in data, they're being given insights from all sources, whether it's the media or it's diplomats or it's think tanks or students. If intel is not sitting in the room, we're constantly going to be. It'll be a do loop of trying to correct them as they work with bad data or bad insights or just wrong information. We can't. We've got to get in front of the problem. We can't be correcting, correcting bad data. And so that's, I mean, I actually think that that's the model the IC should follow, looking into the future, that of being a content provider, a deliverer of insights, being in the room, being able to provide some not influence, but being used differently and more regularly. Great.

So I have a kind of related question to ask, and I wanted to tease it out this way. If you look at your early career, in fact, where you and I first met, at that time, the world was changing. The Berlin Wall was falling. The Soviet Union would soon dissolve. And then all of a sudden, these technologies that were once exclusive to the intel community were being commoditized and commercialized. Overhead imagery is the perfect example. Then the Internet connected everything. In a few years, the entire world is on this global grid. There's the rise of mobile comms, freeing us from geography and giving everybody this power, like ESP to connect with each other. There's the rise of social media and new threats like terrorism. But then old actors learn how to manipulate our social media and deliver propaganda to any citizen. So the whole world has changed. But meanwhile, if you look at the intelligence community, if you could bring General George Washington back to life, I think he would recognize what's going on here. It's really the same as he would have structured with some modifications done by Wild Bill Donovan. I think Bill Donovan would understand everything that's going on here. There's been very little structural change in the opinion of many, including me. Now you mentioned one potential change would be make the intel community more of a content provider. But what do you think? What else needs to occur to really adopt the intel community for the future? Or is it just that the intel community is so perfect it doesn't need to change?

Well, you and I, you know that you and I share that view. I mean, I'm a great proponent of change and growth and getting better. But to your point, we kind of, we've kind of been stuck. I mean, I'll tell you, at inr, they're still delivering intelligence in hard copy in a leather bound briefing book. You know, that's, that's not the most effective model if you're trying to integrate intelligence with decision makers. You know that it's not a very secure model. And oftentimes we talk about the politicization of intelligence. That model actually is not about analysts being politicized, but it's about people who pull out one sheet of paper and says, this is the page I like that supports my, my view of the world. And then they really leave the rest of the book. And so it's, intel is being more easily politicized because of our delivery model. So again, it's about if you are more closely integrated, if you are in the room, you know, you'll have more influence, you'll have more, you have a better ability to impact what's going on, much like we did with submarines and talking directly to submarine commanders as they were out there hunting Soviet submarines. So I think that the intel community and I think the way you change the intelligence community, I said it's a people problem, but I really do believe it's about how we are. I think we need to change our analytic model and turn it on its head. I saw at INR that our analysts start their day with open source, unclassified, publicly available information. This goes back to the Research Analysis branch at the oss and State has an architecture no Matter what, how archaic it is, but they have an architecture where they have an unclassified secret and a top secret SEI network. So when Covid hit inr, we didn't stop because we had an architecture. I had very smart analysts and I told them, you go home and you keep writing, but you're going to write at the unclassified level. And we put out this product called the Commentary and we did 500 of them during my time there. When Covid started, some of them actually made them into the pdb. But to great, they were very popular and had a lot of requests for even more of them because now we were writing at a level where folks could use it. And I had analysts sitting at home, very smart, multiple languages, very steeped in their area, to your point, who had no problem sitting here and reading 10 different newspapers and writing something up and sending it out. And it works. I mean, this is a good side of the pandemic. And a lot of the other agencies didn't have that. You know, they did not have an unclassified network that they could start their day on. And a lot of their analysts are not comfortable working with open source information. So I would love to see the IC sort of flip the model on its head and every analyst start his or her day with an open source that's available to all the analysts and that they work from there. And I think, I mean NGA has been trying to do something similar to this with Pathfinder and other, but at INR we were doing this. I mean, I would love to see it and I'm happy to see a lot of things that have been written by folks who are now back in. And I think there's absolutely recognition that we need to look at open source differently. I just hope that we don't look at it as a stovepipe like SIGINT and EMMENT and human, but that we look at it is it has to be the foundation for everything the IC does.

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. That's good.

Yeah.

Ellen, I appreciate the time today. I have one last question. I would love to get your views on any books that we should all be reading. Anything come to mind. You mentioned all this reading you've been doing on oss.

I gotta tell you, I. So I have been almost for the last two years just reading everything I can on the oss. And actually what I would say to your listeners, Bob, is history. I mean, I think that how do you know where you're going if you don't know where you've Been. And I'll tell you that I am so inspired by Wild Bill Donovan. Actually, I'm doing. The OSS Society has asked me to interview an author, Erica Roebuck, who's just put out a book called the Invisible Woman. I just finished reading this book. It's about Virginia hall and one of the stars of the oss. And I will tell you that for me, as I read the stories of how Wild Bill Donovan and Virginia hall, who was dropped into France and supported the French Resistance and really changed the course of World War II, when I hear how they did their. How they operated, how they succeeded, that's what motivates me. And I think that's the kind of leader. So I would like to think of myself more as a Wild Bill Donovan than perhaps some others. You know, he was somebody who was just incredibly creative. And, you know, he used to laugh and say that his people were the smartest people who could win at a bar fight. You know, it made me think of Admiral Wilson. You know, work hard, play hard. You know, the community that you and I started in, where you're allowed to be creative, you're rewarded for trying. It's okay to make a mistake now and then that those who get promoted are the ones who are the hungriest. And so I would say to. And the other thing is, is that everyone's a leader. No matter where you are in your career, you can start at a GS7 and just rocket as a GS7. And. And again, this was sort of how we started. This is how our community started. And I'm still bullish about the ic. I hope I'm not done. I know I'm not done because you support the IC from multiple angles. But I would say read everything you can about Wild Bill Donovan, because I think that's the kind of leader we need.

Great advice. It really is. And, Ellen, this has been full of leadership lessons that I think are applicable to people regardless of the stage of their career and regardless of whether they're in the intel community or industry. I think this has been fantastic, and I really appreciate it.

Bob, thank you for the opportunity. So good to see you. Yeah, Good to see you. Yeah. Thanks for listening to this OODA Loop production. For the latest analysis on cybersecurity technology and global risks, please visit www.ooda loop.com.