Obama Administration Looks to Colleges for Future Spies

[Better Believe It]

Obama Administration Looks to Colleges for Future Spies
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post
June 20, 2009

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.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/19/AR2009061903501.html

[Dr Fate]

1. I would do it just to get that neat key chain with all the hidden gadgets. n/t

n/t

[scheming daemons]

2. Title should be changed to "Every business looks to colleges for future employees"

:eyes:

[Uzybone]

3. well that doesn't sound sinister enough

[11 Bravo]

4. If the author ever needs work, he can always write push-poll questions.

[angstlessk]

5. I recon they quit skid row after boosh left? WTF...the best and the brightest are IN our

universities and colleges..where else to look?