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 Brennan said he is creating new units within the CIA, called
"mission centers," intended to concentrate the agency's focus on
specific challenges or geographic areas, such as weapons
proliferation or Africa.
The CIA director said he also is establishing a new "Directorate of
Digital Innovation" to lead efforts to track and take advantage of
advances in cyber technology to gather intelligence.
Historically, electronic eavesdroppers at the National Security
Agency have been at the cutting edge of digital innovation within
the U.S. government. But the CIA felt that it had to reorganize to
keep up with the technological "pace of change," as one official put
it.
Brennan said the new digital directorate will have equal status
within the agency with four other directorates which have existed
for years.
"Our ability to carry out our responsibilities for human
intelligence and national security responsibilities has become more
challenging" in today's digital world, Brennan said. "And so what we
need to do as an agency is make sure we’re able to understand all of
the aspects of that digital environment."
 Brennan briefed a small group of reporters on the changes on
Wednesday, on the condition they did not publish until he told CIA
employees on Friday.
Stepping up the CIA's expertise in cyberspace may help it counter
technological innovations and sophisticated use of social media by
militant groups such as Islamic State. It could also mitigate what
U.S. officials have said is damage to intelligence gathering caused
by former NSA and CIA contractor Edward Snowden.
The 10 new "mission centers" will bring together CIA officers with
expertise from across the agency's range of disciplines to
concentrate on specific intelligence target areas or subject matter,
Brennan said.
Competition between spy agencies and between units within agencies
has led to "stove piping" of information that should have been
widely shared and to critical information falling through
bureaucratic cracks, Brennan and other U.S. intelligence officials
said.
"I know there are seams right now, but what we’ve tried to do with
these mission centers is cover the entire universe, regionally and
functionally, and so something that’s going on in the world falls
into one of those buckets," Brennan said.
The CIA currently operates at least two such interdisciplinary
centers, covering counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence.
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Reaction to the CIA reorganization was mostly positive, although
some veterans acknowledged it will likely prompt bureaucratic
friction within the spy agency.
"I think that this will strengthen the CIA significantly over time,"
former CIA acting director and deputy director Michael Morell said.
"There are short term costs...A lot of things to work out," Morell
added. "And there are going to be...senior people with heartburn."
Sen. Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
praised Brennan's moves.
"This reorganization was driven not by any institutional failure,
but by the realization that the world has changed over the course of
the last 70 years. In many ways, the Director’s proposal is long
overdue," Burr said in a statement.
Created in 1947, the CIA is divided into four major directorates.
Two - the Directorate of Science and Technology, which among other
activities invents spy gadgets, and the Directorate of Support,
which handles administrative and logistical tasks - will retain
their names.
The Directorate of Intelligence will be renamed "Directorate of
Analysis" to reflect its function as the home of agency experts who
collate and analyze information from secret and open sources,
Brennan said.
The National Clandestine Service, home of front-line agency
undercover "case officers," who recruit spies and conduct covert
actions, will be renamed Directorate of Operations, which is what it
had been called for most of the agency's history.
(Editing By Warren Strobel and Grant McCool)
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