Thread: FBI to hire more Analysts

FBI Improving Hiring of Intel Analysts

By LARA JAKES JORDAN
The Associated Press
Monday, April 23, 2007; 6:57 PM

WASHINGTON -- The FBI has made strides in hiring intelligence analysts to look for clues about terror attacks but is still about 400 jobs short of reaching its authorized staffing level, a Justice Department audit concluded Monday.

Steps have been taken to hire, train, use and keep intelligence analysts, yet progress has been "slow and uneven" in some cases, according to a new report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.


The FBI plans to hire about 250 new analysts by the end of September, the report showed. It has more than doubled its number of analysts since 2001, growing from 1,023 employees that year to 2,174 in 2006.

"Analysts continue to express high levels of satisfaction with their work assignments and believe they are making important contributions to the FBI's mission," the audit found. That conclusion was enthusiastically embraced as "perhaps most important" by FBI National Security chief Willie T. Hulon.

"We concur with the spirit of the OIG's three main recommendations and acknowledge our need for continued improvement in order to achieve an optimally integrated and functional analytic cadre," Hulon, the FBI's executive assistant director, wrote in an April 16 letter that was included in the report.

Fine's audit was an update to a 2005 report by his office that found that the FBI, among other things, had hired fewer than 40 percent of the analysts needed to meet its goal, and was using many analysts for tasks unrelated to their jobs.

Concerns linger, Fine's report said, including:

_The FBI continues to struggle to develop an adequate training program for its analysts.

_A "strong professional divide" still exists between special agents who investigate counterterrorism cases and the analysts who interpret the intelligence to assist them.

_Better strategies need to be developed to keep the analysts at the FBI beyond a five-year period that many said would be their minimum time on the job.

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