When Tom Waters decided to become a spy, the first thing on his mind wasn't how much he'd get paid. Like thousands of people, Waters applied to work for the CIA in the national furor over the 9/11 attacks.
He was motivated by patriotism, and a desire to serve his country, but when he sat down and did the math about his career-long earning potential, "[I] scared the hell out of myself," he says. "I would be 65
by the time my children got out of college. The first phrase that came to mind was, 'Welcome to Wal-Mart.'" Waters left the CIA and got a higher-paying job as a contractor to the intelligence community.
The nation's spy agencies are grappling with a personnel crisis.
Today, roughly 40 percent of their workforce is comprised of people like
Waters--motivated recruits, but with five years of experience or less.
Senior officials insist that they're not hemorrhaging talent to contractors, but these new recruits--often called "Millennials"--don't necessarily see intelligence as a long-term career.
That's a big problem, because at the other end of the personnel spectrum is a large number of senior employees, people with perhaps more than 20 years experience. In between these two humps of rookies and old-timers is a deep, unsettling valley. Effectively, the intelligence agencies have little middle-management strength, which begs the question, "When the veterans retire, who will run American spying?"
The current cover story of Government Executive examines this spy gap, and looks at what senior officials are doing to fill it: Make intelligence work more attractive to young people, give them more career mobility, and find ways to mentor a new generation of spies.
-- Shane Harris
