CIA to make sweeping changes, focus more on cyber ops -agency chief

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The Central Intelligence Agency will make one of the biggest overhauls in its nearly 70-year history, aimed in part at sharpening its focus on cyber operations and incorporating digital innovations, CIA director John Brennan said.

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.