NCSC Nominee Wants to Establish a New Counterintelligence Career Field

George Wesley, the current administration’s nominee to head the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), has indicated his plans to establish a new counterintelligence type career field to help bridge the communication and collaboration gaps between law enforcement agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigations and intelligence community agencies. He envisions the NCSC can act as the fusion center for the government and private entities when it comes to the distribution of critical information collected by one agency so it could be used across the board.

Having been in various counterintelligence positions while serving in the U.S. Army, Wesley noted those currently working counterintelligence missions are borrowed help from other agencies and are not specifically trained in counterintelligence. They are investigators, analysts, and personnel security tapped to support counterintelligence. Instead, Wesley wants to establish a career field series specifically trained as a formal counterintelligence professional. With China and Russia continuing to target U.S. technologies and assets, a more aggressive counterintelligence posture is needed.

With the current political climate making life stressful for government employees and contractors, more and more cleared employees are looking elsewhere for opportunities, and are inviting targets for foreign agents posing as recruiters or headhunters seeking employees with access to sensitive or proprietary information. A new counterintelligence professional specifically trained to find these threats would be a valuable asset for the government, but first we have to sort out the current wave of hiring freezes before we can move forward.