Art Keller, Forbes
What do former spies do when they quit the spy game? Plan covert action campaigns against the nasty old ladies in their homeowners’ association? Overthrow their city council for fun? No, the majority of former CIA case officers work as consultants or contractors within the U.S. intelligence community.
While returning to work as intelligence consultant is the norm, some few do
forge a different path, applying lessons learned from government
service to a new life in the private sector. I recently spoke with two
former CIA case officers, both of whom had served in the most senior
position a case officer can win overseas, that of Chief of Station, or
COS.
A COS is the president’s senior intelligence officer and personal intelligence representative in the country where he or she is serving. I asked the two former Chiefs how the skills they developed as field officers for the CIA translated to the more entrepreneurial existence of the private sector. The first was Chris Burgess, now COO and CSO of Atigeo, a Bellevue, Washington firm focused on mining Big Data. The second was Ren Stelloh, who until July 2012 was CEO of PhaseOne Communications, a California strategic-messaging company.
(Full disclosure: Chris was one of my last Chiefs of Station before I left the Agency myself. I can attest first-hand that he was a dynamic boss and even at the end of his Agency career, possessed of an energy level that would shame the Energizer Bunny.)
When asked about the transition to the private sector and how his Agency skills applied, Chris was candid. “We both know people who have come out of the Agency, tried to work in the private sector, and crashed and burned. When that happens, I think it is due to a failure on the part of the former Agency person to adapt to their new role. There is a temptation to coast on their laurels, on their ‘secret squirrel’ status as an ex-spook, and that doesn’t work. I don’t own a rearview mirror and I don’t look back.
Important as the Agency’s mission is, there are plenty of people doing important work in the private sector, and I set out to work with them.
At every new role I took on, there was a learning curve, but in general, the skills I developed at the Agency translated easily into the private sector.
One that served me well was my ability to collaborate. That’s a huge skill for a field officer. Everybody on a team has something to contribute and you have to truly recognize and believe that. Another skill is a technique common to planning intelligence operations: building in ‘fall back positions’ and alternate routes while mapping out how to attain a goal. In Agency operations, things go wrong and you have to have backup plans. Also in the corporate world, whether you are selling a widget or consulting, competitors will surprise you. Dealing with that surprise, keeping your cool when all about you are losing theirs, definitely came from Agency training. Another key skill I developed in the Agency was creating loyal workforces, which yield outstanding results. A big part of that is knowing exactly what you are asking someone to do. If you don’t know from personal experience, you cannot be shy about asking them to give you feedback on their probability of success in a risky operation.
After retiring with 30+ years of service from the Agency, I spent several years as adviser to Cisco System’s Chief Security Officer, and I found Cisco was doing great work; they’re one of the backbones of the internet. The more info you can provide to the more people, the better people can see and understand what was obscured. Cisco also had a great culture of charitable donation and emergency response work. It was during that time I also penned an article for Chief Security Officer Magazine, “Secrets Stolen, Fortunes Lost,” which later evolved into a book of the same name. The book outlined how businesses are suffering from IP theft from rivals companies and countries. It generated a lot of interest in security circles, up to and including presentation overseas for Interpol.
Now I’m COO and CSO of Atigeo and we’re a compassionate technology company. We want to provide the tools to mine big data, as that is unquestionably the major resource of this century. We’re drowning in data and have no way to make sense of it, which is why we’ve created a system to explore that huge volume called xPatterns. We have created free xPatterns tools to demonstrate how our technology can be used by the general public to mine both structured and unstructured data. One tool is PubMed, that searches National Institute of Health databases, another is Presidential Election 2012, which tracks election info in an non-partisan way. A third is USPTO, which can sort through the huge quantity of data in the US Patent Office’s files.
Creating such tools has the dual benefits of demonstrating our techniques and giving back to the community, which is a big part of Atigeo’s mission.”
For former case officer Ren Stelloh, who just retired as CEO of PhaseOne Communications in July 2012, moving to the private sector came down to a simple choice.
“I was out on the West Coast serving as Chief of Station. I’d become friends with Jody Moxham at PhaseOne. I was getting towards the end of my tour and the question loomed: return to CIA Headquarters for a job as a high muckity-muck, or stay out here and enjoy the sun? Jody had seen me in action and thought I could serve well in a leadership role. Having become acquainted with PhaseOne’s capabilities, i.e. teaching organizations what to say and how to say it, I was very impressed and believed their techniques were desperately needed by a variety of US government customers. I knew I could be a great advocate for them.
I definitely needed to adapt to the new environment in PhaseOne by building up my business acumen. One necessity of learning PhaseOne’s results-oriented approach to communications was that I had to learn how to read a balance sheet; if the effectiveness of a company’s communication strategy isn’t directly reflected in the company’s bottom line, it isn’t working.
But the learning curve went two ways. One of the first things I was able to do for PhaseOne was act as a translator. What I was translating was ‘government-speak’ into language understandable to the private sector. A private company can’t work effectively with a government organization unless they understand what the government organization really wants. It took several months to do, but I was finally able to impart lessons like, ‘When a government organization says that, this other thing is what they are actually looking for.’ Such disconnects aren’t always readily apparent to people who’ve never worked for Uncle Sam, but once you’ve resolved the language disparities, you can form very effective private-public partnerships.
Leadership, communicating with your staff, putting your people first, those were Agency-developed skills and once you’ve learned how to put those things in line, you’ll be successful at whatever you do. I was excited to be able to jump from the Agency and immediately land with a company doing work I considered vital to the US’ strategic goals and interests. I can’t discuss everything we’ve done, but one of the more recognizable things we did was tell the previous Administration that a lot of their messaging was counterproductive. For example, when officials were using the phrase, ‘Global War on Terror,’ what audiences throughout the Islamic world were hearing was, ‘America’s War on Muslims.’ We told them to stop using the phrase and ‘GWOT’ acronym, because it was only hurting the U.S. abroad.
PhaseOne’s techniques can evaluate a message, be it designed to sell pizza in Italy, tickets to a Broadway show, or U.S. viewpoints in a form palatable to foreign cultures. We evaluate the likely success or failure of the message with quantifiable metrics telling organizations, ‘This part of your message works, and this part doesn’t.’”
* * *
One thing apparent in talking to both former Agency leaders is that while they may have left government service, both looked for meaningful work that would continue to provide the sense of “mission” and contribution to the U.S.’s public welfare that they had found in the CIA. Both believed their work in private sector work was/is just as important to the interests of the United States as their decades of work as shadow warrior for Uncle Sam.
What do former spies do when they quit the spy game? Plan covert action campaigns against the nasty old ladies in their homeowners’ association? Overthrow their city council for fun? No, the majority of former CIA case officers work as consultants or contractors within the U.S. intelligence community.
A COS is the president’s senior intelligence officer and personal intelligence representative in the country where he or she is serving. I asked the two former Chiefs how the skills they developed as field officers for the CIA translated to the more entrepreneurial existence of the private sector. The first was Chris Burgess, now COO and CSO of Atigeo, a Bellevue, Washington firm focused on mining Big Data. The second was Ren Stelloh, who until July 2012 was CEO of PhaseOne Communications, a California strategic-messaging company.
(Full disclosure: Chris was one of my last Chiefs of Station before I left the Agency myself. I can attest first-hand that he was a dynamic boss and even at the end of his Agency career, possessed of an energy level that would shame the Energizer Bunny.)
When asked about the transition to the private sector and how his Agency skills applied, Chris was candid. “We both know people who have come out of the Agency, tried to work in the private sector, and crashed and burned. When that happens, I think it is due to a failure on the part of the former Agency person to adapt to their new role. There is a temptation to coast on their laurels, on their ‘secret squirrel’ status as an ex-spook, and that doesn’t work. I don’t own a rearview mirror and I don’t look back.
Important as the Agency’s mission is, there are plenty of people doing important work in the private sector, and I set out to work with them.
At every new role I took on, there was a learning curve, but in general, the skills I developed at the Agency translated easily into the private sector.
One that served me well was my ability to collaborate. That’s a huge skill for a field officer. Everybody on a team has something to contribute and you have to truly recognize and believe that. Another skill is a technique common to planning intelligence operations: building in ‘fall back positions’ and alternate routes while mapping out how to attain a goal. In Agency operations, things go wrong and you have to have backup plans. Also in the corporate world, whether you are selling a widget or consulting, competitors will surprise you. Dealing with that surprise, keeping your cool when all about you are losing theirs, definitely came from Agency training. Another key skill I developed in the Agency was creating loyal workforces, which yield outstanding results. A big part of that is knowing exactly what you are asking someone to do. If you don’t know from personal experience, you cannot be shy about asking them to give you feedback on their probability of success in a risky operation.
After retiring with 30+ years of service from the Agency, I spent several years as adviser to Cisco System’s Chief Security Officer, and I found Cisco was doing great work; they’re one of the backbones of the internet. The more info you can provide to the more people, the better people can see and understand what was obscured. Cisco also had a great culture of charitable donation and emergency response work. It was during that time I also penned an article for Chief Security Officer Magazine, “Secrets Stolen, Fortunes Lost,” which later evolved into a book of the same name. The book outlined how businesses are suffering from IP theft from rivals companies and countries. It generated a lot of interest in security circles, up to and including presentation overseas for Interpol.
Now I’m COO and CSO of Atigeo and we’re a compassionate technology company. We want to provide the tools to mine big data, as that is unquestionably the major resource of this century. We’re drowning in data and have no way to make sense of it, which is why we’ve created a system to explore that huge volume called xPatterns. We have created free xPatterns tools to demonstrate how our technology can be used by the general public to mine both structured and unstructured data. One tool is PubMed, that searches National Institute of Health databases, another is Presidential Election 2012, which tracks election info in an non-partisan way. A third is USPTO, which can sort through the huge quantity of data in the US Patent Office’s files.
Creating such tools has the dual benefits of demonstrating our techniques and giving back to the community, which is a big part of Atigeo’s mission.”
For former case officer Ren Stelloh, who just retired as CEO of PhaseOne Communications in July 2012, moving to the private sector came down to a simple choice.
“I was out on the West Coast serving as Chief of Station. I’d become friends with Jody Moxham at PhaseOne. I was getting towards the end of my tour and the question loomed: return to CIA Headquarters for a job as a high muckity-muck, or stay out here and enjoy the sun? Jody had seen me in action and thought I could serve well in a leadership role. Having become acquainted with PhaseOne’s capabilities, i.e. teaching organizations what to say and how to say it, I was very impressed and believed their techniques were desperately needed by a variety of US government customers. I knew I could be a great advocate for them.
I definitely needed to adapt to the new environment in PhaseOne by building up my business acumen. One necessity of learning PhaseOne’s results-oriented approach to communications was that I had to learn how to read a balance sheet; if the effectiveness of a company’s communication strategy isn’t directly reflected in the company’s bottom line, it isn’t working.
But the learning curve went two ways. One of the first things I was able to do for PhaseOne was act as a translator. What I was translating was ‘government-speak’ into language understandable to the private sector. A private company can’t work effectively with a government organization unless they understand what the government organization really wants. It took several months to do, but I was finally able to impart lessons like, ‘When a government organization says that, this other thing is what they are actually looking for.’ Such disconnects aren’t always readily apparent to people who’ve never worked for Uncle Sam, but once you’ve resolved the language disparities, you can form very effective private-public partnerships.
Leadership, communicating with your staff, putting your people first, those were Agency-developed skills and once you’ve learned how to put those things in line, you’ll be successful at whatever you do. I was excited to be able to jump from the Agency and immediately land with a company doing work I considered vital to the US’ strategic goals and interests. I can’t discuss everything we’ve done, but one of the more recognizable things we did was tell the previous Administration that a lot of their messaging was counterproductive. For example, when officials were using the phrase, ‘Global War on Terror,’ what audiences throughout the Islamic world were hearing was, ‘America’s War on Muslims.’ We told them to stop using the phrase and ‘GWOT’ acronym, because it was only hurting the U.S. abroad.
PhaseOne’s techniques can evaluate a message, be it designed to sell pizza in Italy, tickets to a Broadway show, or U.S. viewpoints in a form palatable to foreign cultures. We evaluate the likely success or failure of the message with quantifiable metrics telling organizations, ‘This part of your message works, and this part doesn’t.’”
* * *
One thing apparent in talking to both former Agency leaders is that while they may have left government service, both looked for meaningful work that would continue to provide the sense of “mission” and contribution to the U.S.’s public welfare that they had found in the CIA. Both believed their work in private sector work was/is just as important to the interests of the United States as their decades of work as shadow warrior for Uncle Sam.
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