Mr. Joel Brenner
National Counterintelligence Executive and Mission Manager for Counterintelligence
On August 7, 2006, Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte appointed Joel F. Brenner to serve as National Counterintelligence Executive and Mission Manager for Counterintelligence. In this capacity, Mr. Brenner will play a central role in identifying the key strategic CI threats, evaluating those threats, and coordinating our efforts to predict, penetrate, and preempt intelligence activities directed against U.S. national security. As the Mission Manager for Counterintelligence, Mr. Brenner will work closely with key agencies and departments to meet the goals of our strategic CI mission. Since 2002, Mr. Brenner has served as the Inspector General of the National Security Agency (NSA), where he managed a large staff of both auditors and inspectors that was responsible for examining all aspects of NSA's signals intelligence and information assurance missions. Prior to his service with NSA, Mr. Brenner was an attorney at the Department of Justice and in private practice. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin (BA), the London School of Economics (PhD), and Harvard Law School (JD), and was a Marshall Scholar. Mr. Brenner takes over for Ambassador Eric Boswell who has served as the Acting National Counterintelligence Executive since January 2006.
Note - The role of the Mission Manager recommended by the WMD Commission and endorsed by the President is a new and important one. There are now five Mission Managers: one for counterterrorism (the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center), one for counterproliferation (the Director of the National Counterproliferation Center), one for counterintelligence (the Director of the National Counterintelligence Executive), and one each for the countries of Iran and North Korea. Mission Managers will not directly manage operations or analysis, but will instead lead the Intelligence Community at a strategic level.