Sunita P. joined the ODNI Office of the General Counsel in 2015. Since she has been at ODNI, she has provided legal support to several ODNI components including the National Counterterrorism Center, the IC Chief Information Officer, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity and, most recently, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center.
Sunita discussed her background and how she provides legal guidance as a lawyer in the IC in the Q & A below.
The General Counsel is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The OGC is supported by a career staff that includes a Principal Deputy General Counsel, Deputy General Counsels, and attorneys and legal professionals. OGC’s role is to provide expert legal counsel to ODNI leadership and the agency’s personnel, including those assigned to its five intelligence centers, ensuring that all personnel assigned to the ODNI act in accordance with applicable law, regulations, and directives.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence Strategic Communications (SC) serves as agency’s lead for all internal and external communications. SC develops communication strategies to help disseminate key messages to various audiences including members of the Intelligence Community, the internal ODNI workforce, members of the media, and the general public.
SC is led by the Acting Assistant Director of National Intelligence for Strategic Communications,
Madeline Meeker, and consists of three distinct areas: public affairs, internal communication, and multimedia. All components work in coordination to ensure that messages are consistent and are disseminated to the appropriate audience in a timely manner.
For all open positions visit ODNI's Career Opportunities page or IntelligenceCareers.gov.
General Employment Requirements
- Candidates must be eligible to receive and maintain a Top Secret security clearance and Sensitive Compartmented Information access based on a comprehensive background investigation and CI polygraph.
- Attorneys must be admitted to and maintain active membership in the Bar of a state, the District of Columbia, a U.S. territory, or the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
- All ODNI new hires must successfully complete a two-year probationary period.
Training & Detail Opportunities
OGC invests significantly in our staff’s continuing professional development. We harness training opportunities inside the government and in the private sector to equip our personnel with continuing legal education, relevant technical and operational expertise, and leadership development skills to continue to meet our mission of excellence.
Integration across departments and agencies is a key component to OGC’s success. OGC is an active participant in the IC Civilian Joint Duty Program, and our attorneys are encouraged to complete a joint duty assignment, typically of one or two years’ duration, with another IC element or federal department or agency. While on joint duty, attorneys remain OGC employees whose pay and benefits continue to be administered by ODNI. OGC also routinely hosts lawyers for other IC elements who wish to complete joint duty program rotations with us.
Within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the NIC carries out its mission under the direction of the Deputy Director for Intelligence Integration and the Chairman, Vice Chairman, and Counselor, who lead a corps of National Intelligence Officers. 
The NIOs serve as the “analytic arm” of the National Intelligence Manager teams and are responsible for producing finished intelligence analysis.
They support the NIMs’ efforts to integrate US intelligence and develop and implement Unifying Intelligence Strategies to address the nation’s most pressing national security concerns.
Mission Areas
The NIC’s core missions are to:
- The NIC promotes exemplary use of analytic tradecraft and standards, including alternative analysis, new analytic tools and techniques, and wider collaboration within the IC.
- Provide senior policymakers with coordinated views of the entire Intelligence Community, including National Intelligence Estimates.
- Prepare IC principals and represent the IC at National Security Council Principals and Deputies Committee meetings.
- Tap non-USG experts in academia and the private sector to broaden the IC’s knowledge and perspectives.
Although most of the NIC’s work is classified, the NIC also produces or commissions unclassified reports, many of which can be found in the documents section of this page.
Global Trends
Every four years the NIC publishes an update of its Global Trends series that identifies key drivers and developments likely to shape world events a couple of decades into the future. The most recent Global Trends report, Global Trends 2040: A More Contested World was published in March 2021.