Video Discription |
Interview of Marty Faga, former NRO Director, by AFIO President James Hughes, a former CIA Operations Officer.
TOPIC: Marty Faga discusses his background, his remarkable career in DOD, USAF, CIA, and leading both the NRO and later The MITRE Corporation and explains the many technical advances and challenges he has seen in the profession.
The interview runs 27 minutes and was recorded Monday, 14 September 2020.
BIOS:
MARTIN C. FAGA retired as president, chief executive officer of MITRE on June 30, 2006. MITRE operates Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) for several federal agencies.
Prior to his promotion to president and CEO in May 2000, Mr. Faga served as executive vice president. Earlier, he was senior vice president and general manager of MITRE’s Center for Integrated Intelligence Systems, one of the three units operating under the DOD FFRDC. This center serves the DOD and intelligence community sponsors in the integration of intelligence systems, from sensor technology through presentation to the ultimate user.
Before joining MITRE, Mr. Faga served from 1989 until 1993 as Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space, where he was responsible for overall supervision of Air Force space matters. At the same time, he served as Director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), responsible to the secretary of defense and the Director of Central Intelligence for the development, acquisition and operation of all U.S. satellite reconnaissance programs.
Other facets of Mr. Faga’s career include service as a staff member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives, where he headed the program and budget staff, as an engineer at the Central Intelligence Agency, and as an R&D officer in the Air Force.
Mr. Faga has been awarded the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal, the Air Force Exceptional Civilian Service Medal and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. In 2004, he was awarded the Intelligence Community Seal Medallion.
Mr. Faga has served on the Commission for the Protection and Reduction of Government Secrecy, several Defense Science Board and DNI Task Forces, and the National Commission for the Review of the NRO. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, was Chairman of Board of the Space Foundation from 2012-14 and a member of the Board of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers from 2003-2018. He served from 2006-2009 on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and was a member of the Public Interest Declassification Board from 2006 until 2014.
Mr. Faga is on the Board of Lin-Quest, Thomson Reuters Special Services and Inmarsat Government. He has also served on the Boards of Digital Globe, Electronic Data Systems, GeoEye, Alliant TechSystems and Orbital ATK.
Mr. Faga received master and bachelor of science degrees in electrical engineering from Lehigh University in 1964 and 1963.
JAMES R. HUGHES currently serves as the 17th President of AFIO. His service began January 2015. He had a career of US Government service spanning 37 years in numerous foreign countries with a particular focus in the Middle East. He started in U.S. Military Intelligence in the late 1960s and then joined the CIA’s Clandestine Service. He served overseas as a Chief of Station several times, and at CIA Headquarters in a number of senior management positions, including as Chief of the Near East and South Asia Division, in the Directorate of Operations [today’s National Clandestine Service]. He was also named the Associate Deputy Director of Operations (ADDO) at the National Security Agency, 1998-99. Following his retirement from the government in 2005, he joined EDS in Herndon, Virginia, as the Client Industry Executive for the U.S. Intelligence Community. After the HP acquisition of EDS, he continued to serve in a similar capacity until his retirement in 2012. His parents were missionaries in Turkey in the 1950s, where Jim spent his formative years. He attended the prep schools of two of the most famous missionary-founded universities in the Middle East: Robert College in Istanbul and the American University-Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. He is fluent in Arabic, and has extensive knowledge of, and appreciation for, the arts, geography, culture, and religions of that region. He has been an AFIO member since 2005 and joined the board in 2009. |