Ask Molly: CIA’s Mission Centers

Dear Molly,

I've been exploring CIA.gov to get a better sense of the Agency's components and see where I might fit in one day. I've heard about the Directorates, but I'm trying to understand how the Mission Centers fit in. Can you help me understand how the CIA is organized? It seems a little confusing.

~ Clarity Q

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Dear Clarity Q,

Your question couldn't have been better timed! This past summer, CIA's Office of Public Affairs (where I work) launched an "Inside CIA" campaign on social media and CIA.gov to shed some light on the Agency's five directorates. Each month, my team featured a different directorate. In case you missed the stories, you can find them here:

Simply speaking, you can think of the directorates as career disciplines. The directorates hire, train, and manage the careers of officers within their cadre. Officers from each directorate are then assigned to serve in various "mission centers" that cover a specific geographical or functional focus. If you're familiar with how the US military is structured, think of our directorates as the branches of service and our mission centers as the combatant commands.

We currently have about a dozen mission centers that specialize in key regional and transnational issues:

Within each of these mission centers, you'll find officers from every directorate working together towards the shared Agency mission.

The goal of mission centers is to bolster CIA's ability to provide America's top decisionmakers with a comprehensive intelligence advantage on the most pressing global challenges of our time. They bring together the full range of our operational, analytic, support, technical, and digital capabilities and unify them in a whole-of-Agency approach.

In addition to the Directorates and Mission Centers, CIA has executive offices that oversee important Agency business. You'll find officers in Public Affairs who communicate CIA's mission, officers who serve as bridges between CIA and the Department of Defense and Congress, officers in the General Counsel who ensure CIA upholds our legal responsibilities, and so on.

Hope I've cleared things up a bit! There's so much going on at CIA, but our diverse officers, functions, and specialties work together to meet the overarching mission. Before you go, be sure to check out some of my past responses below that cover hiring requirements if you're interested in working with us.

~ Molly

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