WHO IN THE WORLD IS MAUREEN BAGINSKI AND WHY IS SHE THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN EVERY AMERICAN'S LIFE?
Maureen Baginski, Director of the FBI's Intelligence Activities.
George Tenet, Head of the CIA, is leaving the CIA and America high and dry on July 11th. at perhaps the most important era since the country's founding. Yet Ms. Baginski as Director of the FBI's Intelligence Activities is solid during this trying time and is the sole person accountable in the United States for preventing the next big terrorist assault on America.
She IS a very important person to every American's life and the U.S.'s survival.
She also , on February 4th., was appointed the First Chairman, by Attorney General John Ashcroft, to head the newly created Joint Intelligence Coordinating Council.
With these two jobs occupying her time, she is also faced with the departure of many seasoned agents, called the "Brain Drain" at FBI headquarters. This exodus of agents is greatly hurting the agency and is caused by the fact that the mandatory retirement age at the FBI is 57. Most agents are retiring the minute they hit 20 years of service and can receive their full pension benefits. Then they begin making the "Big Bucks" that private industry is more than willing to shovel out, pay that these agents could never imagine receiving at the Agency.
Ms. Baginski is also a "foreigner," having come from the NSA where she was known as The Vision Lady, in a culture formed by J. Edgar Hoover in the 1930s, a culture that is long gone and obsolete in today's world.
During a time when even the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, has set up a web site to recruit people for "special tasks," Ms. Baginski, slim, attractive and able to think on her feet in the face of unending media questioning in a cool and disarming manner, must cope with an unimaginable amount of information from every part of the world and condense it, with her staff, into a format that makes sense out of this chaotic world and where she must trace and spot terrorist actions aimed at the U.S.
That's why she is the most important person in every American's life as she tackles the toughest job in America.
Regards,
Charlie
