CIA picks yet another top woman officer; Beth Kimber to lead agency’s clandestine operations

Washington, Dec 11: The Central Intelligence Agency or CIA - the investigative age, the United States' civilian foreign intelligence agency, has announced the name of its next head of operations and it is a woman which marks a departure from its past practice.

The incoming chief of the CIA is Beth Kimber, 56, who has worked for the agency for 34 years. She will lead the Directorate of Operations the personnel of which recruit foreign agents to spy for the US besides carrying out covert missions inside the country. Kimber is an expert on Europe and Russia and had been the director of the Europe and Eurasia Mission Center most recently. She has also worked as the deputy director of the National Clandestine Service, by which the directorate which she will lead now, was known previously. She also chipped in as the acting deputy director of the CIA earlier this year while the name of Gina Haspel was being finalised.

Kimber was named as the head of the Directorate of Operations by the body's director, Haspel.

This is also the first time that the CIA has publicly identified the Deputy Director for Operations (DDO) which is Kimber's official title. The names of earlier incumbents were kept undisclosed. Kimber's name as the new DDO was announced by Brittany Bramell, CIA's Director of Public Affairs, on December 7.

Kimber is the third woman to bag a plum post in the CIA in the last six months. While 62-year-old Haspel took over as the agency's first woman director in May this year succeeding current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, she picked Sonya Holt as the CIA's chief diversity and inclusion officer in August.