Covert Contact 93: Team Leadership & Ethics
Dean Baratta reflects on building a small intelligence team with broad responsibilities. We discuss analyst ownership, shared knowledge, unclassified assessments, domestic terrorism, and the responsibility leaders have to model ethical behavior.
Dean Baratta returns to look back on his time leading the Analysis Bureau at New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness. His small team had to understand threats around the world, explain their significance for the state, and produce work that could inform decisions at the highest levels of state government. We discuss how he built that capability and what the experience taught him about leadership.
Giving analysts ownership of a subject was central to the approach. They needed to understand that their work could influence policy and resource decisions, and that accuracy, relevance, and timeliness mattered. At the same time, overlapping portfolios encouraged collaboration and gave the team enough depth to keep working when a specialist was away. Dean describes how a shared wiki preserved knowledge and helped the team respond to the Paris attacks while its ISIS analyst was out of the country.
We also examine the value of unclassified analysis. Building relationships with outside experts helped young analysts develop their own source networks and test their work. Publishing assessments made that work useful to people beyond the usual government audience, although it also meant accepting that others might misquote or misuse it.
Domestic terrorism brought its own challenges. Dean describes the need to overcome gaps in understanding, assess politically sensitive threats, and ground conclusions in what extremist groups actually said and did. Evidence and clear explanations were essential to maintaining credibility.
The final part of our conversation turns to ethics and public service. Leaders need to help junior colleagues work through disagreement, model professional values, and prepare for the possibility of an unlawful or unethical demand. Annual training cannot replace those candid conversations. Maintaining integrity may carry a personal cost, and that is worth thinking about before a defining decision arrives.
Fred Burton also shares a brief recollection about the early days of the Rewards for Justice program.
Intelligence Analysis: Feedback, Bias, and Other Challenges
Building an Intel Shop from the Ground Up
Intelligence at the State and Local Level
GHOST: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent
Chasing Shadows: A Special Agent's Lifelong Hunt to Bring a Cold War Assassin to Justice