Paul R. Pillar
| Paul R. Pillar | |
|---|---|
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| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Dartmouth College, Oxford University, Princeton University |
| Occupation | Center for Security Studies |
Paul R. Pillar is an academic and 28-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), serving from 1977 to 2005. He is now a non-resident senior fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies, as well as a nonresident senior fellow in the Brookings Institution's Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence. He was a visiting professor at Georgetown University from 2005 to 2012. He is a contributor to The National Interest.
Pillar earned an A.B. degree from Dartmouth College (1969), and received the B.Phil from Oxford University (1971) and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University (1975 and 1978).
Prior to joining the CIA in 1977, Pillar served as a U.S. Army Reserves officer in Vietnam, on active duty from 1971 to 1973.
At the CIA, Pillar served in a variety of positions, including Executive Assistant to Director of Central Intelligence William H. Webster (1989–1991).
He became chief of analysis at the Agency's Counterterrorist Center (CTC) in 1993. By 1997 he was the Center's deputy director. But in summer 1999 he suffered a clash of styles with the new director, Cofer Black. Soon after, Pillar left the Center.
His 1990 and early 1991 experience were described in a 2006 interview, in which he spoke of the CIA role in assessing Iraq in preparation for the 1991 war. At that time, according to Pillar, the intelligence community (IC) judged that Iraq had active programs for development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). "One of the revelations after the invasion and after the inspections began in Iraq was that some of those programs had gone farther than had been believed. The intelligence community had undershot, if you will, in its assessment of just how far along, especially on the nuclear program, the Iraqis had been". Pillar notes, "I did not receive any [intelligence] requests from a policy-maker on Iraq until about a year into the war...policymakers decided "My goodness, this shows us how much we might not know." And as people like the vice president and others repeatedly reminded in the lead-up to the Operation Iraqi Freedom, "We don't know what we don't know." [said by Donald Rumsfeld]"
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