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Mission

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an independent US Government agency responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior US policymakers.

For more on the Agency's mission, visit our Strategic Intent.

 
Central Intelligence Agency
The Work of a Nation. The Center of Intelligence

CSI

Career Trainee Program, GRU Style

training for overseas assignments,
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE 1994
CIA HISTORICAL REVIEW PROGRAM
  18 SEPT 95
   
 

  SECRET   

                     
The Soviet military intelligence agency's system for selecting, training, and assigning officers to foreign intelligence operations.              
                     
                     

CAREER TRAINEE PROGRAM, GRU STYLE

                     

Richard Framingham
                     
  By consolidating information derived from a number of different Soviet sources, it has been possible to reconstruct the process Soviet intelligence uses to spot, screen, train, and assign case officers. The procedures herein outlined had their beginnings in the mid-1940's, were generally established by the mid-1950's, and to our knowledge remained substantially in effect as late as 1961 and projected at least to 1964. The system described is that of the GRU, the military intelligence organization.  State Security, the KGB, operates separate but similar machinery, in addition to having a hand, as we shall see, in the GRU's.
                     
  The GRU strategic intelligence directorates--four area directorates charged with foreign strategic intelligence operations--have the mission of collecting information broadly defined as contributing to General Staff estimates of the willingness and capability of any nation to wage war. The development of cadres for these directorates and their training for specific foreign assignments is done in a three-year program of the Staff College of the Soviet Army, commonly called the Military-Diplomatic Academy by members of the GRU.   The use of MDA as an unofficial title for the Staff College grew out of the fact that a major function of the College is training military attachés, and a faculty which once handled this training was called the Military-Diplomatic Training Faculty.
     
  The Staff College is actually a university of intelligence, for it carries on a number of related programs, including refresher, mid-career, specialized training, and ad-hoc courses, and awards the degree of Kandidat to those who complete the requirements for this doctorate-level diploma. Although administratively under the control of the GRU, the MDA is formally a joint GRU-KGB establishment, and
                     
  SECRET  

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Posted: May 08, 2007 08:08 AM
Last Updated: May 08, 2007 08:08 AM
Last Reviewed: May 08, 2007 08:08 AM