Stephen Kappes

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Stephen R. Kappes (born August 22, 1951, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA) is a senior U.S. government intelligence officer. He is currently Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DDCIA), having assumed this position on July 24, 2006. He succeeded Vice Admiral Albert M. Calland, III. He is widely admired in the Agency for his role in persuading Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi to abandon his nuclear weapons program in 2003.[1] He has supervised many covert operations and is known to insiders as a "case officer's case officer".[2]

Contents

[edit] Biography

Kappes earned a Bachelor of Science degree in pre-medicine from Ohio University and a Master of Science degree in pathology from Ohio State University. He served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1976 to 1981.

[edit] First CIA tour (1981-2004)

Kappes joined the CIA in 1981 and has held a variety of operational and managerial assignments at CIA Headquarters and overseas, serving as assistant deputy director to former Deputy Director for Operations (DDO) James Pavitt, and later as DDO after Pavitt stepped down in August 2004. At the time of the September 11 attacks, Kappes was the associate deputy director for operations for counterintelligence.

Kappes has been station chief in Moscow, New Dehli and Frankfurt and has served in Pakistan.[3] Towards the end of his tenure with the CIA he worked with President George W. Bush in negotiations with Libya that ended that country's weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD) programs.

Kappes was named Deputy Director for Operations (DDO) for the CIA in June 2004 and took office in August 2004 while the appointment of Porter Goss as the next Director of Central Intelligence was still pending in the Senate. Kappes succeeded James Pavitt, who resigned in June 2004. Both Kappes and Pavitt oversaw the CIA’s Directorate for Operations during the controversial Iraq WMD reporting. He served in that position until he resigned in November 2004. John E. McLaughlin, the then-Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, announced his departure the same week Kappes quit, thus exacerbating the rumored management problems for Goss.

It had been widely reported in the press that Kappes quit the Agency rather than carry out a request by Goss to reassign Michael Sulick, his then deputy[4]. It is also reported that this incident occurred because the chief of staff admonished the then assistant Deputy Director for Counterintelligence, Mary Margaret Graham — who later worked for the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Negroponte — about leaking personnel information[4]. According to some news reports, Sulick had just engaged in a shouting match with Goss’s chief of staff.

For a brief period in between his senior appointments, Kappes worked in the private security industry. In April 2005, ArmorGroup, a British security firm, named him vice president in charge of global strategy, and named him Chief Operating Officer (COO) in November 2005.

[edit] Second CIA tour (2006-Present)

Kappes was named as the next DDCIA by Negroponte in May 2006. Kappes was believed to be the preferred choice for Director of the CIA in the incoming Obama administration by Senators Jay Rockefeller, the outgoing chairman, and Diane Feinstein, the incoming chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.[5] Instead, Leon Panetta was appointed to the position in February 2009, and Kappes was retained as DDCIA, the latter a condition set by Feinstein in exchange for her support for the former.[6] [7]

On November 4, 2009, in a landmark ruling, Italian judge Oscar Magi convicted 22 American C.I.A. operatives of kidnapping Muslim cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, from the streets of Milan in 2003. Most of the top C.I.A. officers have left the agency, with the exception of Stephen R. Kappes, who at the time was the assistant director of the C.I.A.’s clandestine branch.[8]

[edit] Personal

Kappes is fluent in English, Russian, and Persian.[9] He is married to the former Kathleen Morgan and has two children.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Mayer, Jane (2009), "The Secret History", The New Yorker, 22 June 2009, pg 54.
  2. ^ Mayer, Op. cit.
  3. ^ Mayer, Op. cit.
  4. ^ a b Mark Mazzetti, 'A Storied Operative Returns to the C.I.A.', New York Times, May 30, 2006 [1]
  5. ^ http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/01/05/1732576.aspx
  6. ^ https://www.cia.gov/news-information/press-releases-statements/message-from-director-panetta.html
  7. ^ Mayer, Op. ct.
  8. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/europe/05italy.html?_r=1
  9. ^ Mayer, Op. cit.

[edit] External links

Government offices
Preceded by
James Pavitt		 CIA Deputy Director for Operations
August 2004 – November 2004		 Succeeded by
Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr.
Preceded by
Albert Calland		 Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
July 24, 2006–present		 Incumbent
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Kappes"
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