Finding a Niche

This is good news for me.

WASHINGTON — U.S. counterterrorism agencies are shopping for talent at job fairs, dangling generous scholarships and luring staff from each other in a race to overcome a shortage of analysts that may only get worse with America's new intelligence overhaul.

The problem existed even before Congress and the White House approved an intelligence restructuring this month that creates positions for people whose skills already are in high demand.

There is no consensus across the nation's 15 intelligence agencies on where staffing needs are the most acute. But few dispute that many more analysts are needed, particularly in the departments and agencies created since Sept. 11, 2001. The nearly two-year-old Homeland Security Department (search) is a prime example.

"If you had a hundred, we'd take them," Pat Hughes, the Homeland Security Department's top intelligence official, said in an interview earlier this year. "We have to look, search, test, assess. You don't just get analysts off a tree. ... We need people, but we need good people."

This is exactly the sort of post-university job I'm looking for. I pay a lot of attention to international news, I've studied the Middle East, I have preliminary training in French and German that could be easily developed. I've lived abroad (not for that long, but I've done it). I have a minor in Naval Science. I'd make an excellent intelligence analyst, and it would allow me to serve the Republic.

I'm totally stoked by this. Outstanding.