Former presidential intelligence agent was to speak

Austin Walker
Staff Writer

Prior to cancellation due to snow, an official who handled highly classified information regarding national intelligence was set to speak at Virginia Commonwealth University.

David Gompert, who retired from the position of Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence in 2011, serves as a visiting professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, would have given a lecture on the situation in Iraq followed by a Q&A session.

Gompert, 69, has had a long career serving as an authority on international intelligence and function. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with a bachelor’s degree in engineering, and received his master’s in public affairs from Princeton.

It was the decision of Jason Ross Arnold, assistant professor of political science at VCU, to invite Gompert to speak at the university.

“We invited David Gompert to speak at VCU largely because of his unique experiences as a senior intelligence official and as a national security advisor to several U.S. presidents,” Arnold wrote in an email. “For instance, he worked at the highest levels in the intelligence community during President Obama’s first term. Before that, he served on the National Security Council, and worked as a senior adviser for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq — among other positions.”

The lecture, which Gompert was to give, was titled “Is Iraq Lost? If So, Who Lost It?”

Gompert’s expertise and experience are highly attributed to the fact that he served alongside President Obama’s administration as Director of National Intelligence. Aside from being the principal advisor to the President of the United States of America, Gompert served as the head of the Intelligence Community and directed the National Intelligence Program.

It was during his time that the executive decision was made to assassinate former leader of the terrorist al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden. As an example of the DNI’s duties, the knowledge of bin Laden’s location would go to the president through the director.

From 1973 to 1975, Gompert served as Special Assistant to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. During this time, Kissinger’s office completed the “National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests.” This study claimed that overpopulation in lesser-developed countries posed a threat to U.S. National Security.

Controversy arose over this plan, citing the question that the document raised: “Is the U.S. prepared to accept food rationing to help people who can’t/won’t control their population growth?”

People worried the National Security Council was proposing measures which might lead to population control through starvation.

From 1975 through 1983, Gompert remained in the public sector as Deputy to Under Secretary for Political Affairs, then as deputy director of the bureau for Politico-Military affairs.

From 1983 to 1990, Gompert worked in the private sector as AT&T’s Vice President of Civil Sales and Programs, then as Direction of International Market Planning. He left AT&T to work at Unisys, an information technology company which now focuses on security measures for large corporations.

He worked as president of the Systems Management Group, as well as the Vice President for Strategic Planning and Corporate Development. The corporation’s gross income during this time was more than $10 million.

It was after this he began his work with the RAND corporation, a nonprofit global policy group which offers research and analysis to the U.S. military. From 1993 to 2004, he served various functions within the organization.