Joe Augustyn, former CIA Clandestine Services Officer, Defector Resettlement Pgm

Interview of Joseph Augustyn, former CIA Clandestine Services Officer and former Director CIA's Defector Resettlement Program, by James Hughes (also a former Operations Officer), AFIO President.

TOPIC: Joe Augustyn discusses his role with the little known Defector Resettlement Program at CIA.
A few Q&As follow the 42-minute presentation. The interview was conducted Monday, 7 December 2020.

BIOS:
Joseph W. Augustyn retired from the CIA in 2004 after spending 28 years as a member of the Clandestine Service. He served as a Case Officer in several locations, and held numerous senior positions during his career: Chief of Station on three occasions while assigned to the National Resources, Near East, and East Asia Divisions. Mr. Augustyn was also Deputy Chief of East Asia Division with responsibility for overseeing operational activities throughout the Far East. He also served as Chief of Staff for the Deputy Director for Operations where he monitored and helped manage the CIA’s Covert Action programs.
Mr. Augustyn served as Director of the CIA’s defector resettlement center responsible for the re-settlement of high level defectors in the United States. The CIA center administers all aspects of defector resettlement, affording Mr. Augustyn the unique opportunity to work with many of those foreigners who were CIA’s top spies. As Director, he frequently briefed Congress on the status of the program as well as key defectors.

Following 9/11, and prior to the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, Augustyn was appointed the Deputy Associate Director of Central Intelligence for Homeland Security, where he helped coordinate the homeland security activities of the then fifteen members of the Intelligence Community. He reported directly to the Director of the CIA and was a frequent participant in White House, Pentagon, State Department and law enforcement agency meetings.
Mr. Augustyn became a senior advisor to John Brennan (later CIA Director) and was one of the key architects of what is now the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). He interacted with state and local law enforcement and Chiefs of Police around the country, helping to establish an enhanced intelligence information sharing program that had not previously existed.
He is the recipient of numerous CIA awards, including the Donovan Award, the Intelligence Commendation Medal, the Collector of the Year Award, and the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal.
Mr. Augustyn has a BA from The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, an MA from Brown University, and did doctoral studies in Russian History at Indiana University.

James. R. Hughes currently serves as the 17th President of AFIO. His service began January 2015. He had a career of US Government service spanning 37 years in numerous foreign countries with a particular focus in the Middle East. He started in U.S. Military Intelligence in the late 1960s and then joined the CIA’s Clandestine Service. He served overseas as a Chief of Station several times, and at CIA Headquarters in a number of senior management positions, including as Chief of the Near East and South Asia Division, in the Directorate of Operations [today’s National Clandestine Service]. He was also named the Associate Deputy Director of Operations (ADDO) at the National Security Agency, 1998-99. Following his retirement from the government in 2005, he joined EDS in Herndon, Virginia, as the Client Industry Executive for the U.S. Intelligence Community. After the HP acquisition of EDS, he continued to serve in a similar capacity until his retirement in 2012. His parents were missionaries in Turkey in the 1950s, where Jim spent his formative years. He attended the prep schools of two of the most famous missionary-founded universities in the Middle East: Robert College in Istanbul and the American University-Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. He is fluent in Arabic, and has extensive knowledge of, and appreciation for, the arts, geography, culture, and religions of that region. He has been an AFIO member since 2005 and joined the board in 2009.