THE FAST TRACK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP89G00720R000100020007-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 1, 2011
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: September 11, 1980
• Content Type: MEMO

Approved For Release 2011/03/02 : CIA-RDP89GO072OR000100020007-1
11 September 1980
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
FROM: Executive Assistant
SUBJECT: The Fast Track
1. The term "fast track" is used frequently and fairly loosely in
CIA. No one really understands what that means or how to get on the fast
track or, in some cases, to know whether you are even on the fast track.
To the extent that senior officer development depends on identifying people
on the fast track and also those who have been so selected knowing that they
are on the fast track, it would seem to me essential that there be some
criteria for objective standards within each Directorate for the fast track.
2. Based on my observations in recent years and conversations with
a wide range of managers and employees, I strongly believe that the fast
track today is entirely subjective. It is in fact no more than a different
name for the old system of patron-protege that has existed in all
bureaucracies probably through all time. My own case is illustrative.
As the youngest supergrade in CIA, I am presumably on a fast track. Yet
no one ever told me I was on a fast track or that I was being considered for
senior management positions in NFAC. Indeed, to a large extent I believe
I am on a fast track because I put myself there. I have worked outside of
a normal line office for the last nine years. In each case I worked for a
very senior and powerful individual, either within the Agency or within the
government, who exerted themselves to insure that in each stage I was
promoted as quickly as possible. But, there was no overall plan; the
Directorate certainly never had a plan; to this day I have never been advised
by NFAC what my career track would look like after this job or on down the
road for even as few as three or four years.
3. I believe this experience is typical. People on the fast track are
those who have impressed a Division/Office Chief or Deputy Director and have
been brought along by that individual as long as the employee was under the
supervision of that senior official. This is what generally gets someone
on the fast track. In short, being on the fast track is not the result of a
considered judgment of a career service panel or of a meeting of senior
officials who identify an individual as having exceptional skill or competence,
but rather the result of a highly subjective approach based on a patron-protege
relationship generally during the GS-13-15 phase of one's career. Thus, in
the eyes of most employees, those who are considered by senior managers to be
Approved For Release 2011/03/02 : CIA-RDP89GO072OR000100020007-1
 Approved For Release 2011/03/02 : CIA-RDP89GO072OR000100020007-1
on the fast track are considered by other employees simply to be "golden boys"--
those who have found favor for one reason or another in the eyes of a single
senior manager.
4. If we are serious about senior officer development, the whole notion
of the fast track should be rationalized and given some objective standards.
These need not be common to the entire Agency, but there must be some feeling
on the part of the employees that each employee has an equal opportunity to
get on the fast track and that,; indeed, competence and skill are the primary
criteria for being selected--not finding favor in the eyes of one supervisor.
It might be worth your pursuing at the next Deputies' meeting by asking each
of the Deputies to describe for you in a very brief piece of paper who they
determine who should be on the fast track and how the process works within
each of their Directorates. This could then be the basis for further discussion
of the question. I raise this because of the considerable discussion of the
fast track as part of the senior officer development program in recent months
and what I perceive to be a general feeling (and resentment) on the part of a
large number of employees about how one gets on the fast track.
Approved For Release 2011/03/02 : CIA-RDP89GO072OR000100020007-1