The CIA Is Getting a Private-Sector Makeover

Brian Bulatao remembers the call as if it came yesterday. After the 2016 election, he was on the phone with his old buddy Mike Pompeo, congratulating him for being Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Central Intelligence Agency. Bulatao, who went to West Point with Pompeo in the early 1980s and later started a business with him in Kansas, was telling his friend what a great job he’d do—when Pompeo interjected. “He goes: ‘Well, not so quick. I’m going to drag your butt with me!’ ”

In January 2017, Pompeo did just that, first bringing Bulatao on as a senior adviser at the CIA, and then tapping him as the agency’s No. 3 executive. The job used to be called executive director, or exdir, and entails overseeing the day-to-day running of the CIA—budgets, logistics, personnel. But after Bulatao was appointed to the job in June 2017, he and Pompeo agreed to change his title to chief operating officer, underscoring their aim to bring a veneer of the private sector to the world of espionage.