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The Lawfare Podcast

Sasha O'Connell on Turning a Ship Like the FBI

The Lawfare Podcast

The Lawfare Institute

Politics, Terrorism, National Security, News, Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Intelligence, Rule Of Law, Military, Constitutional Law, Current Events, International Relations, History, International Law, Government, Law

4.76.4K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2019

⏱️ 52 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sasha O'Connell is Executive in Residence in the School of Public Affairs at American University, as well as AU's director of the Terrorism and Homeland Security Policy Masters program. She also had a long career at the FBI where she served in a variety of strategic management positions. She was basically the FBI's Chief Strategy Officer.

She joined Ben Wittes in the Jungle Studio to talk about what it takes to turn a ship like the FBI when it comes to issues like IT, technology, and investigative focus—like changing an organization to focus on terrorism and then noticing that you also have to focus on cybersecurity. And they talked about how to make an organization like the FBI think about recruiting diversity.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:14.0

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Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings,

0:22.0

rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath.

0:29.0

So I think the first piece is to understand the context for change.

0:38.0

What is a normal day at FBI headquarters look like and then thinking about how you add in change, right?

0:43.0

The first piece I think that's important to understand for context is the normal course of business at FBI headquarters is the pace is just extraordinarily high.

0:51.0

Just on the criminal side, you're talking about tens of thousands of cases, right?

0:55.0

And are open and operational any every given day.

0:58.0

And headquarters on the criminal side, for example, are just making sure the field offices have what they need,

1:04.0

responding to any legal process requests, trying to do program management, right?

1:08.0

So there's kind of a core business tempo that's extremely high.

1:11.0

I'm Benjamin Wittis and this is the LawFair podcast August 13th, 2019.

1:18.0

Sasha O'Connell is executive in residence in the School of Public Affairs at American University,

1:25.0

and the director of the Terrorism and Homeland Security Policy Master's program there.

1:31.0

But more importantly for our purposes, she had a long career at the FBI where she served in a variety of strategic management positions.

1:41.0

She was basically the FBI's chief strategy officer.

1:45.0

She joined me the other day in the Jungle Studio to talk about what it takes to turn a ship like the FBI,

1:52.0

what it takes on issues like IT and technology, what it takes on issues of investigative focus,

2:00.0

like changing an organization to focus on terrorism, and then noticing that you have to also focus on cybersecurity.

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