Stephen Kappes

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Stephen R. Kappes (born August 22, 1951) is a senior U.S. government intelligence officer. He is currently Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DDCIA), having assumed this position on July 24, 2006. He succeeded Vice Admiral Albert M. Calland, III.

Kappes joined the CIA in 1981 after serving as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1976 to 1981. He has held a variety of operational and managerial assignments at CIA Headquarters and overseas, serving as assistant deputy director to former Deputy Director for Operations (DDO) James Pavitt, and later as DDO after Pavitt stepped down in August 2004. At the time of the September 11 attacks, Kappes was the assistant deputy director for operations for counterintelligence.

Kappes served in Moscow and Pakistan. Towards the end of his tenure with the CIA he worked with President George W. Bush in negotiations with Libya that ended the rogue state’s weapons-of-mass-destruction programs.

Kappes was named Deputy Director for Operations (DDO) for the CIA in June 2004 and took office in August 2004 while the appointment of Porter Goss as the next Director of Central Intelligence was still pending in the Senate. Kappes succeeded James Pavitt, who resigned in June 2004. Both Kappes and Pavitt oversaw the CIA’s Directorate for Operations during the controversial Iraq WMD reporting. He served in that position until he resigned in November 2004. John E. McLaughlin, the then-Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, announced his departure the same week Kappes quit, thus exacerbating the rumored management problems for Goss.

It had been widely reported in the press that Kappes quit the Agency rather than carry out a request by Goss to reassign Michael Sulick, his then deputy.[1] It is also reported that this incident occurred because the chief of staff admonished the then assistant deputy director for counterintelligence, Mary Margaret Graham (who now works for the DNI John Negroponte) about leaking personnel information.[2] According to some news reports, Sulick had just engaged in a shouting match with Goss’s chief of staff.

For a brief period in between his senior appointments, Kappes worked in the private security industry. In April 2005, ArmorGroup, a British security firm, named him vice president in charge of global strategy, and named him Chief Operating Officer (COO) in November 2005. Kappes was named as the next DDCIA by DNI John Negroponte in May 2006.

[edit] References

• CIA press release with a brief biography
• CIA official biography
• New York Times article on appointment of Kappes, May 30, 2006
• Washington Post: Kappes is Expected to Boost CIA Morale, June 19, 2006