Woodward Speaks at Waynesburg on Intelligence Challenges
Professor John D. Woodward Jr., Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, gave a special lecture to faculty and students at Waynesburg University in southwestern Pennsylvania on US intelligence challenges and how identification technologies can improve national security on February 21, 2020.
Woodward began his presentation by explaining that tension between the President and his intelligence chiefs is not really new, noting how President Harry Truman in August 1945 fired William Donovan, the head of the Office of Strategic Services.“Intelligence professionals have to develop thick skins.”
Drawing on his experience as Director of the Department of Defense Biometrics Management Office during the height of the Iraq War, Woodward explained how biometric technologies, or automated methods of human recognition based on a physiological or behavioral characteristic, can be used to identify terrorists and other threats. The U.S. military, working closely with law enforcement, implemented and used biometric technologies like computerized fingerprinting to identify numerous foreign persons who posed a possible threat to coalition forces.
Professor James Tanda, a retired Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) officer, and current faculty member of Waynesburg University’s criminal justice administration department hosted the visit.
Woodward is a Professor of the Practice at the BU Pardee School and a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who, during his twenty-year CIA career, served as an operations officer in the Clandestine Service and as a technical intelligence officer in the Directorate of Science and Technology, with assignments in Washington D.C., East Asia, Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. He also served as the Director of the U.S. Department of Defense Biometrics Management Office from 2003-2005.