Paul Frandano

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (Ret.)

Paul Frandano recently retired after nearly 30 years as an analyst and manager at CIA. He is now a Senior Principal with Monitor Group, a global, Cambridge, MA-based professional services firm. Mr. Frandano started at the CIA in 1979 as a specialist in Asian politics and afterward held a broad range of analytic, staff, and leadership assignments on both regional and functional issues. Among these were a stint as editor and briefer on the staff of the President's Daily Brief and a 3-year secondment to the National Intelligence Council as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for East Asia. Mr. Frandano headed the DCI Environmental and Societal Issues Center from 1999 to 2001. In September of that year he helped found and lead the CIA Red Cell, a contrarian (or alternative) analysis program. From 2005 to 2007 he was the Agency's Officer in Residence at Georgetown, where he taught graduate seminars on "Intelligence in a Democracy." Mr. Frandano's last CIA assignment was as Special Assistant to the Director of Strategy Management.

Mr. Frandano graduated from Rutgers College in 1974 and studied in the Department of Government at Harvard University from 1974 to 1979. He is a recipient of the Director's Award (2004), the highest achievement award personally given by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal (2008). Mr. Frandano is married to Denise Davies Frandano, a post-partum care specialist; they have three grown sons.