CI CENTRE STAFF: Cynthia Kwitchoff

Cynthia Kwitchoff

Director of Productions

Cynthia Kwitchoff is the Director of Productions at The Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies. She handles all aspects of design, graphics, marketing and proposal materials, photography, video and production for the CI Centre, including designing and maintaining the company's different websites. Kwitchoff also does research, public relations for the company, media liaison and she is the Company Security Officer. She has organized many of the company's events, such as a book reception at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, DC for movie producer Lawrence Schiller and author Norman Mailer, who both co-wrote "Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story." The book was turned into a CBS-TV movie and the CI Centre served as technical consultants, researchers and Washington liaison, including briefing actors William Hurt, Ron Silver and Wayne Knight on the background of the characters they portrayed as well as the Hanssen case itself.

Prior to joining the CI Centre, Kwitchoff served at the Central Intelligence Agency for ten years (1989-1999). She began her career with the CIA at the Intelligence Community Staff, and then became a CIA security officer. Kwitchoff conducted investigations for four years and assisted with the training of two classes of new investigators.

In April 1995, she became the Program Manager of the Counterintelligence and Security Program (CISP) in the Directorate of Operation's Counterintelligence Center. This program, created in 1994 after the arrest of CIA officer and Russian spy Rick Ames, was responsible for enhancing the counterintelligence awareness of all Agency employees and contractors. Through Kwitchoff's initiatives, the CIA became a leader in the Intelligence Community in the area of counterintelligence awareness training.

The CISP program began running on a continual basis two advanced, week-long graduate-level strategic counterintelligence courses, as well as a two-day tactical counterintelligence course for all CIA managers and employees. Kwitchoff also designed and maintained "CI Online," which was an internal electronic database of counterintelligence awareness information, cases, news stories, regulations, announcements, etc., accessible to CIA employees and contractors to learn and be kept informed about counterintelligence issues. Kwitchoff created the idea of CI-TV and saw to the implementation of this initiative. CI-TV is the Agency's first internal television series, and under her direction, 71 episodes were filmed and a different episode was shown in the Agency each week. For the first time in the CIA, counterintelligence awareness information was available in a variety of forms to the Agency population every day, all day.

Also as part of the CISP program, Kwitchoff wanted to document the CIA's role as being the first to uncover Rick Ames as a Russian spy. An hour-long unclassified video documentary was produced entitled, "To Catch a Spy: The Investigation Leading to the Arrest of Aldrich Ames." The CISP program also created CI/security awareness video commercials that were placed at the end of each CI-TV episodes.

Kwitchoff directed or helped design and run various counterintelligence briefings and presentations in the Headquarters auditorium for analysts, alumni of the CI courses, and for the population in general. The program also conducted the first-ever professionally conducted Agency-wide survey on CI and security attitudes and awareness. Kwitchoff aggressively advertised and promoted a healthy, balanced counterintelligence awareness throughout the CIA, and aided in part by all of the above CISP initiatives, the cultural attitudes towards counterintelligence began to shift in a positive direction.

Kwitchoff's last assignment in the Agency was as an investigator in the Center for CIA Security's Advanced Investigative Element. During her ten year career, she received ten Exceptional Performance Awards.

Prior to joining the Agency in 1989, Kwitchoff was a junior account executive with the public relations firm The Carmen Group in Washington, DC. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois with a bachelor of fine arts degree in Art History and a minor in Art.