The CIA has made public the name of the head of operations, Elizabeth Kimber, a veteran of 34 years at the Agency will become the first woman to lead the most important sector of the CIA. Directorate of Operations officers, formerly known as the National Clandestine Service, spend their careers recruiting foreign agents and conducting covert operations around the world. This is also the first time that the CIA has chosen to make public the name of the head of operations - assignment abbreviation in DDO. Previous DDOs were undercover agents whose names were never revealed. Kimber's promotion was announced on 7 December by Brittany Bramell, the CIA's director of public relations.
Kimber is a graduate of Hamilton College, a private liberal arts college located in upstate New York, and has spent much of her CIA career as an agent in Western Europe. He is also believed to have led the "Russia Group", a network of intelligence planners of the CIA Directorate of Operations who manage a broad spectrum of espionage operations against Russian intelligence services. He also held the position of Deputy Director of the National Clandestine Service, before being renamed Directorate of Operations. For a few months this year, Kimber served as deputy director of the CIA while Kimber's previous post was as head of the Europe and Eurasia Mission Center.
Kimber is the third woman to assume a central role in the CIA in the past six months. In May of this year, Gina Haspel, a 33-year veteran in the CIA, became the first director of the agency. In August, Haspel selected Sonya Holt, another woman who served the CIA for 34 years, as the agency's diversity and inclusion manager.