I met Sam Faddis this week at a cafe near Union Square, where we sat down to talk about intelligence reform and other topics—among them, Sam’s run for Congress. Although SOFREP doesn’t endorse political candidates, I’ve written a lot about intelligence and military reform here on SOFREP. This is an issue that Sam feels passionately about as well.

This fall, he will be up against an incumbent who has been in Congress for decades. If you read through Sam’s policy positions and think he is someone who could advance the conversation about intelligence reform, consider him as a potential representative in Congress.

For my part, I’ll be keeping a close watch on his political campaign in the coming months.

sam-faddis

Press release

Charles S. (Sam) Faddis, former US Army officer and retired CIA operations officer, is running for Congress in Maryland’s Fifth Congressional District against longtime incumbent Steny Hoyer. Faddis spent twenty years undercover with CIA’s Directorate of Operations, most of that in the Middle East and South Asia. He took the first CIA team into Iraq in 2002, almost a year in advance of the invasion of that country. He retired in 2008 as head of CIA’s terrorist weapons of mass destruction unit. Since then he has written a number of books and commented widely on television, radio, in print and online on terrorism, national security and weapons of mass destruction.

Faddis has been a longtime critic of creeping bureaucratization and risk aversion in intelligence and special operations. His book, Beyond Repair, is a scathing critique of the state of American human intelligence capabilities and an argument for starting over at CIA.  He branded 9/11 not simply a failure to “connect the dots” but a failure to collect enough dots in the first place and has pushed for a more aggressive, creative approach to operations against rogue states and terrorist groups.

Faddis is the son of a career Naval officer, the brother of a retired Army colonel and the father of a decorated Marine infantryman wounded in action in Afghanistan. He was himself an Armor officer and JAG officer in the US Army. He believes we need more men and women on Capitol Hill who have worn the uniform and been in harm’s way. In his words, “when we have more people with skin in the game making policy we will see a lot more thought go into decisions about the use of military force.”