Senior intelligence official put on leave for ‘personal misconduct’
The head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency last week placed his deputy director on administrative leave for allegedly engaging in inappropriate workplace relationships, sources familiar with the matter told POLITICO.
An NGA spokesperson confirmed today in a statement that Justin Poole had been “placed on administrative leave on February 27, following a DoD investigation containing substantiated allegations of personal misconduct.”
“NGA takes any instance of personal misconduct seriously and holds its employees accountable to substantiated behavior counter to department standards and agency core values,” the spokesperson added, without providing additional details.
The incident is the latest embarrassment for the NGA, a combat support agency that employs around 14,500 people and is dedicated to providing geospatial intelligence, or so-called location data. Established in 1996, it has faced challenges in providing timely satellite imagery when such material is more and more commercially available.
The organization is also part of the U.S. intelligence community and recently underwent a leadership change.
U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Robert Sharp took over of the organization last month — marking the first time in roughly nine years that the agency has had a uniformed chief — in a ceremony that was presided over by Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Joseph Kernan.
Just weeks after Sharp assumed the directorship, DoD’s inspector general issued a report that found Ellen Ardrey, then NGA’s director of human development, allowed a handful of senior agency officials to downgrade their posts to nonsenior positions in order to cash in on a $40,000 early-retirement buyout.
The two-year investigation concluded that Ardrey approved fraudulent bonuses for seven senior NGA officials in fiscal year 2017, for a grand total of $280,000.
In response to the findings, Ardrey, now the agency’s associate director for support, wrote she had given similar downgrades at another organization and that the probe’s “preliminary conclusion is based on inference and opinion, with insufficient evidence to substantiate intentional circumvention of DoD policy.”
The NGA spokesperson said the investigations into Ardrey and Poole “are entirely unrelated.”
Poole has served as the agency’s No. 2 since August 2017 and started his career as a cartographer and geospatial analyst at the Defense Mapping Agency, a predecessor to NGA, in 1991, according to his official biography.
Before becoming deputy director, he held a variety of management positions at NGA, including head of its Source Operations and Management directorate.
Poole “has an opportunity to submit matters for the deciding official’s consideration,” according to the NGA spokesperson.
While the DoD inspector general will examine the allegations, the “final adjudication and resulting disciplinary action” will be made by Sharp, the spokesperson added.
Poole’s duties “have been reassigned as appropriate and NGA operations continue unimpeded,” the spokesperson noted.