Govexec cover story on the looming retention crisis in the intelligence community.

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The intelligence community is divided by a generation gap, one that threatens to undermine its ability to perform its missions, including keeping the country safe from terrorists. The intelligence workforce is out of balance. It can be plotted as two humps on a graph. At the beginning of the experience spectrum are the millennials, green, just learning the ropes, no more than a half-decade of experience under their belts. They make up more than 35 percent of the total intelligence workforce. At the far end is a large number of highly skilled, longtime employees, moving closer to retirement by the day. In between those two humps, where there should be a stockpile of experienced middle managers, the future leaders of the community, there is instead a deep, unsettling valley.

The agencies' top leaders are laboring furiously to fill it. In the nearly six years since Sept. 11, the CIA and other agencies haven't wanted for applicants; there are more people who want jobs than there are billets. But training employees takes years. To fill the gap in the meantime, during wartime, the agencies have hired contractors in record numbers. The agencies have outsourced some of the most sensitive functions, including analysis, spying on foreign adversaries, prisoner interrogation and translation services ...