Richard Calder (1943 – 3 November 2014) was a senior official at the

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Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

(CIA). Calder held a

Bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Medieval Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six years ...

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

from the

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university system with its main campus in Storrs, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1881 as the Storrs Agricultural School, named after two benefactors. In 1893, ...

and a master's degree in

information systems An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, store, and distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems comprise four components: task, people, structu ...

from

George Washington University The George Washington University (GW or GWU) is a Private university, private University charter#Federal, federally-chartered research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Originally named Columbian College, it was chartered in 1821 by ...

. He was a

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

radio operator. From 1966, he was as communications officer in the CIA Directorate of Administration (DA) Office of Communications (OC). It was in this role that he found himself trapped for several days inside the CIA's base in

Benghazi Benghazi () () is the List of cities in Libya, second-most-populous city in Libya as well as the largest city in Cyrenaica, with an estimated population of 859,000 in 2023. Located on the Gulf of Sidra in the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean, Ben ...

Libya Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya border, the east, Sudan to Libya–Sudan border, the southeast, Chad to Chad–L ...

, during riots in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. His chief at the time was

Thomas Twetten Thomas Alan Twetten (born 1935) was a Central Intelligence Agency case officer. From 1991 to 1993, he was Deputy Director of Operations (DDO). Early life Twetten grew up in the town of Spencer, Iowa. He graduated with a degree in psychology fr ...

, who rose to become deputy director for operations (DDO). Calder served in numerous roles within the CIA, including Directorate of Operations (DO) case officer, deputy chief of the DO Near East Division (NE) for Arab operations, and chief of DO Operations and Resource Management Staff. In late 1995, then-CIA Director

John M. Deutch John Mark Deutch (born July 27, 1938) is an American civil servant and physical chemist. He was the United States Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1995 and Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from May 10, 1995, until December 15, 1996 ...

made Calder an offer to run the DA, of whose inefficiencies he had been sharply critical, with a free hand. Against nearly universal resistance among his own directorate's leadership, Calder instituted

activity-based costing Activity-based costing (ABC) is a costing method that identifies activities in an organization and assigns the cost of each activity to all products and services according to the actual consumption by each. Therefore, this model assigns more ind ...

and a working-capital fund, returning the majority of his directorate's budget back to the operational units and requiring his directorate to offer its services on a reimbursable basis. The net result was a freeing up of significant resources for use in the Agency's main operational and analytic missions. He retired from the CIA in 2001. That year he was named president of Abraxas Corporation by company founder and former CIA director

Richard Helms Richard McGarrah Helms (March 30, 1913 – October 23, 2002) was an American government official and diplomat who served as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from 1966 to 1973. Helms began intelligence work with the Office of Strategic Ser ...

and served until his retirement in 2008. Calder was married with two children and lived in

Vienna, Virginia Vienna () is a town in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, Vienna has a population of 16,473. Significantly more people live in ZIP codes with the Vienna postal addresses (22180, 22181, ...

. He died from a heart attack.Washington-area obituaries of note
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References

* 1943 births 2014 deaths People of the Central Intelligence Agency George Washington University alumni {{US-gov-bio-stub