Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Deputy Secretary John Tien marked the retirement of Melissa Smislova, the Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis (PDUSIA), with a ceremony Dec. 21 in Washington.
Smislova served in an acting role as Under Secretary for I&A until the June Senate confirmation of Kenneth L. Wainstein, then continued to serve at I&A as Acting Principal Deputy Under Secretary.
In this capacity, she oversaw the DHS Intelligence Enterprise Readiness divisions as well as Intelligence Enterprise Mission Centers which serve as the Department’s center of gravity for intelligence-driven integration of analysis and operations and serves alongside the Under Secretary. She also oversaw all of I&A’s deployed personnel embedded in fusion centers and other strategic locations nationwide.
Prevoiusly, Smislova served as the Acting Under Secretary for the Office of Intelligence
and Analysis, Deputy Under Secretary for Intelligence Enterprise Readiness, leading all Intelligence support and enabling functions, to include several large data analytic projects, management of DHS’s secure IT systems, DHS Intelligence Policy, Budget, Human Capital, Training, Privacy Compliance, and Intelligence Collection Management. She has been an intelligence professional within the Intelligence Community since 1985, and with DHS since 2004. At I&A, she held the positions of Director of Human Capital Division, Associate Deputy Under Secretary for Enterprise Mission Support, Associate Deputy Under Secretary for Analysis, and Senior Advisor for the Homeland for the Director of National Intelligence. She was acting Deputy Under Secretary for Analysis during DHS’s first presidential transition from January to October 2009. She helped create DHS’s Homeland Infrastructure Threat and Risk Analysis Center (HITRAC) and was the Director of HITRAC from 2007 until 2009.
Prior to her assignment at DHS, Smislova worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency. For twelve of her nineteen years at DIA, she studied North Korea’s military.
This year, she was awarded the Meritorious Rank Award, which is presented to leaders for sustained accomplishments and is awarded to only five percent of career SES members and Senior-Level (SL) employees and Scientific and Professional (ST) corps.
Smislova received the DHS Award for Excellence in 2008. She received two National Intelligence Meritorious Unit Citations and the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement for her work on North Korea. As a member of a small team, she received the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) 1998 Killian Award for work on North Korea.
