Jim Greer (CIA)

Jim Greer (full name James Robert Greer) was born and raised in Jackson, Michigan. His father, Robert Greer, was a bus driver and U.S. Marine Corps veteran; while his mother, Ruth Greer (née Earl), was a bank teller.

After graduating from Jackson High School in Jackson, Jim went on to the United States Naval Academy. He graduated from the Naval Academy with a Bachelor of Science in Economics and a commission as an Ensign in the United States Navy. While at the Naval Academy, Jim decided to become an intelligence officer. After graduating from the Navy and Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center, he was assigned to Patrol Squadron 10 at Naval Air Station Jacksonville as an anti-submarine warfare intelligence officer. Jim was later attached to SEAL Team 4 as an operational intelligence officer. Afterwards, he was assigned to the Chief of Naval Operations Intelligence Plot at The Pentagon. There, Jim served as an intelligence watch officer and intelligence briefer. He left the U.S. Navy after five years of service at the rank of Lieutenant.

Jim then enrolled in the four-year joint JD-PhD in Finance program at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. After receiving both his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School and his PhD in Finance from the Yale School of Management, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he found employment as a senior associate in the management consulting division at DDI Partners LLC, an international management consulting and investment banking firm. A year later, Jim became a compliance officer in DDI Partners LLC's investment banking division. Six months into that role, a high-ranking official with the Central Intelligence Agency named Jeffrey Pelt offered him a job as an outside analyst for the Agency. Jim accepted the job offer and was tasked with using his position at DDI Partners LLC to look for suspicious financial transactions that would indicate terrorist funding. A year later, he was recruited into the CIA to work as a full-time economic analyst.

Jim subsequently resigned from DDI Partners LLC and then went on to the Career Analyst Program at the Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis. After training, he was posted to the Terror Finance and Arms Division (T-FAD) in the Counterterrorism Center and assigned to analyze global markets and financial aberrations to uncover funding for terrorist groups. Jim was given the official cover of a U.S. State Department logistician who runs supply chain logistics for the Western Hemisphere.

A couple of years into his career with the CIA, he was assigned to T-FAD's Yemen desk. A little over a month in that capacity, Jim began monitoring SWIFT network transactions in and around Aden. Over a period of a few months, he red-flagged several transactions as potentially suspicious. Jim recognized it as anomalous to see large, one-off SWIFT transactions to individuals, especially in Yemen. And normal SWIFT transactions usually occurred in patterns. Jim developed a theory that the individual behind these transactions could be a high-level target.

He eventually convinced T-FAD's group chief, Jane Ryan, that his theory was right. Ryan was able to used T-FAD's resources to discover that the target's name was "Suleiman" and then had his bank account frozen. Jim also had Special Activities Division put a surveillance team on the bank where the account was located. A couple of days later, the SAD officers in the detail and officers of the Yemeni Political Security Organization captured two men attempting to withdraw money from the account.

The Yemeni government believed the two detainees to be couriers. Jim and Ryan flew to Yemen to assist in the interrogation of the detainees. The interrogation took place at a forward operating base in Yemen serving as a CIA black site. A few hours after Jim and Ryan arrived, the site was attack by a terrorist militia. During the attack, Jim surmised that one of the captured men was Suleiman. After a tense battle that left many dead, Suleiman escaped.

Once Jim returned to CIA headquarters, he was able to use both confidential and open-source intelligence to find that Suleiman's full name is Musa Bin Suleiman. Ryan pulled Suleiman's phone records, which lead them to Paris. There, Jim and Ryan worked with French DGSI agents and GIGN officers to track down Suleiman. Together, they took part in raiding an apartment that Jim's analysis indicated Suleiman had taken refuge in. In the raid, Suleiman was captured and taken into the custody of the French government.

As a commendation for his role in capturing Suleiman and defunding Suleiman's terrorist cell, Jim was elevated to senior analyst of T-FAD. In that capacity, he is frequently deployed as T-FAD's liaison with either CIA paramilitary units or U.S. military special operations units. Jim is deployed and embedded with these units whenever field operations-acquired financial or economic intelligence requires immediate analysis.

Although his official cover is that he is simply a supervisory logistics management officer in the Bureau of Administration of the Office of Logistics Management at the United States Department of State, Dr. Jim Greer is in fact one of the most exemplary officers of the Central Intelligence Agency.