Dermot O’Reilly was appointed on September 16, 2016, to be the acting Director of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS).

O’Reilly attended St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1992. He then went to work for the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations’ (OSI) Boston office as a criminal investigator. While there, he went to Harvard, earning an M.A. in government in 1998. In 2001, he was sent to London as OSI’s resident agent in charge. He returned to the U.S. in 2004 as chief of the inspections division.

O’Reilly in 2006 was made director of operations for OSI’s Region 7. Later that year, he became acting special agent in charge of OSI’s Office of Special Projects. In 2009, he moved over to the National Reconnaissance Office as deputy director of the Office of Security and Counterintelligence, a joint-duty assignment. He took a year off to attend the National War College and, upon earning a master’s degree in national security strategies in 2012, returned to OSI as Deputy Executive Director. While in that post, he served for a few months in the Joint Counterintelligence Unit in Kabul, Afghanistan. In 2014, he was made the Defense Department’s Assistant Inspector General for Investigations, with responsibility for international operations, national security and cyber security. He held that post until taking over at DCIS.

-Steve Straehley

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