Michael J. Orlando is a Senior Executive Service leader with more than 25 years of law enforcement, Intelligence Community, and military experience, including counterintelligence and counterterrorism investigations. Mr. Orlando joined the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) in November 2020 as the Deputy Director and is currently the Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Director of NCSC.

 

Mr. Orlando brings extensive counterintelligence experience to his post at NCSC, having received the FBI Director's Award for Outstanding Counterintelligence Investigation and three Director of National Intelligence Awards for Counterintelligence Operations.

  

Mr. Orlando entered on duty as an FBI Special Agent in 2003 and was assigned to the Pittsburgh Division where he investigated counterintelligence matters. In his follow-on field assignment to the Washington Field Office, he worked on high-priority counterintelligence special projects with multiple deployments to the People's Republic of China. In 2009, Mr. Orlando was the program manager assigned to an FBI task force where he coordinated counterintelligence operations in the Western Pacific and East Asia and led an interagency and foreign partner effort to disrupt foreign influence in the region.

 

In 2011, Mr. Orlando returned to the field and was assigned to the Honolulu Field Office where he oversaw the successful espionage investigation and conviction of a DOD contractor for passing national defense secrets to China. In 2013, Michael served as the principal deputy for the East Asia Section in the Counterintelligence Division, and in 2017 he served as Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Washington Field Office, Counterintelligence Division, where he oversaw the successful disruption of Russian clandestine foreign agent Maria Butina. In 2018, he helped create the Counterterrorism Division’s Iran Threat Task Force, now the Iran Mission Center, as its first Acting Section Chief.

 

Immediately before joining NCSC, Mr. Orlando served as a Deputy Assistant Director in the Counterterrorism Division at the FBI. In that capacity, he was responsible for overseeing the business administration and operational support for the division, which included technology development, human resource matters, financial management, and private-sector partner engagements. Mr. Orlando also served as the acting head of the Counterterrorism Division and successfully managed several interagency crisis incident responses, including the attack at Pensacola Naval Air Station; Manda Airstrip, Kenya; as well as the domestic terrorism attacks in Jersey City, NJ, and Monsey, NY.

 

Prior to working for the FBI, Mr. Orlando was an officer in the U.S. Army and was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency.

 

A native of New York, Mr. Orlando received his bachelor's degree in Economics and Management from the State University of New York, College at Cortland. In 2017, Michael attended Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and earned a master’s in leadership.