Rick Francona

Infobox Military Person
name= Richard Carmon Francona
born= Birth date and age|1951|8|31
died=
placeofbirth= New Brighton, Pennsylvania
placeofdeath=


caption= Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona, USAF (Ret)
nickname=Rick
allegiance= United States of America
branch=United States Air Force
serviceyears= 1970-1998
rank= Lieutenant Colonel
current position=
commands=
unit=Defense Intelligence Agency National Security Agency Central Intelligence Agency
battles=Vietnam War Gulf War
awards= Defense Distinguished Service Medal Defense Superior Service Medal Bronze Star Air Medal (9)
laterwork=NBC/MSNBC/CNBC military analyst
Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona is a commentator and media military analyst. He is a retired United States Air Force intelligence officer with extensive operational experience in the Middle East, including tours of duty with the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. He is currently under contract to NBC News and appears regularly on NBC, MSNBC and CNBC, as well as Radio Canada and other worldwide media.

Background

Rick Francona served for over 27 years in the U.S. Air Force, most of it in the Middle East. Fluent in Arabic, he served in the region with the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. The colonel has a bachelor's degree from Chapman College (now Chapman University) in Government and the Arabic language, and a master's degree from Troy State University in International Relations with a concentration in Middle East studies. He is a cousin of Boston Red Sox manager Terry Francona.

Francona and his wife Emily, also a retired Air Force intelligence officer, reside on the Oregon coast.

Military service

Lt Col Rick Francona enlisted in the Air Force in 1970, and served as a Vietnamese linguist until 1973, conducting combat aerial reconnaissance missions over Vietnam and Laos in a variety of strategic and tactical aircraft. After Arabic language training, he served at a variety of locations in the Middle East from 1975 to 1977, and supported the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon in 1976. In 1978, he became an Arabic language instructor at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California.

Following his commissioning in 1979, Lt Col Francona was an instructor at the Air Force intelligence school in Denver, Colorado. From 1982 to 1984, he was a Middle East operations officer with the National Security Agency in the United States and classified locations overseas. In 1984, he was assigned as an advisor to the Royal Jordanian Air Force in Amman, Jordan.

In 1987, Lt Col Francona was assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency as the assistant Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East. During this assignment, he spent much of 1987 and 1988 at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, as a liaison officer to the Iraqi armed forces directorate of military intelligence. Lt Col Francona traveled extensively as an observer of Iraqi combat operations against Iranian forces, and flew sorties with the Iraqi air force. His observations were key to the discovery of Iraqi chemical weapons capabilities and ballistic missile modifications.Immediately following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August, 1990 and through the Gulf War, Lt Col Francona was deployed to the Gulf as the personal interpreter and advisor on Iraqi armed forces to commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command, General Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. As such, he was the lead interpreter for ceasefire talks with the Iraqi military at Safwan, Iraq, in March, 1991.

After the end of the Gulf War, the colonel served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and was a principal author of the Department of Defense report to Congress on the conduct of the Gulf war. In 1992, he was selected to be the first air attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria, returning to the United States in early 1995.

From 1995 to 1996, Lt Col Francona served with the Central Intelligence Agency, and participated in a variety of sensitive operations in the Middle East, including the escape of an Iraqi scientist's family. During one of these operations, he survived an attempt on his life by Iraqi Intelligence Service agents.

In 1996, the colonel was selected to develop the Department of Defense counterterrorism intelligence branch. In late 1997, the colonel led a special operations team supporting NATO forces in Bosnia. He returned to the United States and retired from active duty in 1998.

His decorations include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Bronze Star, and nine Air Medals, as well as campaign awards for service in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, and the Balkans. The colonel was awarded the Central Intelligence Agency Seal Medallion for his service with that agency. In 2006, Lt Col Francona was inducted into the Defense Language Institute Hall of Fame.

Commentary

Currently Lt Col Francona is a media analyst on Middle East political-military events currently under contract to NBC News and appears regularly on NBC "Nightly News", the "Today Show", MSNBC, "Hardball with Chris Matthews", "Scarborough Country", "Countdown with Keith Olbermann", and others. He also writes periodic articles for MSNBC, the Council on Foreign Relations, his blog at [http://www.francona.com Middle East Perspectives] , and is a regular blogger on the MSNBC Hardball [http://hardblogger.msnbc.msn.com/ Hardblogger] . He frequently speaks to conventions and public service audiences.

Books

* [http://www.francona.com/book.html "Ally to Adversary: An Eyewitness Account of Iraq's Fall from Grace"] , Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1999; ISBN 1-55750-281-1. Cited as one of the top ten regional books of the year by "The Oregonian" newspaper.