SpyTalk

"When Michael Morell was growing up in Cuyahoga Falls -- hanging out at the city pool, playing baseball, watching the Browns and Indians -- he had no clue he would wind up at the highest level of the world's biggest spy agency," the Akron Beacon Journal reported last August.

But today, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell tapped Ohio native Morell, the CIA's third-ranking official, to brief President-elect Barack Obama on the U.S. intelligence community's view of global developments and its secret operations.

Morrel joined the agency in 1980, almost as an accident, he told the Akron paper upon his appointment as CIA associate deputy director.

"I had every intention of going to grad school and getting a Ph.D. in economics and teaching," he said. "But a friend of mine suggested, 'Why don't you send a resume to the CIA?'"

"Even on the day he walked into the CIA for his job interview," the paper said, "he had no intention of actually working there. He was a just college kid at the University of Akron cashing in on a free trip to Washington, D.C."

That was 1980.

Morrel ended up on the analysis side of the business, spending most of his career with the Directorate of Intelligence. He was chief of the agency's Asia, Pacific and Latin American division.

He also headed the unit that prepares the President's Daily Brief (PDB). In that role, he briefed President George W. Bush.

He has also been the acting associate deputy director of intelligence for strategic programs and was deputy director for intelligence at the National Counter-Terrorism Center.

DNI McConnell led a team of senior intelligence officials to brief Obama Wednesday morning.

But the CIA sounds like it's not going to take a back seat in forming the president-elect's views.

"We have already prepared a great deal of information about CIA for the Obama team," CIA Director Michael Hayden said in a letter to agency employees.

"The goal today is to review what has been done and to ensure that every part of the Agency is well-placed to contribute in the weeks ahead."