Marine intelligence officer chosen as 2017 Patriotic Speaker

Posted 6/30/17

An intelligence officer who has served the Marine Corps throughout the world will make a stop in Bristol for the Fourth of July to deliver this year’s Patriotic Address, the Bristol Fourth of …

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Marine intelligence officer chosen as 2017 Patriotic Speaker

Posted

An intelligence officer who has served the Marine Corps throughout the world will make a stop in Bristol for the Fourth of July to deliver this year’s Patriotic Address, the Bristol Fourth of July Committee has announced.

Colonel Andrew James Drake, a New York native, will stop off in Bristol before heading to Washington, DC, to begin his new position in the Office of Net Assessment. After traveling all around the world leading intelligence missions, especially in East Asia, Colonel Drake has been stationed in Hawaii for the last three years, where he was serving as a senior intelligence officer.

Colonel Drake enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1987. His initial fleet tour was with the 1st Marine Division Staff Judge Advocate before a lateral-move into intelligence and a transfer to 11th Marines. He was accepted into the Marine Enlisted Commissioning Education Program in 1990, reached the rank of sergeant, and graduated cum laude from George Washington University in 1993. He returned to the fleet as an intelligence officer with the 3rd Marine Air Wing and served as the targeting officer for the G2.

In 1996, Colonel Drake was accepted into the Foreign Area Officer program for China, where he attended the Naval Postgraduate School, the Defense Language Institute and a year of in-country training, visiting every province of China from 1999 to 2000. 

Colonel Drake remained in the Pacific with the III Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) G2 on Okinawa, Japan as the current intelligence officer, and completed that tour with three months in East Timor in a counter-intelligence billet. In 2001, he was assigned to Pacific Command (PACOM) and worked in the China Division of JICPAC, first as the Pol-Mil branch chief, and then as the branch chief in support of PACOM’s operational planning. 

After PACOM, Colonel Drake attended Command and Staff College, which was followed by a two-year tour in South Korea in the Combined Forces Command as an intelligence planner. After completing JPME-2, Colonel Drake was assigned to Headquarters Marine Corps Intel Department before being deployed to Iraq in 2008-09 to be with Multi-National Force-West as the intelligence planner, and served all over Anbar and Ninewa Provinces, and the Saudi Arabian and Syrian borders.

Colonel Drake returned to the Pentagon to work as the human intelligence and counter-intelligence branch chief in intel department for eight months before serving in Beijing as the Marine attaché to China from 2010 to 2013. After China, he worked in the Commandant of the Marine Corps’ Strategic Initiative Group. While there, he was selected for colonel and assigned to Hawaii to be the G2 (Senior Intelligence Officer) for Marine Forces Pacific from August 2014 to June 2017.  He has just returned to Washington, D.C. to start working in the Office of Net Assessment.

He holds a master’s degree in military studies from the Marine Corps University, a master’s in national security affairs from the Naval Postgraduate School, and a bachelor’s degree in political science (cum laude) from George Washington University. He graduated high school in Clinton, NY.

Colonel Drake is married to Ameurfinna (Moy), and they have three children: Andrew,9, Elisabeth, 8, and Warren,7, while his parents, Ed and Diane, live with them in Fairfax Station, Virginia.

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