Barbara Fast

Barbara Fast is a former Major General in the United States Army. She retired with thirty two years of service in 2005. Fast is currently employed by CGI Group as Senior Vice President, Army and Defense Intelligence Business Unit within CGI Federal.

She was the senior military intelligence officer serving in Iraq during the period of time when the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse occurred. Fast was exonerated of any wrongdoing in the findings of the Fay Report.

Education
Fast graduated from Belleville Township High School East in Belleville, Illinois in 1971 and earned a Master of Science degree in Business Administration from Boston University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Education from the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. She was given an honorary Juris Doctor degree from Central Missouri University. She also is a graduate of the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and the Armed Forces Staff College, and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the American Public University System.

Military career
Fast held a variety of command and staff positions in the Army. During her career, her tours included serving as the Deputy Chief, Army Capabilities and Integration Center and G9, Training and Doctrine Command; Commanding General, United States Army Intelligence Center; C2 (Director of Intelligence), Combined Joint Task Force-7 and Multi-National Forces-Iraq; J2 (Director of Intelligence), U.S. European Command; Associate Deputy Director of Operations/Deputy Chief, Central Security Service and S1, National Security Agency; Commander, 66th Military Intelligence Group; G2 (Director of Intelligence), 2nd Armored Division; and commanding officer of the 163rd Military Intelligence Battalion.

Fast was the most senior military intelligence officer serving in Iraq during the period of time when the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse occurred. Critics believed she should have been held partly accountable for the abuses committed at Abu Ghraib by military intelligence personnel, but she was exonerated by the military. In the Fay Report, Fast received praise for improving intelligence collection efforts when the Iraqi insurgency was growing in the summer of 2003. Changes she put in place "improved the intelligence process and saved the lives of coalition forces and Iraqi civilians," according to Army Maj. Gen. George Fay.