Former Central Intelligence chiefs are not the sorts of guys you’d expect to be advocating fuel made from corncobs. Nor, for that matter, are they the types you’d expect to see jury-rigging their hybrid-engine cars with a special plug-in feature that gets double the gas mileage. But Jim Woolsey – former director of the CIA under Clinton – is the exception.

Now a successful security and technology consultant in the private sector, Woolsey lives on a solar-powered farm in rural Maryland and considers himself equal parts “tree-hugger, sodbuster, and cheap hawk,” according to a Grist.org interview. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, he’s become one of the most influential advocates of energy independence in the U.S. As a founding member of the Energy Future Coalition, Set America Free, and National Commission on Energy Policy, he has been helping shape a next-generation energy strategy for America.

Woolsey’s obsession, in particular, is promoting the development of advanced biofuels and car-technology upgrades, including modern diesels, flexible-fuel vehicles, hybrids, and a plug-in adaptation for hybrids that enables them to get upwards of 120 mpg. These are the only technologies on the market the promise immediate results. “We don’t need pie-in-the-sky hydrogen scenarios that are twenty years out,” he said in a Rolling Stone interview. “We don't have that kind of time.”

Photo credit: Rollingstone.com