'Spies for Hire' 'The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing'

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/05/29/DI2008052902845.html



'Spies for Hire'
'The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing'


"As investigative reporter Tim Shorrock notes in this valuable (and angry) book, contractors have long had the run of the Pentagon and CIA, working hand in hand on projects ranging from reconnaissance satellites to Predator drones. But Shorrock persuasively shows that the business has changed dramatically in recent years, beginning even before the Sept. 11 attacks set off a homeland security gold rush. Today, intelligence contracting is a $45 billion-a-year industry, he says, chewing up three quarters of the estimated $60 billion intelligence budget."

[eleny]

1. Have you read it? It sounds like a good one

I read Blackwater by Scahill and think these books on contractors are so important.

[seemslikeadream]

3. Not yet

:hi:

[Hangingon]

2. Read Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes

A great history of the CIA. One of his observations of the problems now facing the agency is the loss of talent to contracors. They pay a lot better than the government.

[seemslikeadream]

4. It's become a $50 billion a year industry:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90411856

Prologue

On May 9, 2006, John Humphrey, a former CIA officer making his way up the management ladder of one of the nation's largest intelligence contractors, made a stunning disclosure to Intelcon, a national intelligence conference and exhibition at a hotel in Bethesda, Maryland. Outsourcing, Humphrey declared, was out of control. Contractors deployed in Iraq and other hotspots overseas were making decisions and handling documents that, in earlier times, had been the sole responsibility of U.S. military and intelligence officers. This had caused a "paradigm shift" in the relationship between government and the private sector, and left companies like his in an untenable position.

Five years ago, "you'd never have a contractor supporting an operation on the field where they're making a recommendation to an officer," said Humphrey. Nor would you find a contractor "making little contributions here and there" in the reports intelligence officers sent back to Washington. "This concerns me a lot, the way these lines are blurring," he went on. "We shouldn't be involved in some of these intelligence operations, or the planning, or the interrogations and what have you." Unless government started taking more responsibility in the field, he warned, the "blowback" for the contracting industry could be profound.

The intelligence professionals in the room looked stunned. They had just sat through two days of upbeat discussions about the annual $10-billion expansion of U.S. intelligence budgets and the opportunities that money presented for defense contractors, information technology vendors, and former national security officials who still held their top secret security clearances. Upstairs in the exhibition hall, thirty-five companies were displaying the latest high-tech spying equipment and competing to recruit new employees, who could earn up to three times government pay by migrating to the private sector. Words like "blowback" did not come easily at such gatherings.

[Octafish]

5. Shorrock is top-notch. So is R. J. Hillhouse...

She spoke on this very subject on Democracy Now.

Outsourcing Intelligence: Author R.J. Hillhouse on How Key National Security Projects Are Contracted to Private Firms

EXCERPT...

R.J. Hillhouse joins us now from Tulsa, Oklahoma. She has written extensively about outsourcing of the war on terror in her blog, thespywhobilledme.com. She has also just published a novel called Outsourced. We welcome you to Democracy Now!, R.J. Hillhouse. First, talk about this expose, what you found.

R.J. HILLHOUSE: Well, what I found is, as you said, private corporations have completely penetrated the intelligence apparatus of the United States. It’s impossible—even in the response to me by the Director of National Intelligence that was published in the Washington Post, they admitted that without private corporations they would be unable to function. So what we’re seeing is basic responsibilities of government have been handed over to the private sector, which I really don’t have a problem with, but how it has occurred is very problematic. There are layers of responsibility that have been handed to private sector, so the government has actually very little control in some of what’s going on in terms of espionage. There’s management layers, and private corporations actually run other corporations that are doing espionage work, the entire gamut of everything from the NSA, what is being done in pattern analysis with phone calls. Internet traffic is handled by some private corporations. Actual gathering of intelligence on the ground, running of covert operations on behalf of the CIA, it’s all in private hands. It seems that James Bond bills by the hour.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And you talk even about the presidential daily briefing. Could you explain how that has become privatized, as well?

R.J. HILLHOUSE: Well, it’s not clear if the very final document is done by private corporations. It’s clear at every stage of the way, what’s called a government employee or blue badger will sign off on it. But all of the information that goes into it, the analytical products that become part of the President’s Daily Brief, are produced by private corporations, because they’re—the work of analysts who receive their paychecks from corporations such as Booz Allen, Raytheon and others, is not distinguished from that of government employees. So that brings up a huge national security vulnerability, that one could very easily shape or nudge along US national security policy, because this is the most important national security document that we have in this country.

CONTINUED...

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/7/26/outsourcing_intelligence_author_r_j_hillhouse

Gee. The President's Daily Brief has been outsourced. What's next, courts?