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Older but relevant articles addressing the widespread use of private contractors in the intelligence community
The Spy Who Billed Me
Many of the 5,517 jobs available have something to do with the global war on terror or the occupation of Iraq. One recruiter has a position open for an Iraq Counterterrorism Analyst. Another is looking for personnel to conduct interrogations of detainees in Iraq. There is a job in Baghdad for a senior intelligence analyst and several in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, for intelligence analysts experienced in counter-terrorism, threat analysis, and counter-narcotics. One job looks formidable: a deputy site manager is needed in Baghdad to supervise 1,500-2,000 linguists providing interpreter-translator service to a 140,000-member deployed U.S. military force conducting counter-insurgency, stabilization and nation building operations.
Theres only one thing missing: the U.S. government. Every one of these jobs is being advertised by a private company -- one of hundreds of firms that contract with the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, or the Pentagon to provide everything from urine testers to supervisors of clandestine operations overseas. The people hired for these jobs may be doing government work in Washington or Baghdad, but they will be paid by firms such as the international consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton (Booz Allen/The Carlyle Group) or CACI International, one of the companies whose employees were implicated in prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.
The job fair is being sponsored by IntelligenceCareers.com, a recruitment firm headed by William D. Golden, a former Army intelligence officer. Golden says his company can hardly keep up with the demand for intelligence contractors. The government has become addicted to the use of private industry in the world of intelligence, he says. In fact, theyve made a science of it. Indeed they have. A CIA official interviewed for this story wouldnt say how much of the agencys work is done by private companies, but admitted that outsourcing has increased substantially since 2001. Of the estimated $40 billion the United States is expected to spend on intelligence this year, experts say at least 50 percent will go to private contractors.
Yet as Americans learn more about the role of intelligence contractors from Afghanistan (where a contractor has been charged in connection with the death of a detainee) to Guantanamo (where Lockheed Martin has supplied interrogators, according to the trade publication Federal Times), critics are beginning to question whether private companies should be in the business of handling some of the governments most sensitive work. Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, believes that the kind of military intelligence work contracted to CACI, Titan Corp., and other companies is particularly ripe for problems because intelligence agencies operate under unusual authority. He adds: I dont think the current oversight system is equipped to monitor the activities of contractors. That is one of the central lessons of the Abu Ghraib affair.
Outsourcing Intelligence: Author R.J. Hillhouse on How Key National Security Projects Are Contracted to Private Firms
Author R.J. Hillhouse caused a stir in Washington last month when she revealed more than 50 percent of the National Clandestine Service has been outsourced to private firms. Now Hillhouse has exposed private companies are heavily involved in the nations most important and most sensitive national security document the Presidents Daily Brief. And there appears to be few safeguards from preventing corporations from inserting items favorable to itself or its clients into the Presidents Daily Brief in order to influence the countrys national security agenda.
According to Hillhouse more than 50 percent of the National Clandestine Service has been outsourced to private firms such as Abraxas, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. Hillhouses article in the Washington Post created a firestorm of controversy within the intelligence community. A week later the Office of the Director of National Intelligence responded defending the use of private contractors.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The company gets all the benefits of getting the taxpayer to foot the bill.
The company gets all the benefits of getting first-peek at the Take.
The company gets all the benefits of NO CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT.
PS: Outstanding OP and memory, yours, Solly Mack.
Solly Mack
(90,787 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)marmar
(77,091 posts)annabanana
(52,791 posts)Solly Mack
(90,787 posts)wandy
(3,539 posts)Welcome to the big league!
These folk could buy the NRA and use it as a door stop.
A door stop holding the door open to you're elected official's office.
Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html
suffragette
(12,232 posts)both in terms of being private and lacking oversight and in terms of siphoning funding away from essential programs.
Our Austerity and Their Prosperity.