Former NSA Contractor Lobbyists Head Key Congressional Committees

[Jefferson23]

Posted by Lee Fang
February 25, 2014
4:00pm



This post originally appeared at RepublicReport.org.

Two congressional committees with oversight of the National Security Agency (NSA) — the House Homeland Security Committee and the House Intelligence Committee — are managed by former lobbyists for major NSA contractors.

Alex Manning, a senior lobbyist for IBM who specialized in cyber intelligence influence for the company, became a Staff Director for the Homeland Security Committee in January of last year. In August of last year, Darren Dick, a former lobbyist for EMC Corporation, was promoted to Staff Director for the House Intelligence Committee. In Congress, Staff Directors oversee committee matters, and are roughly equivalent to a chief of staff.

The chairmen of the committees, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), have led the attack on Edward Snowden, accusing the whistleblower of endangering national security or worse. Both congressmen have shown little interest in Snowden’s revelations and related civil liberty concerns.

IBM reportedly works on a number of NSA-related and intelligence agency contracts for the government. The New York Times last year revealed that the NSA has tested IBM’s famed Watson artificial intelligence computing technology for its own data-collection purposes.

http://www.theinvestigativefund.org/blog/1933/former_nsa_contractor_lobbyists_head_key_congressional_committees/

[dougolat]

1. Regulatory capture in all it's glory.

Some of these agents even get special retirement benefits for "time spent in government service."