WP, Pincus: Lawmakers Want More Data on Contracting Out Intelligence

[DeepModem Mom]

Lawmakers Want More Data on Contracting Out Intelligence
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 7, 2006; Page A07

Congress is taking its first steps to oversee the Defense Department's rapidly growing activities in the foreign and domestic intelligence fields, focusing also on the growing practice of contracting out intelligence analysis to former military personnel.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in its version of the fiscal 2007 intelligence authorization bill, has called for enhanced reporting requirements on the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), the Pentagon's newest and fastest-growing intelligence agency.

While the House Armed Services Committee approved an unusually large Pentagon request to increase by 50 the number of supergrade defense intelligence Senior Executive Service personnel, the Senate Armed Services Committee last week ordered expanded reporting on defense contractor employment of former senior Defense Department officials and interagency contracting.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on May 2, John Gannon, a former CIA deputy director for intelligence and later the first staff director of the House Homeland Security Committee, joined others who have raised questions about the growth of contracting and its possible negative effects.

The House intelligence panel said one trigger for its study was the disclosure that CIFA "failed to follow policies regarding the collection and retention of information about U.S. persons." It noted that CIFA, in its classified database of 13,000 records of threats to defense facilities, had included 260 records that "improperly contained information relating to U.S. persons." The Defense Department has ordered "refresher training" for those collecting such files, and the committee requested that the Pentagon's inspector general submit a report on the CIFA records by next Feb. 1....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/06/AR2006050601088.html

[LiviaOlivia]

1. The mid-term elections are critical

on this Pincus article Laura Rozen notes:
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004102.html

Walter Pincus reports on a really important and much overlooked aspect that one encounters in microcosm in the Cunningham case -- that so much intel work is being contracted out at this point to private companies including by the Defense Department, that it has essentially zero oversight. And what might this intel work include? WP:

An online ad by Lockheed Martin Information Technology-Professional Services seeks a counterintelligence analyst to work in Iraq doing research on intelligence capabilities of countries in areas of operations under the Central Command. Additional work, according to the ad, would be "on substantive intelligence matters involving terrorist groups and networks . . . Centcom experience is a plus," the ad notes.

So just war, terrorism, Iraq. Nothing that requires oversight anyhow, right?

~snip~

[lyonn]

2. K & Recommend

[meow2u3]

3. Sounds like the BCF is hiring mercs

to spy on American citizens. How else can they dodge the law?