Outsourcing Intelligence: How Bush Gets His National Intelligence from Private Companies

[unhappycamper]

Outsourcing Intelligence: How Bush Gets His National Intelligence from Private Companies
By R.J. Hillhouse, The Nation. Posted July 31, 2007.



The unprecedented involvement of private corporations in the Iraq War has been well documented. Private soldiers working for Blackwater USA, Triple Canopy and others provide security services against military-level threats, and they regularly engage in combat.

But what is not generally known is that the secret side of the Iraq War and the larger "war on terror" is also conducted by private corporations, fielding private spies. The reach of these corporations has extended into the Oval Office. Corporations are heavily involved in creating the analytical products that underlie the nation's most important and most sensitive national security document, the President's Daily Brief (PDB).

Over the past six years, a quiet revolution has occurred in the intelligence community toward wide-scale outsourcing to corporations and away from the long-established practice of keeping operations in US government hands, with only select outsourcing of certain jobs to independently contracted experts. Key functions of intelligence agencies are now run by private corporations. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) revealed in May that 70 percent of the intelligence budget goes to contractors.

For all practical purposes, effective control of the NSA is with private corporations, which run its support and management functions. As the Washington Post's Walter Pincus reported last year, more than 70 percent of the staff of the Pentagon's newest intelligence unit, CIFA (Counterintelligence Field Activity), is made up of corporate contractors.

Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) lawyers revealed at a conference in May that contractors make up 51 percent of the staff in DIA offices. At the CIA, the situation is similar. Between 50 and 60 percent of the workforce of the CIA's most important directorate, the National Clandestine Service (NCS), responsible for the gathering of human intelligence, is composed of employees of for-profit corporations.

Employees of private corporations -- "green badgers," in CIA parlance -- provide sensitive services ranging from covert CIA operations in Iraq to recruiting and running spies. They also gather human intelligence on behalf of the CIA and analyze it, creating intelligence products used by the intelligence community and also shared with other branches of government.



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[porphyrian]

1. Because a nation's intelligence should come from a privately owned company.

They would never do anything dishonest for a buck.
</sarcasm>

[bobthedrummer]

2. Titan is involved-remember Titan "employees" skill sets from Abu Ghraib?

Titan is also involved in illegal domestic data-mining and , for the right price, other "services".

Titan assets, L-3 for example, have been reported about in regards to outsourced intelligence in Iraq.

"Intelligence in Iraq: L-3 Supplies Spy Support" by Pratap Chatterjee Corp Watch 8-9-2006
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13993

L-3 Communications Niceville, Florida seeks employees
http://posts.same.org/emerald/firms/titan.htm

[mod mom]

3. and if he outsources surveillance to off shore crony corporations then they can claim

they are not spying on Americans.

In both cases he is funnelling big taxpayer bucks to republican donors while trampling on the constitution.

[flashl]

4. It began with the 'lazy' government worker complaints

when Newt Gingrich and company announced their 'contract' on America. I never understood why Americans did not stand up and say to Newt 'what contract'? And, have them to explain it.

Making the government smaller and dropping 'lazy' government workers seem to have been their rally cry while they 'outsourced' government services. The size of contracts and the related workforce dwarfs any federal workforce in the history of this country, someone once referred to this workforce as the 'shadow' government.

Again and again, the public seems to buy into these schemes when they hear about 'savings' and never realize that usually the real costs proposed are usually doubled or tripled the amount that is supposed to be saved.

Just look into what happened within the military's acquisition corp along the time when General Shinseki was getting the boot.

[shance]

5. Also, people need to better understand why they are spying on citizens

The more they know about you the more power they have over you.

[underpants]

7. Not having "idle" workers on the payroll sounds like a good idea

and that seems to be all that matters-that it SOUNDS good.

I read about this a few years ago and I just don't understand the controls here-is it really possible to pay someone NOT to talk to the next bidder? Is it really possible to keep secrets when a person's expertise is for sale to the highest bidder?

I do know this- about 10 years ago our then governor decided that the Dept. of Transportation just had too many people on the payroll so he started firing them left and right. From what I read on Fridays everyone came in checked their emails and then sat around waiting to see who would be fired ..... seriously. Turned out that all the engineers he fired were in fact needed to, you know, keep the roads paved and the bridges up (that is a big important factor to the citizenry) so they had to hire them all back but as contractors not as "government employees" and to get these people back to the same level of compensation AND to account for their lost state employee status (retirement and all) they paid them about 250% of what they used to pay them.

That distinguished Virginia Governor????? George Allen.

[Richard Steele]

6. And some folks STILL don't wanna call it FASCISM. K&R

[OwnedByFerrets]

8. K & R This needs to be kicked