In This Article
30-Second Summary
Headline Link: ‘The Vast and Dangerous Transfer of American Spying to Mercenary Companies’
Background: The rise of public spies in the U.S.
Opinions & Analysis: Outsourcing America’s spies
Related Topic: Military contracts in Iraq
Reference: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Reports
Subscribe to National Updates
Washington Post
Cover of Spies for Hire
Cover of Spies for Hire
The Outsourcing of America’s Spies
July 29, 2008 08:56 AM
by
Liz Colville
A new book and other data on private intelligence contracts reveal an increasingly privatized industry augmenting U.S. intelligence agencies.
30-Second Summary
Investigative journalist Tim Shorrock analyzes the growing amount of espionage work subcontracted by the U.S. government to private firms in his new book, “Spies for Hire.”
The book comes just months after a “procurement executive from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence gave a PowerPoint presentation at a conference in Colorado and let slip a staggering statistic”: around 70 percent of the U.S. Intelligence Community budget is allotted to private companies.
This trend is decades-old, Chalmers Johnson says on AlterNet, but the acceleration following September 11, 2001, is causing “the loss of the most valuable asset any intelligence organization possesses—its institutional memory.”
The House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee recommended in 1996 and in 2000 that the Intelligence Community, particularly the National Security Agency, look to private contracts to help bolster its intelligence. Its 2000 report criticized the NSA for lagging behind in technological capability.
The fear for many, Johnson explains, is that foreign spy organizations could “simply to get its agents jobs at any of the large intelligence-oriented private companies on which the government has become remarkably dependent.”
In a 2007 New York Times article, Patrick Radden Keefe noted that “there is nothing inherently wrong” with this kind of contracting. “We want our spies to have access to the best technology and expertise, and if that means they have to look outside the building—and pay top dollar—then so be it. The problem is that the ‘symbiotic relationship’ has turned decidedly dysfunctional, if not downright exploitative.”
Former CIA private spy division chief and senior analyst Melvin Goodman told The Nation in June that he fears the industry is “out of control.”
The book comes just months after a “procurement executive from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence gave a PowerPoint presentation at a conference in Colorado and let slip a staggering statistic”: around 70 percent of the U.S. Intelligence Community budget is allotted to private companies.
This trend is decades-old, Chalmers Johnson says on AlterNet, but the acceleration following September 11, 2001, is causing “the loss of the most valuable asset any intelligence organization possesses—its institutional memory.”
The House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee recommended in 1996 and in 2000 that the Intelligence Community, particularly the National Security Agency, look to private contracts to help bolster its intelligence. Its 2000 report criticized the NSA for lagging behind in technological capability.
The fear for many, Johnson explains, is that foreign spy organizations could “simply to get its agents jobs at any of the large intelligence-oriented private companies on which the government has become remarkably dependent.”
In a 2007 New York Times article, Patrick Radden Keefe noted that “there is nothing inherently wrong” with this kind of contracting. “We want our spies to have access to the best technology and expertise, and if that means they have to look outside the building—and pay top dollar—then so be it. The problem is that the ‘symbiotic relationship’ has turned decidedly dysfunctional, if not downright exploitative.”
Former CIA private spy division chief and senior analyst Melvin Goodman told The Nation in June that he fears the industry is “out of control.”
Headline Link: ‘The Vast and Dangerous Transfer of American Spying to Mercenary Companies’
Chalmers Johnson, focusing on the new book “Spies for Hire” by Tim Shorrock, writes that the “private sector is now fully ascendant. The uniformed air, land, and naval forces of the country as well as its intelligence agencies … and even clandestine networks entrusted with the dangerous work of penetrating and spying on terrorist organizations are all dependent on hordes of ‘private contractors.’"
Source: AlterNet
Background: The rise of public spies in the U.S.
In a 2006 report for the Center for Strategic Intelligence Research, army Major Glenn James Voelz writes that the end of the Cold War necessitated “a major reallocation of intelligence resources to cover a more complex array of trans-national threats.” But, despite a report from the House Permanent Select Committee in 1996 that recommended a “surge capacity for crisis response” of both government and private contract workers, it was September 11 and the war on terror that prompted more and varied private intelligence contracts.
Source: The Center for Strategic Intelligence Research [via the Federation of American Scientists]
Prior to September 11, politicians and others argued for a stronger relationship between private companies and U.S. intelligence agencies. According to a 2000 Bloomberg News article, Representative Porter Goss, a Florida Republican heading the House panel on intelligence and its 2000 report on the National Security Agency, called for the NSA to “learn how to do business with the private sector.” At the time, the agency was “under attack for failing to keep pace” with technological advancements, and was accused of struggling to “find its role” since the end of the Cold War.
Source: Bloomberg News [via Federation of American Scientists]
In a Washington Post Book World interview, Tim Shorrock, author of “Spies for Hire,” notes that “about 70 percent” of the budget of the Intelligence Community, which includes the CIA, the NSA, the National Reconnaissance Office and several other agencies, now “goes to private contracts, covering the acquisition of everything from pencils to satellites.” Shorrock also found that the budget for private intelligence has increased by more than 150 percent since 2000, from $17.5 billion to $42 billion.
Source: Washington Post Book World
Opinions & Analysis: Outsourcing America’s spies
In a New York Times op-ed published in June 2007, Patrick Radden Keefe contends that the privatization of espionage has taken off since September 11, 2001. “Of course,” he notes, “our spies always relied on private sector expertise. But in the decade after the cold war the intelligence community’s budget was cut by 40 percent.” September 11, he suggests, found government spies “shorthanded—untrained in the languages spoken by terrorists, unable to crack new communications technologies, generally lagging behind their counterparts outside the government. The privatization boom emerged out of sheer necessity.”
Source: The New York Times
In an article on Blackwater, which has billions of dollars worth of contracts with the U.S. military and private companies, The Nation argues that Blackwater’s Total Intelligence Solutions, formed in 2006, is led by “a Who’s Who of the CIA’s ‘war on terror’ operations after 9/11,” exemplifying another trend: the growing number of ex-government agents now working for private organizations. Former CIA division chief and senior analyst Melvin Goodman told The Nation that his “major concern” about the trend is the “lack of accountability, the lack of responsibility. The entire industry is essentially out of control.”
Source: The Nation
Related Topic: Military contracts in Iraq
Steve Fainaru, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his reports on military contracts in Iraq, reported on the fallout from a Baghdad incident in September 2007 in which Iraqi civilians were killed by Blackwater employees. Allegedly “exempt” from “U.S. military regulations governing other security firms,” Blackwater and the surrounding controversy “illuminated” what Fainaru called the “uneven and largely dysfunctional regulatory system” governing private military contracts in Iraq.
Source: The Washington Post
Reference: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Reports
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence provides PDFs of its annual reports on the committee’s Web site for fiscal years 1998–2009. These reports chiefly allocate budgets for the following fiscal year, but also discuss Intelligence Community performance and make recommendations.
Source: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Most Recent Beyond The Headlines
© 2010 Dulcinea Media, Inc.
