GREATEST HITS: INTELLIGENCE

SpiesForHire

Over the last 20 years, government outsourcing spread to some of the crown jewels of US intelligence. From CIA analysis to NSA signals intelligence to the interrogation of enemy prisoners, private companies like SAIC, Booz Allen Hamilton and CACI International are now making millions of dollars doing what the government used to do. Outsourcing has become so pervasive that the Director of National Intelligence decided to study the phenomenon in 2006. When the report was completed in April 2007, the results were apparently so stunning that the DNI vetoed the idea of putting out a report and instead told reporters that disclosure of the figures would damage national security (read more about that here). I’ve been following these developments for years and wrote this book about it. So here’s a guide to some of my articles on the subject from the time I was writing my first book:

  • The Spy Who Billed Me (Mother Jones/January-February 2005) – This was my first major expose of intelligence outsourcing, published in 2005. I wrote it after attending an intelligence jobs fair where all applicants had to have a top secret security clearance to enter. “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.” I was way off, as I later discovered, the actual figure was an astonishing 70 percent.
  • The Spy Who Came in From the Boardroom (Salon) – A look at the corporate the DNI during the Obama administration, Mike McConnell of Booz Allen Hamilton. “With revenues of $3.7 billion in 2005, Booz Allen is one of the nation’s biggest defense and intelligence contractors. Under McConnell’s watch, Booz Allen has been deeply involved in some of the most controversial counterterrorism programs the Bush administration has run…Booz Allen is almost certainly participating in the (NSA’s) warrantless surveillance of the telephone calls and e-mails of American citizens.”
  • Watching What You Say (The Nation) – An expose of the corporations that have been helping the NSA listen in on the telephone calls made by US citizens, under the Terrorist Surveillance Program. “Corporations have been cooperating with the NSA for half a century. What’s different now is that they appear to be helping the NSA deploy its awesome computing and data-mining powers inside the United States in direct contravention of US law, which specifically bans the agency from collecting information from US citizens living inside the United States.”
  • CACI and its Friends (The Nation) – An early look at the corporation that brought you Abu Ghraib. “J.P. ‘Jack London, CACI’s longtime chairman and CEO, told securities analysts that CACI is unaware of ‘any specific charges” against its employees but is “working diligently to get the facts.’ He added, ‘We feel we’ve done a fine job for the United States Army.'”