[Marxism] Privatization of US intelligence

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

washingtonpost.com


Who Runs the CIA? Outsiders for Hire.

By R.J. Hillhouse
Sunday, July 8, 2007; B05

Red alert: Our national security is being outsourced.

The most intriguing secrets of the "war on terror" have nothing to do  
with al-Qaeda and its fellow travelers. They're about the mammoth  
private spying industry that all but runs U.S. intelligence  
operations today.

Surprised? No wonder. In April, Director of National Intelligence  
Mike McConnell was poised to publicize a year-long examination of  
outsourcing by U.S. intelligence agencies. But the report was  
inexplicably delayed -- and suddenly classified a national secret.  
What McConnell doesn't want you to know is that the private spy  
industry has succeeded where no foreign government has: It has  
penetrated the CIA and is running the show.

Over the past five years (some say almost a decade), there has been a  
revolution in the intelligence community toward wide-scale  
outsourcing. Private companies now perform key intelligence-agency  
functions, to the tune, I'm told, of more than $42 billion a year.  
Intelligence professionals tell me that more than 50 percent of the  
National Clandestine Service (NCS) -- the heart, brains and soul of  
the CIA -- has been outsourced to private firms such as Abraxas, Booz  
Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

These firms recruit spies, create non-official cover identities and  
control the movements of CIA case officers. They also provide case  
officers and watch officers at crisis centers and regional desk  
officers who control clandestine operations worldwide. As the Los  
Angeles Times first reported last October, more than half the  
workforce in two key CIA stations in the fight against terrorism --  
Baghdad and Islamabad, Pakistan -- is made up of industrial  
contractors, or "green badgers," in CIA parlance.

Intelligence insiders say that entire branches of the NCS have been  
outsourced to private industry. These branches are still managed by  
U.S. government employees ("blue badgers") who are accountable to the  
agency's chain of command. But beneath them, insiders say, is a  
supervisory structure that's controlled entirely by contractors; in  
some cases, green badgers are managing green badgers from other  
corporations.

Sensing problems -- and possibly fearing congressional action -- the  
CIA recently conducted a hasty review of all of its job  
classifications to determine which perform "essential government  
functions" that should not be outsourced. But it's highly doubtful  
that such a short-term exercise can comprehensively identify the  
proper "blue/green" mix, especially because contractors' work  
statements have long been carefully formulated to blur the  
distinction between approvable and debatable functions.

Although the contracting system is Byzantine, there's no question  
that the private sector delivers high-quality professional  
intelligence services. Outsourcing has provided solutions to  
personnel-management problems that have always plagued the CIA's  
operations side. Rather than tying agents up in the kind of office  
politics that government employees have to engage in to advance their  
careers, outsourcing permits them to focus on what they do best,  
which boosts morale and performance. Privatization also immediately  
increased the number of trained, experienced agents in the field  
after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Even though wide-scale outsourcing may not immediately endanger  
national security, it's worrisome. The contractors in charge of  
espionage are still chiefly CIA alumni who have absorbed its public  
service values. But as the center of gravity shifts from the public  
sector to the private, more than one independent intelligence firm  
has developed plans to "raise" succeeding generations of officers  
within its own training systems. These corporate-grown agents will be  
inculcated with corporate values and ethics, not those of public  
service.

And the current piecemeal system has introduced some vulnerabilities.  
Historically, the system offered members of the intelligence  
community the kind of stability that ensured that they would keep its  
secrets. That dynamic is now being eroded. Contracts come and go. So  
do workforces. The spies of the past came of age professionally in a  
strong extended family, but the spies of the future will be more like  
children raised in multiple foster homes -- at risk.

Today, when Booz Allen Hamilton loses a contract to SAIC, people rush  
from one to the other in a game of musical chairs, with not enough  
chairs for all the workers who possess both the highest security  
clearances and expertise in the art of espionage. Some inevitably  
lose out. Any good counterintelligence officer knows what can happen  
next. Down-on-their-luck spies begin to do what spies do best: spy.  
Other companies offer them jobs in exchange for industry secrets.  
Foreign governments approach them. And some day, terrorists will clue  
in to this potential workforce.

The director of national intelligence has put our security at risk by  
classifying the study on outsourcing and keeping the truth about this  
inadequately planned and managed system out of the light. Much of  
what has been outsourced makes sense, but much of the structure  
doesn't, not for the longer term. It's time for the public and  
Congress to demand the study's release. More important, it's past  
time for the industry -- an industry conceived of and run by some of  
the best and brightest the CIA has ever produced -- to come up with  
the kind of innovative solutions it's legendary for, before the  
damage goes too deep.

rjh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

R.J. Hillhouse writes the national security blog the Spy Who Billed  
Me and is the author of the espionage thriller "Outsourced."


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