Over the Counter Intelligence

Tim Shorrock, a veteran investigative journalist and a longtime subscriber to the Dirt Diggers Digest, has just come out with a book called Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing.
Shorrock describes how an activity that used to be handled by spooks on
the federal payroll has been steadily transformed into a $50 billion
Intelligence-Industrial Complex.

Thanks to the contracting scandals surrounding Halliburton and its
former subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, the public learned of the
extent to which the Pentagon has turned over routine functions to
private military companies. The outrageous behavior of Blackwater has
highlighted the use of mercenaries to protect U.S. diplomats and other
VIPs in Iraq.

Shorrock shines a light on another group of corporations that are
carrying out a more sensitive function that most people have no idea is
being handed over to the private sector. Careful readers of the
revelations concerning abuses at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq
would have learned that interrogators alleged to have abused detainees
included civilians employed by a company called CACI. But that is only
the tip of a lucrative iceberg, Shorrock shows.

For example, he writes, more than half the people working at the
super-secret National Counterterrorism Center in Virginia are employees
of companies such as Science Applications International Corporation
(SAIC), BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin. The Center's terrorist
database is maintained by The Analysis Corporation, which subcontracted collection activities to CACI.

Since 9/11, Shorrock says, the Central Intelligence Agency has been
spending 50-60 percent of its budget (or about $2.5 billion a year) on
contractors-both individuals and companies. At the CIA and its sister
spook agencies: "Tasks that are now outsourced include running spy
networks out of embassies, intelligence analysis, signals intelligence
(SIGINT) collection, covert operations, and the interrogation of enemy
prisoners."

Shorrock devotes an entire chapter to Booz Allen Hamilton, known to
most people as a management consultant for large corporations but which
pioneered the intelligence outsourcing industry (though it recently
agreed to sell its federal business to the Carlyle Group). When Mike
McConnell, a former Booz Allen executive, was named by President Bush
as Director of National Intelligence, it was the first time, Shorrock
notes, that a contractor was put in charge of the country's entire spy
apparatus.

Spies for Hire has much more to offer that cannot be
adequately summarized here. I recommend that you read it in full. But
let me let also note that profiles of some of the intelligence
contractors discussed by Shorrock-such as CACI and ManTech International-can be found on the Crocodyl wiki to which I contribute. Also note that the updated edition of Jeremy Scahill's valuable book Blackwater,
recently issued in paperback, has a discussion (p.453 forward) on the
mercenary company's move into another form of privatized intelligence-a
product called Total Intelligence Solutions that is designed to bring
"CIA-style" services to Fortune 500 companies.

http://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/60

Dirt Diggers Digest is written by Philip Mattera, director of the Corporate Research Project, an affiliate of Good Jobs First.

See also feature articles by Tim Shorrock on CorpWatch.org:

Domestic Spying, Inc.

QinetiQ Goes Kinetic: Top Rumsfeld Aide Wins Contracts From Spy Office He Set Up 

Carlyle Group May Buy CIA Contractor: Booz Allen Hamilton

• 9 Lockheed Martin
• 15 Halliburton
• 17 Science Applications International Corporation
• 23 Private Security
• 24 Intelligence
• 176 War Profiteers Site
• 187 Privatization
• 210 Blackwater USA