6 things you should know about privatized intelligence contracting

[nashville_brook]

What You Should Know About The Intelligence Community’s Contractors

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/06/10/2127511/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-intelligence-communitys-contractors/


Number of private contractors exploded since 2001. After 9/11, the budgets of the Pentagon and intelligence community grew to almost double their 1998 rates. To keep pace with this expansion, without bringing more federal workers into the fold, federal contractors were signed up to provide the labor instead.

More than half a million private contractors can access the country’s secrets. A large degree of surprise also was related to the fact that Snowden had access to many of the documents he obtained so soon after beginning to work for Booz Allen. Once obtained, a clearance is a relatively hard thing to lose, so long as you remain employed by a company that does work requiring you to hold one. These clearances also only need to be renewed every five years while active. According to a 2013 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, a total of 483,263 contractors held Top Secret clearances in 2012, the highest level one can obtain, with another 582,524 holding them at the Confidential and Secret levels.

Private contractors are on average twice as expensive as government workers. Many former government employees make the switch into private contracting, which can serve to drive up the amount they wind up costing the American taxpayer. A 2007 report to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that the average government employee working as an intelligence analyst cost $126,500, while the same work performed by a contractor would cost the government an average $250,000 including overhead. The total annual budget of the intelligence community is itself secret; only the top line is reported to the public. For Fiscal Year 2014, the Obama administration requested $48.2 billion for the National Intelligence Program, encompassing “six Federal departments, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.” Of that amount, according to a 2007 article, an amazing 70 percent goes towards private contractors.

(snip)

Contractors are prevalent in the intelligence sector. Analysts looking for patterns among information, technology staffers building IT systems and making sure the networks stay functioning, front office administrative workers, sometimes even the intelligence collection specialists themselves are all positions contractors fill. This takes place across the range of intelligence collection including signals intelligence (SIGINT), of the sort that the NSA performs and has led to the current scrutiny, as well as human intelligence gained directly from sources and geographic intelligence gathered from spy satellites....These positions exist for even the most shadowy of operations, including openings for human targeting analysts, who help the military and intelligence community determine who to place in the cross-hairs of drone strikes.

(snip)

More at link: http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/06/10/2127511/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-intelligence-communitys-contractors/

[DirkGently]

1. It's become a racket. Which means lobbyists will tell us

when we can have our privacy back.

[Fumesucker]

2. They are now "C" men not "G" men

The C being for Corporate.

[Turbineguy]

3. It was never about gathering intelligence.

It was about making money. Repub patriotism is about making money.

[freshwest]

5. +1,000

[nashville_brook]

6. such a conflict of interest -- companies must do what's profitable

intelligence/security should be the first order of "public commons."

[TxVietVet]

10. You've hit the nail on the head.

Conservanazi patriotism is about profit and ideology. Period.

[DURHAM D]

4. I have also assumed that the vetting for a security clearance

has now been privatized. I would love to know which corporation has that job or do each do their own "checking".

[nashville_brook]

11. for there to be so many, you'd have to imagine they'd privatize that too.

[scarletwoman]

7. K&R! Sorry I didn't see this sooner - great stuff!

[RainDog]

8. k&r n/t

[liberalla]

9. K&R

[DCKit]

12. It's the cost of privatization that's killing us.

Back in the day, I was making less than 25% (including benefits) of what the company I worked for billed to the Feds for my time. To the best of my knowledge, no federal contractor pays more then 50% of what they bill. On top of that - in many cases - government contractors admin expenses are subsidized by the government.

We're being screwn.