Outsourcing *

Who Runs the CIA? Outsiders for Hire.

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

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/06/AR2007070601993.html

~~~

Who Runs the CIA?

July 07, 2007

Regular readers already know the answer:  it's the spies who bill.  The
 CIA has been outsourced.  I write in Sunday's  Washington Post:

  [T]he private spy industry has succeeded where no foreign government
 has: It has penetrated the CIA and is running the show.

  ...

    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.

Now it is nearly impossible to pin down the exact statistics of the
 extent of the penetration, precisely because CIA and ODNI leadership finds
 the numbers so damning and will go through great efforts to parse
 terms to keep the numbers down--doing things like throwing in the number of
 foreign agents run by case officers, under and over counting various
 groups--whatever it takes to keep those number below 50%.  I tried to
 find the best way of phrasing this so it wouldn't get noodled., but after
 coming up with, "50% of the hours expended by non-agent human beings
 at the behest of the NCS" which probably couldn't be successfully
 parsed, I decided to let them to the silly gymnastics in response and go with
 the straight forward truth that over 50% of the National Clandestine
 Service has been outsourced to industrial contractors.

I also discuss the issue of contractors--green badgers--managing other
 contractors:

  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.

Now this is another one where the Beltway linguist could attempt to
 split bureaucratic hairs.  I'm sure some will argue that if there are two
 blue badgers in a twenty person branch, the "entire branch" isn't,
 technically speaking, outsourced.  Others would argue that such a branch
 isn't outsourced at all because, by their definition, green badgers
 aren't part of a branch, only blue badgers are.  When one or two blue badger
 oversees a green badger project manager who in turn is overseeing
 green badgers from his firm and/or other firms, I'd say that's farming out
 the whole branch.

I also discuss dangers to national security from outsourcing that are
 being glossed over through the DNI's censorship of the year-long study
 of industrial outsourcing in the Intelligence Community.  This is pretty
 straight forward, so check it out in the article.  I conclude:

  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.

Rent-A-Spy
  a.. Abraxas 
  b.. Advanced Concepts, Inc. 
  c.. Baer Group 
  d.. Booz Allen 
  e.. CACI 
  f.. Diligence 
  g.. Future Technologies 
  h.. Guidance Software 
  i.. Lockheed Martin 
  j.. ManTech 
  k.. McNeil Technologies 
  l.. Northrop Grumman 
  m.. QinetiQ 
  n.. Raytheon 
  o.. SAIC 
  p.. Scitor 
  q.. SpecTal 
  r.. The Analysis Corporation (TAC) 
  s.. Total Intel 
  t.. ViaGlobal Group 
Rent-A-SEAL
  a.. AEGIS 

  b.. Armor Group

  c.. Blackwater USA

  d.. Cochise Consultancy

  e.. Crescent Security Group

  f.. DynCorp 

  g.. ERINYS

  h.. FalconGroup

  i.. GardaWorld

  j.. Hart

  k.. L-3

  l.. MPRI

  m.. Olive

  n.. SOC-SMG

  o.. Triple Canopy

Rent-A-Lobbyist
  a.. International Peace Operations Association 
  b.. Intelligence and National Security Alliance