Still find it amazing that one mid-level guy can steal so much highly classified information.

[AnalystInParadise]

88. But you are overlooking one key fact

The two largest expansions of Contractors in military intelligence are Presidents Clinton and Obama. I voted for both guys so that is tough for me to say. Intel contractors started showing up on Army bases in 1996 when I was a young E-5. 9/11 happened and Bush made it a larger issue with the outsourcing of contract work for Intel. President
Obama got us out of Iraq but kept authorizing Defense budgets or other funding programs that kept hiring contractors. We are leaving Afghanistan next year and the contract positions are still going up, not going down. You are arguing morality and many of us are feeding our families because we have unique skills that government wants to make use of. Granted I and others work for corporations, but our customer is the government. We exist at their behest and do the work they task organize and contract us to do. I am not saying government is bad, wrong or evil. However any work a contractor is doing for Intelligence is work that has been ordered to be performed by the government. The only difference is who is issuing the paychecks. The government pays the contracting company to do the job, the contracting company hired the worker to do the job paying him or her with funds from the government. I, and others are doing what the government is paying us to do. In essence I am earning a government salary after the contracting company takes their cut. If I converted to a Federal position (of which none exist for the unique work I do,) I would not be taking a pay cut at all, Intel contractors make on par with what their few federally employed peers make.