Meet the Counterterrorism-Industrial Complex

[Jcrowley]

Meet the Counterterrorism-Industrial Complex
Posted on Tuesday, September 19, 2006. By Ken Silverstein.

Last week I wrote about the steady flow of CIA employees to Blackwater USA, the private security contractor with major operations in Iraq. Yesterday's Los Angeles Times took a broader look at the revolving door between intelligence agencies and the private sector, and found that “because of the demands of the war on terrorism and the drawn–out conflict in Iraq, U.S. spy agencies have turned to unprecedented numbers of outside contractors to perform jobs once the domain of government-employed analysts and secret agents.”

For private contractors to hire intelligence officials is not a new phenomenon. Take a look at the board of directors of any major defense or homeland security contractor and you're likely to come across some familiar names. The board at San Diego-based Science Applications International Corporation, which receives billions annually in federal contracts, has included two former CIA directors (John Deutch and Robert Gates), a former head of the National Security Agency (Bobby Ray Inman), and two former defense secretaries (William Perry and Melvin Laird).

But the pace of the movement to private firms has recently reached alarming proportions. “At the CIA,” said the Los Angeles Times story, “poaching became such a problem that former Director Porter J. Goss had to warn several firms to stop recruiting employees in the agency cafeteria . . . . One recently retired case officer said he had been approached twice while in line for coffee.” (As I noted in my recent post about Blackwater, that firm's CEO, Erik Prince, has a “green badge” that allows him access to CIA installations, and he regularly meets with senior officials at the agency's headquarters.)

Among the Times' other interesting findings:
• More than half of all employees at the National Counterterrorism Center (NCC) are outside contractors, and the former head of the NCC, John Brennan, is now the CEO of Analysis Corp, which supplies contract analysts to the center. The use of contractors is especially heavy at the CIA. Abraxas Corp, a firm conveniently located near the agency in McLean, Virginia, and home to many former CIA veterans, creates false identities for an elite group of overseas case officers.

http://www.harpers.org/sb-meet-the-counterterrorism-1158675678.html

[MadMaddie]

1. The Republicans have allowed this.....and this will eventually

lead to more US spies......with no accountability they can do as they want for $$$$

[waketheherd]

2. For those that don't yet know

Blackwater head honcho Erik Prince is the brother-in-law of Michigan GOP gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos.

Oligarchy Rules!

[Jcrowley]

3. Spy Agencies Outsourcing to Fill Key Jobs

At CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., senior officials say it is routine for career officers to look around the table during meetings on secret operations and be surrounded by so-called green-badgers — nonagency employees who carry special-colored IDs.

Some of the work being outsourced is extremely sensitive. Abraxas Corp., a private company in McLean, Va., founded by a group of CIA veterans, devises "covers," or false identities, for an elite group of overseas case officers, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the arrangement.

Contractors also are turning up in increasing numbers in clandestine facilities around the world. At the CIA station in Islamabad, Pakistan, as many as three-quarters of those on hand since the Sept. 11 attacks have been contractors. In Baghdad, site of the agency's largest overseas presence, contractors have at times outnumbered full-time CIA employees, according to officials who have held senior positions in the station.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-contractors17sep17,1,7829028.story?ctrack=1&cset=true