Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 23. december 2004 / Time Line December 23, 2004
Version 3.522. December 2004, 24. December 2004
12/23/2004
Danger in Iraq drives out firm
The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com
ASSOCIATED PRESS
An international construction company has pulled out of its
contract to rebuild Iraq's transportation systems, deciding the
country was too dangerous, a spokesman for the U.S.-led
reconstruction effort said yesterday.
Contrack International Inc., based in Arlington, led a coalition of
firms working on a $325 million contract to rebuild Iraq's roads,
bridges and railways.
Contrack withdrew from that contract last month after a surge in
attacks on reconstruction efforts, said Lt. Col. Eric Schnaible of
the Pentagon's Project and Contract Office in Baghdad.
12/23/2004
The Spy Who Billed Me : In the post-9/11 rush to beef up
intelligence, the government has outsourced everything from spy
satellites to covert operations -- and well-connected companies are
cashing in.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2005/01/12_400.html
By: Tim Shorrock
A small crowd files past a sign reading “Career Fair
Today” at the Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly, Virginia, just
outside Washington, D.C. An American flag and a cluster of colorful
balloons flutter in the breeze. But inside, it quickly becomes
clear that this is no ordinary job fair. Everybody, from the
well-dressed applicants to the stern-faced recruiters, wears a
badge reading “Secret” or “Top Secret.”
That’s because this event is open only to candidates with an
intelligence background and a government security clearance -- the
more high-level, the better.
Many of the 5,517 jobs available have something to do with the
global war on terror or the occupation of Iraq. One recruiter has a
position open for an “Iraq Counterterrorism Analyst.”
Another is looking for personnel to “conduct interrogations
of detainees” in Iraq. There is a job in Baghdad for a senior
intelligence analyst and several in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, for
intelligence analysts experienced in “counter-terrorism,
threat analysis, and counter-narcotics.” One job looks
formidable: a “deputy site manager” is needed in
Baghdad to supervise “1,500-2,000 linguists providing
interpreter-translator service to a 140,000-member deployed U.S.
military force conducting counter-insurgency, stabilization and
nation building operations.”
There’s only one thing missing: the U.S. government. Every
one of these jobs is being advertised by a private company -- one
of hundreds of firms that contract with the Central Intelligence
Agency, the National Security Agency, or the Pentagon to provide
everything from urine testers to supervisors of clandestine
operations overseas. The people hired for these jobs may be doing
government work in Washington or Baghdad, but they will be paid by
firms such as the international consulting giant Booz Allen
Hamilton or CACI International, one of the companies whose
employees were implicated in prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.
The job fair is being sponsored by IntelligenceCareers.com, a
recruitment firm headed by William D. Golden, a former Army
intelligence officer. Golden says his company can hardly keep up
with the demand for intelligence contractors. “The government
has become addicted to the use of private industry in the world of
intelligence,” he says. “In fact, they’ve made a
science of it.” Indeed they have. A CIA official interviewed
for this story wouldn’t say how much of the agency’s
work is done by private companies, but admitted that outsourcing
has increased substantially since 2001. Of the estimated $40
billion the United States is expected to spend on intelligence this
year, experts say at least 50 percent will go to private
contractors.
Yet as Americans learn more about the role of intelligence
contractors from Afghanistan (where a contractor has been charged
in connection with the death of a detainee) to Guantanamo (where
Lockheed Martin has supplied interrogators, according to the trade
publication Federal Times), critics are beginning to question
whether private companies should be in the business of handling
some of the government’s most sensitive work. Steven
Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the
Federation of American Scientists, believes that the kind of
military intelligence work contracted to CACI, Titan Corp., and
other companies is particularly ripe for problems because
intelligence agencies “operate under unusual
authority.” He adds: “I don’t think the current
oversight system is equipped to monitor the activities of
contractors. That is one of the central lessons of the Abu Ghraib
affair.”
Like the defense industry, the intelligence business is driven by a
network of lobbyists and a web of close connections between
government and the private sector. But unlike the arms industry,
intelligence contractors operate in a world where budgets are
classified and many activities -- from covert operations to foreign
eavesdropping -- are conducted in secret. Even the bidding for
intelligence contracts is often classified. As a result, there is
virtually no oversight of the intelligence community and its
corporate partners. That was one of the central findings of the
9/11 commission, which called congressional supervision of
intelligence and counterterrorism “dysfunctional.”
The outsourcing revolution began with the end of the Cold War, when
hundreds of intelligence jobs were eliminated, and quickened in the
mid-1990s under Vice President Al Gore’s Reinventing
Government initiative. Sensing a niche, information technology
companies like CACI and Titan began hiring retired intelligence
employees and contracting them back to the agencies they had once
worked for; their business boomed after 9/11, when the intelligence
community found itself awash in money and desperate to catch
up.
Today, the ties between intelligence agencies and the private
sector are so close, it’s sometimes hard to tell the
difference. Joan Dempsey, a former CIA deputy director, recently --
and approvingly -- referred to consulting firm Booz Allen as
“the shadow intelligence community.” Three of Booz
Allen’s current and former vice presidents previously served
as intelligence agency directors, including James Woolsey, who
headed the CIA during the Clinton administration. Connections with
the private sector are especially close at the NSA, where
outsourcing has grown rapidly. Former NSA director William Studeman
is now a vice president of Northrop Grumman, and Barbara McNamara,
a former deputy director, is on the board of CACI. After leaving
government, these officials keep their high-level security
clearances, which makes them extremely valuable to their new
employers. “You can’t do anybusiness without having the
clearances,” says John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, a
Virginia- based think tank. “How else would you know about
the contracts?”
The lines separating contractors from agencies are so blurred that
at the leading trade association -- the Security Affairs Support
Association (SASA) -- 8 of 20 board members are current government
officials. The association represents about 125 intelligence
contractors, including Boeing, CACI, General Dynamics, and Computer
Sciences Corporation (CSC). Retired Air Force Lt. General Kenneth
Minihan, its president and chairman, is yet another former director
of the NSA. As a nonprofit, SASA is barred from lobbying, but it
frequently sponsors events where government and corporate officials
mingle, and it provides infor- mation to members of Congress.
“We use the term ‘advocacy,’” says Frank
Blanco, SASA’s executive vice president.
Intelligence contractors themselves, meanwhile, have fielded armies
of lobbyists to keep the money flowing; according to the Project on
Government Oversight, Lockheed Martin spent $47 million on outside
lobbying between 1997 and 2004, while another company, SAIC, spent
$8.6 million and CSC spent $3.3 million. Lockheed Martin has also
hired Joe Allbaugh, who managed the 2000 Bush campaign, to lobby
for its rapidly growing intelligence division. And the companies
are showering key members of Congress with contributions: The top
contributor to Duncan Hunter (R-Ca.), chairman of the House Armed
Services Committee, is Titan Corp. Over at the Senate Intelligence
Committee, Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) received $14,000, almost
half of his PAC intake in 2004, from six key contractors.
Most of the big players in the intelligence business have set up
shop within shouting distance of SASA’s offices on the
National Business Parkway in Annapolis Junction, Maryland -- just
blocks from the gleaming headquarters of the NSA. One large
building bears the logo of Boeing, the prime contractor for the
nation’s spy satellite system; the next complex houses CSC
and Logicon, the information technology unit of Northrop Grumman.
Together, in 2001, the companies won a $2 billion contract to
modernize the NSA’s information systems; the day the project
began, more than 600 government workers were instantly transformed
into private contractors. Next door sits the brand-new headquarters
for Titan, whose earnings have surged due to its contract with the
U.S. Army to supply translators and provide support for the
military’s unmanned spy planes. Across the street is Booz
Allen, one of the prime contractors for the Trailblazer project, a
huge effort to overhaul the NSA’s top-secret signals
intelligence capabilities. Booz Allen and SAIC are doing research
for the project under a $280 million “technology
demonstration platform” contract, and few doubt that the NSA
will award the final, much larger contract to the same companies.
That troubles analysts, who say that allowing contractors to write
the specs for their own future deals -- as Halliburton did in Iraq
-- is a conflict of interest. That task “should remain within
the agencies,” says Aftergood. (Booz Allen, like other
contractors contacted for this article, would not comment on its
intelligence work.)
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