Total Intelligence’s leadership also includes Craig Johnson, a twenty-seven-year CIA officer who specialized in Central and South America, and Caleb “Cal” Temple, who joined the company straight out of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he served from 2004 to 2006 as chief of the Office of Intelligence Operations in the Joint Intelligence Task Force—Combating Terrorism.47 According to his Total Intelligence bio, Temple directed the “DIA’s 24/7 analytic terrorism target development and other counterterrorism intelligence activities in support of military operations worldwide. He also oversaw 24/7 global counterterrorism indications and warning analysis for the U.S. Defense Department.” The company also boasts officials drawn from the Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI.48
Total Intelligence is run out of an office on the ninth floor of a building in the Ballston area of Arlington, Virginia.49 Its “Global Fusion Center,” complete with large-screen TVs broadcasting international news channels and computer stations staffed by analysts surfing the web, “operates around the clock every day of the year”50 and is modeled after the CIA’s counter-terrorist center, once run by Black.51 The firm now employs at least sixty-five full-time staff—some estimates say it is closer to 100.52 “Total Intel brings the… skills traditionally honed by CIA operatives directly to the board-room,” Black said when the company launched. “With a service like this, CEOs and their security personnel will be able to respond to threats quickly and confidently—whether it’s determining which city is safest to open a new plant in or working to keep employees out of harm’s way after a terrorist attack.”53
Black insists, “This is a completely legal enterprise. We break no laws. We don’t go anywhere near breaking laws. We don’t have to.”54 But what exact services Total Intelligence is providing and to whom remain shrouded in secrecy. What is clear is that the company is leveraging the reputations and inside connections of its executives. “Cofer can open doors,” Richer told the Washington Post in 2007. “I can open doors. We can generally get in to see who we need to see. We don’t help pay bribes. We do everything within the law, but we can deal with the right minister or person.”55 Black told the paper he and Richer spend a lot of their time traveling. “I am discreet in where I go and who I see. I spend most of my time dealing with senior people in governments, making connections.”56 But it is clear that the existing connections from the former spooks’ time at the agency have brought business to Total Intelligence.
Take the case of Jordan.
For years, Richer worked closely with King Abdullah, serving as the CIA’s liaison with the king. As journalist Ken Silverstein reported, “The CIA has lavishly subsidized Jordan’s intelligence service, and has sent millions of dollars in recent years for intelligence training. After Richer retired, sources say, he helped Blackwater land a lucrative deal with the Jordanian government to provide the same sort of training offered by the CIA. Millions of dollars that the CIA ‘invested’ in Jordan walked out the door with Richer—if this were a movie, it would be a cross between Jerry Maguire and Syriana. ‘People [at the agency] are pissed off,’ said one source. ‘Abdullah still speaks with Richer regularly and he thinks that’s the same thing as talking to us. He thinks Richer is still the man.’ Except in this case it’s Richer, not his client, yelling ‘show me the money.’”57
In a 2007 interview on the cable TV business network CNBC, Black was brought on as an analyst to discuss “investing in Jordan.”58 At no point in the interview was Black identified as working for the Jordanian government. Total Intelligence was described as “a corporate consulting firm that includes investment strategy,” while “Ambassador Black” was introduced as “a 28-year veteran of the CIA,” the “top counterterror guy” and “a key planner for the breathtakingly rapid victory of American forces that toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan.” During the interview, Black heaped lavish praise on Jordan and its monarchy. “You have leadership, King Abdullah, His Majesty King Abdullah, who is certainly kind towards investors, very protective,” Black said. “Jordan is, in our view, a very good investment. There are some exceptional values there.” He said Jordan is in a region where there are “numerous commodities that are being produced and doing well.”
With no hint of the brutality behind the exodus, he argued that the plight of Iraqi refugees, fleeing the violence of the U.S. occupation, was good for potential investors in Jordan. “We get something like six, 700,000 Iraqis that have moved from Iraq into Jordan that require cement, furniture, housing, and the like. So it is a—it is an island of growth and potential, certainly in that immediate area. So it looks good,” Black said. “There are opportunities for investment. It is not all bad. Sometimes Americans need to watch a little less TV…. But there is—there is opportunity in everything. That’s why you need situation awareness, and that’s one of the things that our company does. It provides the kinds of intelligence and insight to provide situational awareness so you can make the best investments.”
Black and other Total Intelligence executives have turned their CIA careers, reputations, contacts, and connections into profitable business opportunities. What they once did for the U.S. government, they now do for private interests. It is not difficult to imagine clients feeling as though they are essentially hiring the U.S. government to serve their private interests. “They have the skills and background to do anything anyone wants,” said Hillhouse. “There’s no oversight. They’re an independent company offering freelance espionage services. They’re rent-a-spies.”59
In 2007 Richer told the Post that now that he is in the private sector, foreign military officials and others are more willing to give him information than they were when he was with the CIA. He recalled a conversation with a general from a foreign military during which Richer was surprised at the potentially “classified” information the general revealed. When Richer asked why the general was giving him the information, he said the general responded, “If I tell it to an embassy official I’ve created espionage. You’re a business partner.”60
“I Sleep the Sleep of the Just”
In 2008 Iraq was a leading issue in the U.S. presidential election. While the Democrats campaigned on a pledge to end the war, the Republican nominee, John McCain, suggested U.S. forces could remain in Iraq for “maybe a hundred” years, a scenario that he said “would be fine with me.”61 But hidden behind the rhetoric of political speeches, often framed as pro- versus anti-Iraq War, was a stark reality: the Iraq occupation will continue for years to come regardless of who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Erik Prince, who had previously donated more than $250,000 to Republican campaigns and causes, seems to have determined that his publicly traceable campaign contributions are a liability. “I don’t know that I’ll have much political involvement in either party going forward,” he said in late 2007.62 Whether that is a business decision or a political one, his company and the highly profitable industry in which it operates are so deeply embedded in the U.S. political system that they are here to stay.