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Positions that were formerly reserved for government personnel are regularly filled with private sector employees. Traditionally, tasks performed by contractors were for technical support, but increasingly critical functions in the CIA are now being handled by employees of private corporations. Outsourced jobs include “regional desk officers who control clandestine operations around the world; watch officers at the 24-hour crisis center; analysts who sift through reams of intelligence data; counterintelligence officers who oversee clandestine meetings between agency officers and their recruited spies; and reports officers who act as liaisons between officers in the field and analysts back at headquarters.” [1] Up to 75 percent of the personnel at the CIA’s Islamabad station work for private companies and contractors are often in the majority at the CIA’s Baghdad station, where they regularly perform such traditional spy activities as recruiting and handling agents. [2] The outsourcing of the management of the black sites or secret CIA prisons is but the next progression. The intelligence industry has succeeded where few foreign governments have: private agents have infiltrated the CIA.

The highly secretive National Security Agency outsources over $2 billion of services annually. [3] Private industry provides the NSA with the equivalent of 5,000 additional full-time employees, boosting its civilian staffing by 30 percent. Contractors often work side by side with NSA staff, inside high security facilities. [4] Not only does the US government monitor some domestic calls and most domestic calling patterns, but so do private for-profit companies. Big Brother, Inc. is listening.

All US government intelligence agencies are now highly dependent upon the staff of private companies for critical national security positions, including the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). The NCTC was created in 2004 to serve as a hub for all government intelligence collection relating to terrorism and counterterrorism. It is one of the most influential government agencies because NCTC analysts are responsible for aggregating intelligence produced by sixteen government agencies and using this to prepare the daily National Terrorism Brief (NTB), a document that is appended to the Presidential Daily Brief. [5] The Presidential Daily Brief is a summary and analysis of national security issues warranting the President’s immediate attention that the National Intelligence Director presents to the President each morning. According to a twenty-four-year CIA veteran who is a current intelligence contractor, “When I left the Hill over a year ago, a significant majority of the analysts assigned to the NCTC…were contractors.” [6] Thanks to outsourcing, private, for-profit companies have the American president’s ear on a daily basis and their words carry the weight of the combined intelligence agencies of the United States.

The extensive use of private, for-profit companies in critical intelligence positions raises a host of national security concerns and The Washington Post reported in March 2006 that the office of the Director of National Intelligence was reportedly studying the issue. [7] But in 2000 the Army was already concerned with potential dangers arising from the use of private contractors performing sensitive intelligence functions. That year the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs attempted to bar private contractors from performing intelligence functions, citing a risk to national security. He noted with caution, “Private contractors may be acquired by foreign interests, acquire and maintain interests in foreign countries, and provide support to foreign customers.” [8] He also requested that the Army modify its field manual, Contractors on the Battlefield, to reflect this determination. Such requests by secretaries of the Army are usually honored, but in this case, when the new version of the manual was issued in 2003, the ban on private contractors performing intelligence functions was omitted. Ironically enough, the Army did not revise its own field manual for contractors, but rather outsourced the project to Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI), a private military corporation that states on its own Web site that it serves the national security interests of “selected foreign governments.” [9] In the Pentagon, private contractors write their own rules.

The Pentagon is the government’s biggest fan of outsourcing, although actual figures of the true extent of private contracting are unknown, even to the Department of Defense. [10] Everything ranging from aircraft maintenance and prisoner interrogations to background checks for security clearances and ROTC programs at over 200 universities is handled by private firms. Also, 28 percent of all weapons systems are maintained by the private sector. [11] Even key aspects of the preparation of the defense budget itself are outsourced to a major defense contractor, Booz, Allen, Hamilton, as well as others. [12] With the Pentagon as its largest consumer, the private military business has grown into a $100 billion global industry. [13]

The Pentagon’s use of private companies for intelligence functions has exploded in recent years. Private contractors make up 70 percent of the staff of the Pentagon’s newest intelligence entity, the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA). [14] CENTCOM, the military’s unified command responsible for the Iraq and Afghan wars, now contracts out to Lockheed Martin’s Information Technology-Professional Services division for human intelligence collection and analysis. At the time of this writing in June 2006, Lockheed Martin is advertising on an intel community job board for four intelligence support positions for CENTCOM. Three of the positions are seeking “HUMINT Collectors” with “strategic debriefing” training to work in Afghanistan. Translation: SPIES WANTED. [15]

Not only has spying been outsourced, but so has soldiering. Thanks to the Iraq war, the private military industry is booming. No one-not the Pentagon, not the CIA, not the Iraqi government-knows the exact number of contract soldiers in Iraq. [16] In 2005 many experts believed the figure to be around 25,000, but in April 2006 the Director of the Private Security Company Association in Iraq estimated that the number was somewhere over 48,000 heavily armed men and women. [17] One reporter who studied the issue in-depth wrote, “no one is really keeping track of all the businesses that provide squads of soldiers equipped with assault rifles and belt-fed light machine guns.” [18] More than one in four Coalition soldiers in Iraq now works for a private company. [19] Private industry is the single largest coalition partner in the conflict, with private soldiers outnumbering all international coalition troops combined.

These contract soldiers guard VIPs, airports, pipelines, government buildings and even US military facilities. They regularly engage insurgents in firefights. They are often referred to as private security, but as one expert on private military wrote, “These are not private guards who stroll at the local shopping mall. They involve personnel with military skills and weapons who carry out military functions, within a war zone, against military-level threats.” [20] They operate in a legal vacuum, outside of Iraqi and American law, the military’s own Rules of Engagement as well as the Uniform Code of Military Justice. [21] However, they do have one clear rule: they are to provide defensive security only; they are not to engage in direct action or participate in offensive missions. Many question whether this rule is often ignored. [22]