Outsourced

The Facts Behind the Fiction

The Outsourcing of War and Espionage in the 21st Century

During the Cold War, the battle lines were clear: soldiers were soldiers and spies were spies-and they all took home paychecks from one government or another. On the American side, the spies who gathered human intelligence were civilian employees of the CIA, lurking in the shadows of history, secretly breaking foreign laws to quietly manipulate international affairs to the American advantage. At the same time, the Pentagon controlled all soldiers who did the obvious things soldiers (and marines) do: they fought wars for their country. In only a few short years, the global War on Terror changed all of this: soldiers are now spies; spies are now soldiers and tens of thousands of both soldiers and spies work for private corporations, accountable only to their shareholders. Wars, both conventional and covert, have been outsourced.

In the aftermath of 9/11, a frightened nation dumped cash into the CIA, but Congress did not expand the number of full time positions allotted to the Agency to keep pace with the funding increases, so the CIA turned to the private sector to swell its ranks. Companies were eager to pick up the new business and to meet the demand for intelligence professionals with requisite training and security clearances; after tapping into the pool of CIA retirees, they then turned to existing CIA personnel and used higher pay to lure away experienced mid-career officers into their ranks. These former CIA employees are frequently leased back to the CIA to perform their old jobs, with a higher salary for the individual and a large profit for the company. Recruitment within the Agency became so common that former CIA Director Goss intervened to stop companies from recruiting within the Agency’s own cafeteria; new CIA contracts usually carry a clause prohibiting this practice. As a direct result of outsourcing, the Agency now faces a critical personnel shortage and it can no longer function without contracted personnel. The number of contractors working for the CIA now outnumbers the Agency’s own workforce.

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]

Among these contract soldiers are former members of America’s most highly trained counterterrorism units. Two companies in particular, Blackwater USA and Triple Canopy, were early specialists in providing tier-one operators-former SEALs, Delta Force and Recon Marines. These are the elite warriors who have carried out some of the most challenging and secretive military operations. They are the best of the best, the most highly trained soldiers in the world and collectively they are one of the most sophisticated and lethal weapons in the US arsenal. And they are now for rent.

In 2003 Triple Canopy explained its mission on its Web site, writing, “Triple Canopy provides legal, moral and ethical Special Operations services consistent with US National Security interests.” [23] These private military corporations have secret contracts with multiple government agencies, reportedly with the Departments of Energy, State, and Defense as well as the CIA. Blackwater also has secret contracts with the Department of Homeland Security. [24] The president of Blackwater, who openly aspires to create the world’s largest private army, once boasted that he has contracts that are so secret “he can’t tell one federal agency about the business he’s doing with another.” [25] Private military corporations have privatized the fog of war, conveniently obscuring questionable activities from the light of public scrutiny. Blackwater claims to be ready for any type of mission. At a conference in Amman, Jordan in early 2006, Cofer Black, the former director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and now the Vice Chairman of Blackwater, offered Blackwater’s for-hire army to police global hotspots. “Black said, Blackwater could have a small, nimble, brigade-size force ready to move into a troubled region on short notice.” [26] Blackwater recently announced plans to open jungle training facilities at Subic Bay in the Philippines and desert training facilities at an undisclosed site in Southern California. It’s positioning itself for United Nations peacekeeping missions, and, according to its Web site, “Blackwater Mobile Security Teams stand ready to deploy around the world with little notice in support of US national security objectives, private or foreign interests [emphasis mine].” [27]

The Pentagon’s most secretive and controversial spy unit has not been outsourced. [28] As part of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s desire to stop “near total dependence on the CIA,” he created a new espionage organization, planting military boots firmly in CIA turf. [29] Title 10 of the United States Code has traditionally been interpreted in such a way as to limit the collection of human intelligence in foreign countries to times of hostilities or when the threat of hostilities is imminent, but Pentagon lawyers have recently found a creative work-around for these restrictions by defining the War on Terror as global and ongoing. [30] This cleared the way for military spies, GI Joe’s 21st Century replacement: Bond. Master Sergeant Bond.

The new Pentagon spy agency, the Strategic Support Branch (SSB, portrayed as Force Zulu in this novel), is staffed with linguists, case officers, signals intelligence specialists, interrogators and, most strikingly, Special Forces operators, reportedly drawn from the military’s most elite special units-Delta Force, former Gray Fox, and DEVGRU/SEAL Team 6. [31] The unit frequently changes its name and it fields spies throughout the world to gather human intelligence and to recruit foreign assets, functions that are the mainstay of CIA clandestine operations. It is active in both friendly and unfriendly countries, operating outside of Congressional oversight, largely due to the diversion of funds approved for other programs and because of its claims that its activities do not strictly meet its own definition of covert actions. However, the new CIA Director General Hayden has noted the problem of overlapping missions between the CIA and the SSB. According to The New York Times, “General Hayden said it had become more difficult to distinguish between traditional secret intelligence missions carried out by the military and those by the CIA ‘There’s a blurring of functions here.’” [32]

The Department of Defense running spy networks around the world signals a major shift toward the militarization of intelligence and challenges the very existence of the CIA. It’s very probable that the shift in leadership at the Pentagon is a reprieve for the Agency and may even signal the end of unilateral covert actions by the Department of Defense.

With very little strategic planning, public debate, or Congressional oversight, American national security has been handed over to the private sector-to small loyal companies run by longtime US government veterans as well as to large multinational firms-corporations with international clientele, foreign ownership, and with primary allegiance to their shareholders. With proper oversight, the private sector has consistently demonstrated its ability to deliver government services more effectively and more efficiently than the state, but we may be approaching the limits of government privatization as national security is put in question.

War and espionage have been transformed in the twenty-first century as the government has scrambled to respond to an unconventional enemy. Soldiers are spies. Spies are soldiers. And the War on Terror has been outsourced.