Private contractors hold lots of US intel jobs (One Quarter)

[sabra]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON - More than a quarter of the U.S. intelligence agencies' employees are outside contractors, hired to fill in gaps in the military and civilian work force, according to a survey of the 16 intelligence agencies.

That is roughly on par with last year's total, the first year the national intelligence director's office tried to count the outside help, Ronald Sanders, the intelligence director's personnel policy chief, told reporters Wednesday.

The number of government employees at U.S. intelligence agencies is classified, but Sanders confirmed it is more than 100,000. Contractors are not included in that total. Sanders said 27 percent of the total number of intelligence employees are contractors. With around 100,000 as a baseline, that translates to an estimated 35,000 to 40,000 private contractors working for agencies like the CIA and the National Security Agency.

Of that number, 27 percent of the contractors engage in intelligence collection and operations, 19 percent conduct analysis and produce reports, and 22 percent work on information technology. Another 19 percent are in support and management positions, with a small number in research and development and other activities.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080827/ap_on_go_ot/outsourcing_intelligence;_ylt=AmdIzTbNblA0JRCQbSb0Ph4NJ_wE

[Bozita]

1. Blackwater USA recently set up a for-profit private CIA-type of intel business

You just gotta know Blackwater is getting govt contracts for this kind of shit.

[Bozita]

2. Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater now in the private intelligence business

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Scahill_updates_Blackwater_book_with_new_0731.html

Scahill: Blackwater now in the private intelligence business
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Thursday July 31, 2008


Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, is worried about the giant mercenary firm's latest foray into private intelligence. "They're marketing their services to not only foreign governments, but to Fortune 500 corporations," he recently told an interviewer.

The forthcoming paperback edition of Scahill's book on Blackwater, which appeared in hardcover in February 2007, will include 100 pages of new material, including a discussion of last September's shooting spree in Baghdad by Blackwater operatives -- which killed 17 Iraqi civilians but for which nobody has ever been charged.

"This is a company that has been accused of murdering Iraqi civilians," Scahill pointed out, "of shooting the bodyguard to the Iraqi vice-president, of causing blowback attacks on United States troops, of hurting the morale of the United States military -- that has cost United States taxpayers over a billion dollars for its operations in Iraq."

However, Scahill's greatest concern at present appears to be Blackwater's venture into the private intelligence business.

"Blackwater started a private intelligence company," he explained, "a private CIA essentially, called Total Intelligence Solutions. And the man running Total Intelligence Solutions is J. Cofer Black. He's a thirty-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency. He also was the guy who ran the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, the government-sanctioned kidnap-and-torture program."

more...

[aquart]

3. People who sell to the highest bidder have all our secrets?

Well, that makes me feel secure.

[gratuitous]

4. Yeparoonie

But don't call them mercenaries, because that's upsetting to some people.

[CatholicEdHead]

6. And at the lowest price

Doesn't that make us all feel so secure.

[bobthedrummer]

5. Yep. J.Coffer Black, the Krongard brothers, Erik Prince, L-3, and a whole lot more

are part of the BFEE's "intelligence" assets...

[bobthedrummer]

7. k