Top Secret America

[Peter Lemkin]

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/19/ti...hy_it_took
a critical look at the Post's article....and right on....although the info in the article is important, none the less....

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Tim Shorrock, an investigative journalist and the author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of [Intelligence Outsourcing].

Tim, as you go through the first of the series of pieces in the Washington Post—you’ve been looking at these issues for a long time—what are you—what do you think is most important?

TIM SHORROCK: Well, first of all, let me say that, with all due respect to the Washington Post—and Dana Priest and Bill Arkin are very good reporters—we have to ask, why did it take them seven years to do this story? Anyone who’s been covering intelligence or national security in Washington knows that intelligence has been privatized to an incredible extent and national security has been privatized to an incredible extent.

I broke the first stories on the intelligence-industrial complex. The first one appeared in Mother Jones in 2005. In 2007 I wrote a major story for Salon and a whole series in Salon. I disclosed that 70 percent of the US intelligence budget is spent on private-sector contractors. And then, of course, I wrote this book, which has a lot of this information that’s in the Post series. So, I find it rather amazing that it took them this long to actually do this kind of piece, because the information has been there.

And the American people have been ill-served by the Washington Post, whose coverage of these companies has been basically rah-rah journalism—rah-rah Lockheed Martin, rah-rah Booz Allen, look at the profits they’re making. There has not been this kind of careful look at what’s actually happening. So, that’s the first point I’d like to make. And I think, you know, people should look at the work of myself, Jeremy Scahill, other journalists that have covered this sector and put out the word of how much intelligence is controlled and gathered by private-sector corporations.

AMY GOODMAN: What should most be understood by these private companies? And what is your major concern? One of the things Bill Arkin was saying, you know, he was surprised—well, they’ve done the series now for—they were researching the series for two years, that maybe there were 200 firms. There are 2,000, he says, now.

TIM SHORROCK: Well, a lot of the—yeah, there’s about—I would say there’s about 200 firms that really control most of the business with the intelligence community, as well as the national security community. There are hundreds of companies in this area. As you know, there’s a Beltway around Washington. They’re called Beltway bandits. They start up. They develop a specific kind of technology, some kind of special apparatus that’s used by a certain intelligence agency. They get money from the agency. They develop it. And then, pretty soon, a bigger company looks at them and says, "Hey, we’d like to get their contracts. We’d like to buy them." And that’s what they do. And that’s how these companies, like Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen and others, have grown so large, is that they’ve picked up a lot of these smaller companies. Northrop Grumman is another one, BAE Systems. So there’s literally, you know, hundreds and hundreds of companies.

And I think one of the things about the first day of this piece that’s quite amazing, if you look at the national map, and you see all these offices of both, you know, private contractors as well as government agencies, basically, you know, doing intelligence on the world and the American people. You know, it’s an enormous spy apparatus. You know, you can drive, say, from—you know, just pick a random state, New Mexico, where I’ve spent some time. You drive from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, you pass the big building on the right side, which used to be National Guard headquarters, and that’s one of these—you know, one of these centers where they integrate all the intelligence with—you know, and pass it on to local police and local law enforcement. These kind of buildings are all over the United States, and I think if readers look at this, they’ll see, you know, what an incredible secret police state we’ve really built here.

AMY GOODMAN: You have written a piece, "The Corporate Intelligence Community: A Photo Exclusive." Talk about how this has grown and both what you’re doing, what the Washington Post has done—those that raise the question of are you putting the nation’s intelligence community at risk by locating where it is, by naming it all.

TIM SHORROCK: Well, you know, if you fly into DC National Airport and drive, you know, up to—up the river and into DC, all you see on the Virginia side are buildings like Booz Allen Hamilton, Northrop Grumman, etc., etc. It’s very clear where these buildings are. You know, in my website, timshorrock.com, the top story, which I posted over the weekend, is a little tour, is a photo tour I did a few months ago of northern Virginia, just looking at some of these buildings, some of these colossal headquarters of contractors like Accenture Corporation, which most people just know as some kind of, you know, consulting, corporate consulting firm, but does a huge amount of work the intelligence agency. These are huge buildings. They’re all over the place, and you can’t but notice them. So I think it’s foolish of the intelligence community or intelligence agencies to accuse us of, you know, somehow compromising national security.

After all, if you want to keep the stuff secret, don’t contract it out to private companies who sell their stocks on the stock market. Half the information I got for my book, Spies for Hire, came from attending, you know, investor conferences, reading up on their SEC documents that they file, Securities and Exchange, looking at their press releases. Just take a look at a website such as the company called C-A-C-I International, CACI International, which is the company that sent the interrogators to Abu Ghraib under an IT contract, one of the IT contracts that Bill Arkin mentioned. Just take a look at their website and go through it, and you’ll see. You’ll learn a whole heck of a lot about national security and what’s going on in intelligence that you never would have been able to learn if this industry had not been privatized to the extent that it is. So I think that the IC’s concerns here are really ridiculous. They should probably, you know, ask all these corporations to cover up their logos, if they want to keep it secret.

AMY GOODMAN: Tim Shorrock, the Senate Intelligence Committee is going to hold confirmation hearings Tuesday for General James Clapper, President Obama’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence. Tell us who he is.

TIM SHORROCK: James Clapper used to be the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was an Air Force general, came through the ranks. He took over the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the NGA, which you discussed a little bit there with Bill Arkin. He took over the NGA just after 9/11, a few days after 9/11, and ran it for four or five years. And actually, the NGA is a very interesting organization. It collects the imagery—it analyzes the imagery they pick up from satellites and overhead UAVs, and they merge that with intelligence that the National Security Agency picks up, and they can actually, you know, track individual people, track people in real time. And that’s how a lot of the assassinations that have taken place in Iraq and Pakistan have been done, with technology like that. But the NGA is a very important agency. It also does—conducts a lot of domestic surveillance. I actually wrote a story, and it’s in my book, as well, about how the NGA, for the first time, for the first time ever during Hurricane Katrina, flew U-2s over the Gulf Coast and collected imagery intelligence. So Clapper has a lot of experience in this area.

He also has close connections to contractors, which I write about. You can also find that article on my website, an article I wrote recently for Foreign Policy in Focus about the many contractors that he has been—either been a board member of or been an adviser to. And interestingly enough, in his written testimony to the Senate committee, he called this whole thing "the intelligence enterprise," quote-unquote. And I think that’s a very interesting phrase for someone to use. It’s not accidental that they’re calling this the "enterprise," because, after all, it is a combination of private-sector companies and US national intelligence agencies. But, you know, going back to the point I made earlier, 70 percent of our budget—excuse me—goes to these companies, so the vast majority of our funds in intelligence go to private-sector corporations.

And what we’ve got to ask is, what does it mean to have these companies, private-sector companies, making profits at the highest levels of our national security? Our last Director of National Intelligence, Michael McConnell, is now back at Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the largest intelligence contractors. Before he began his job as Bush’s Director of National Intelligence, he ran Booz Allen’s military intelligence. Before he went to Booz, he was the director of the National Security Agency during the Clinton administration. So you have these people going in and out, in and out of these companies, having top-level security clearances, yet they’re in the private sector making huge profits off of this. And I think we have to wonder—we have to take the intelligence that they gather and the advice that they give to our government agencies with a huge grain of salt, because when you get a contract, the important thing about that contract is you want to get the next contract. You want to get that contract renewed. You might get a five-year contract with one-year renewals. You want to get it renewed every year. So, do you think you’re going to downplay the threat? Do you think you’re going to say, "Oh, there’s no more, you know, problem over here in this area of the world, so we can just—you know, you can just pull our contract"? They’re not going to do that. And I think we really have to wonder about the quality of the intelligence you get from these private-sector companies.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Tim Shorrock, I want to thank you very much for being with us. His book is Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. And we’ll link to your website at http://www.timshorrock.com.

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By Tim Shorrock

Program note: I was a guest on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman on Monday 7/19 talking about this article and the Washington Post stories on privatized intelligence.

Not long ago, as I was preparing an article on government contracting, I was given a tour of Northern Virginia by a friend who spent over a decade as an intelligence operative and another five years working as an intelligence contractor. We drove through Arlington, Herndon, Fairfax, Tysons Corner and McLean, and up to Dulles Airport. Our route took us from the entrance to the CIA through “contractor alley” and past the huge, gleaming office buildings that house the dozens of corporations that make up what Lt. Gen. James Clapper, the incoming director of the Office of National Intelligence, likes to call “the intelligence enterprise.”

This industrial neighborhood is home to around 60 percent of the Intelligence Community. These are the private sector warriors who staff the offices and installations of the CIA, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the rest of the so-called “Intelligence Community.” As I first reported in Salon in 2007 and later in my book, SPIES FOR HIRE, 70 percent of our intelligence budget goes to these companies. Officially, according to a 2008 ODNI study of human capital within the IC, nearly 40,000 private contractors are working for intelligence agencies, bringing the total number of IC employees to more than 135,000.

So here, as an introduction to the upcoming Washington Post series on intelligence contractors that has the agencies quaking in their boots, is a guide to the “real” IC (I’m sure the Post isn’t going to credit my work, so here’s my chance – with a little help from fellow muckrakers like emptywheel – to scoop the paper for once: screw ‘em).

Enjoy the ride; initial links to company names are to their section of the intelligence database I built with CorpWatch. All photos are copyright Tim Shorrock/2010.

We begin the tour: Ah, yes, SAIC, the Big Daddy of privatized intelligence, the company responsible for the failed $5 billion Trailblazer program at the NSA, which was supposed to keep track of the billions of bits of data downloaded by the NSA around the world but totally failed. SAIC, which recently moved its headquarters from San Diego to this building, stands like a private colossus across the whole intelligence industry. Of its 42,000 employees, more than 20,000 hold U.S. government security clearances, making it, with Lockheed Martin, one of the largest private intelligence services in the world.

SAIC’s offices stand in this office park, right next to its biggest competitor, Booz Allen Hamilton. Booz is involved in virtually every aspect of the modern intelligence enterprise, from advising top officials on how to integrate the 16 agencies within the Intelligence Community (IC), to detailed analysis of signals intelligence, imagery and other critical collections technologies.

Booz’s strategic role in the IC was best described in 2003 by Joan Dempsey, then the top assistant to CIA Director George Tenet for community management. “I like to call Booz Allen the Shadow IC,” she said when receiving a lifetime achievement award from a contractor group, because it has “more former secretaries of this and directors of that” than the entire government. Dempsey, whose picture is to the right (speaking at a contractor-sponsored event known as GEOINT) is now Booz’s senior vice president, responsible for many of the programs she managed while at the CIA. Booz itself it owned by the Carlyle Group, one of the nation’s most politically-connected private equity funds. Booz is also known for being king of the revolving door at the IC, as personified by former NSA Director Mike McConnell, who left the NSA to become Booz’s top executive on military intelligence, served for most of the Bush administration as DNI, and is now back in his old slot at Booz. So, not surprisingly, security is tight at this building; just after I took this picture, a pair of burly security guards came out and gave me the cold stare. I smiled and promptly left.

This collosal building, near the SAIC/Booz complex, is the headquarters for Accenture, the global consulting company that was formerly a branch of Andersen Consulting. Few people know (and you certainly wouldn’t pick up from their website) that Accenture is deeply involved in intelligence work. But as I learned at several industry gatherings I attended while researching my book, it does financial planning and audits for the IC and recently began providing information-sharing and collaboration tools to agencies. Its customers, according to Accenture literature I’ve gathered, include the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the NGA and the National Reconaissance Office.

Down the road, visible for several miles, is this Sheraton Hotel. It’s not a contractor building, of course, but it is where the CIA and other agencies like to wine and dine their contractors as well as visiting dignitaries from foreign intelligence agencies such as Britain’s MI5.

This building behind the trees is the headquarters for Scitor, a virtually unknown company that does over $300 million worth of business with U.S. intelligence every year. Scitor is “the biggest company you never heard of,” a former NSA officer who knows the company well once said (see the company’s profile in my book). It is a technology company that does extensive work for the Air Force in aerospace communications and satellite support services. The privately held company is also an important contractor for the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology. Within that directorate, it is used primarily by the Office of Technical Services, the secretive unit that develops the gadgets, weapons, and disguises used by spies. If you can divine anything from its website, you’re probably a spook yourself. So too if you can recognize these companies, whose logos are pointed out by my guide: Juniper, Blackbird Technologies and RavenTech (so many predator metaphors!)

On the other hand, most people recognize BAE Systems, one of the many British companies that have made deep inroads into the U.S. intelligence market. BAE’s intelligence division has extensive operations throughout the DC area and operates numerous Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIF) for intelligence agencies. These facilities have special windows that prevent outside infiltration of electronic spying devices. According to BAE, “Our newest facility in Herndon, Virginia, known as the Information Analysis Center (IAC) is a state-of-the-art workspace, built to stringent…customer security, communications, and analytic requirements. This facility, which was opened in July, 2005, provides over 150,000 square feet of accredited SCIF space accommodating over 700 personnel.” BAE provides much of its contracting services (especially to the CIA) through its Global Analysis intelligence unit, which described itself as “a leading provider of skilled, fully cleared, and experienced intelligence and geospatial analysts working directly with Government agencies and U.S. military commands to satisfy regular and surge requirements.” This is no bit player.

Not every building in contractor alley is marked. Only those who know can identify the headquarters of the DNI or the National Counter-Terrorism Center. But it’s easy to figure out which facility in the Herndon-Fairfax corridor is an intelligence center: the intense security just gives it away.

This building is reportedly a special intelligence office; next to it is a small building with a CACI logo on it. That makes the barricaded site even more obvious.

Finally, if you think that Dulles International Airport is just for the public, guess again. Throughout the complex are terminals often used by the CIA to whisk officials, operatives and contractors to their foreign destinations without being seen by ordinary travellers and with heavy security. That’s what this building is; my tour guide said he had used it several times to depart for the Middle East and other spots, both as an intelligence operative and as a contractor. Dual use, you might say, and a metaphor for the entire intelligence enterprise.

Then of course there’s the industry parties, where the contractors get to spend their money on lavish events of back-slapping and celebration. That’s what’s happening here, where Stan Soloway, the executive director of the Professional Services Council, the voice and chief lobbyist of the contractor industry, is opening the “Academy Awards of the Government Contracting World” at the swank Ritz Carlton Hotel in Tysons Corner.

At this event, held every October, the scions of the Washington business community pay tribute to the leading companies in the government contracting industry. Like A-List actors at the Oscars, it’s the high-flying intelligence contractors that usually sweep the awards: at this event, in 2008, the big winner was Booz Allen, which was chosen best contractor of the year for companies earning more than $300 million a year. Booz’s competitors for the top spot were CACI International, which earns much of its money from the CIA, and CSC, another big NSA contractor.“This is the new face of government,” Soloway, a top Pentagon acquisition official during the Clinton administration, later told me about the 350 corporate members of his association. So who elected you? I thought.

The highlight of the PSC’s gala was the induction of Norman R. Augustine (below), the former chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, into the contractor “hall of fame.” Lockheed Martin, largely on the basis of its huge military and intelligence business, is the government’s largest contractor, bringing in close to $17 billion in contracts in 2009 (see the rankings here). “There are fewer greater burdens that one could bear than accepting the fiduciary responsibility of spending the public’s money,” Augustine told the contractors. Ah yes, the new white men’s burden: spying for profit.

So that’s our tour. Enjoy the sites. And enjoy the Dana Priest-Bill Arkin series in the Post. It’s about damn time they covered this story: intelligence outsourcing to this extent has only been a fact of life in Washington since, oh, 2002. The real question to be asked of the Post is: why the hell did it take them eight years?