At Booz Allen, a Vast U.S. Spy Operation, Run for Private Profit by Matthew Rosenberg, New York Times
In the six weeks since federal agents raided a suburban Maryland home and arrested Harold T. Martin III on suspicion of stealing classified information from the National Security Agency, another organization has quietly prepared to face the fallout: Booz Allen Hamilton, Mr. Martin’s employer.
Booz Allen, a consulting firm that earns billions of dollars by working for American intelligence agencies, has been called the world’s most profitable spy organization. News this week of Mr. Martin’s arrest in August could renew scrutiny of the firm’s operations and, more broadly, the lucrative contracting business that American intelligence now relies on to run its vast, global surveillance operations.
Mr. Martin’s arrest is the second time in three years that a Booz Allen contractor has been accused of stealing potentially damaging material from the N.S.A. The company also employed Edward J. Snowden, who spirited out a cache of documents that, in 2013, exposed the extent of American surveillance programs in the United States and around the world.
Booz Allen is one of a handful of defense and intelligence contractors that blur the line between the government’s intelligence work and private enterprise.
Tens of thousands of contractors are believed to work for American intelligence agencies (the exact number is not known). They do everything from helping secure the military against cyber attacks and plan intelligence operations, to training spies and running war games for NATO generals.
“What most people don’t realize is just the sheer scale of the intelligence work force that is outsourced,” said Peter W. Singer, a national security expert at New America, a think tank in Washington. “There will be meetings, and less than 10 percent of the people there are official U.S. government employees as opposed to contractors.”
Firms like Booz Allen provide a ready and potentially lucrative option for federal employees who are looking to cash in on their government experience…
Comments
It might in fact be quite interesting to comment here about this deep pocketed living off of the US taxpayer that the private world of defense contracting has gotten to......
It was originally sold to the US government that "outsourcing was the way to go" as a cost saving device....just as it was sold to the entire IT industry and it has not been successful there as well when it comes to actually sinking costs....
The core problem is the way the US security world has expanded the use of the TS and TS/SCI clearances and the inherent use of PSI contractors in the issuance of those clearances.
Everyone and their cousin seems to have a TS these days...25 years ago in the middle of the intense ongoing Cold War...that was not the case..there it was strictly "need to know basis" and if you did not need it then you did not get it...then when you left it was downgraded...
Now it is argued..."ease of use" and it saves money when moving people in and out of security positions...etc....
BUT has anyone ever run into a PSI contract investigator who had to be told what sections to focus on and what she or he had forgotten to ask....I have and it was bad...really bad....
Secondly there is a serious disconnect between the security clearances granted to defense contractors and the OPM investigations conducted for a security clearance for civil service....TWO very different worlds of security checks....BUT hey I am still waiting for the OPM notification that all my security clearance data hacked by the Chinese was in fact hacked along with my fingerprints....but still no notification has come...
Thirdly.....as one who has worked in the past for BAH....that company really does need an airing of dirty laundry.....simply look how they have handled the two arrests of their personnel as clues to how they run their business model....and their relationships to their so called "BAH employees".
What many do not fully realize is that the defense contracting world is that you as an "employee of company X" are not really a full employee BUT one of "at will" and per contract/funding stream....and the second the contract is lost and or funding stream dies so does you position...slave laborer might be a far better description these days....WHO wins..the defense contractor who has "placed a profit margin" onto the top of your employment position....who loses the full time intelligence community and the US taxpayer....
Fourthly, the intertwining of all defense contractors who work inside the world of intelligence needs to be aired and aired thoroughly....there are far more Snowden's afoot than we really want to know about........
As one who has done PSI the old fashion way employed by the US government during the Cold War....we need to get back to that professional model and in one big hurry as the Russian SVR has a massive head start on our feeble CI efforts.....
AND we have to urgently and seriously cut back on our clearances which have run amok.