The "Espionage-Industrial Complex"

Are we "alert and knowledgeable" enough "so that security and liberty may prosper together"?:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, 1961

We now have the "espionage-industrial complex," and exactly how citizens stay alert and knowledgeable about secret government programs is a mystery:

Don’t Privatize Our Spies, by Patrick Radden Keefe, NY Times: Shortly after 9/11, Senator Bob Graham, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called for “a symbiotic relationship between the intelligence community and the private sector.” They say you should be careful what you wish for.

In the intervening years a huge espionage-industrial complex has developed, as government spymasters outsourced everything from designing surveillance technology to managing case officers overseas. Today less than half of the staff at the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington are actual government employees, ... at the C.I.A. station in Islamabad, Pakistan, contractors sometimes outnumber employees by three to one.

So just how much of the intelligence budget goes to private contracts? Because that budget is highly classified, ... it seemed we would never know. Until last month, that is: a procurement executive from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence ... let slip a staggering statistic — private contracts now account for 70 percent of the intelligence budget. ...

On 9/11, our spies found themselves shorthanded... The privatization boom emerged out of sheer necessity. ... As it happened, the dot-com bubble had burst shortly before 9/11, cutting loose a generation of technology entrepreneurs who, when the government came calling, were only too happy to start developing new data-mining algorithms and biometric identification programs. New startups began sprouting in the suburbs around Washington. The number of “contractor facilities” cleared by the National Security Agency grew from 41 in 2002 to 1,265 in 2006. It was a gold rush, a national security bubble. ...

There is nothing inherently wrong with all this. We want our spies to have access to the best technology and expertise... The problem is that the “symbiotic relationship” has turned decidedly dysfunctional, if not downright exploitative. ...

For contractors, ... failure is seldom punished — it’s often rewarded. Many contracts are “cost plus,” meaning there will be no penalty if a contractor wildly exceeds the initial projection. Better still, a contractor can break something, then bid for the job of putting it back together. When the N.S.A. wanted to create another program ... to replace Science Applications International’s failed Trailblazer, it needed a contractor to build it. Who got the job? Science Applications. ...

It’s not just the money that flows out the door, ... companies offer hefty raises to government employees who join their ranks. A recent report ... found that “contractors recruit our own employees, already cleared and trained at government expense, and then ‘lease’ them back to us at considerably greater expense.”

This process — called “bidding back” — has created a brain drain. Two-thirds of the Department of Homeland Security’s senior officials and experts have departed for private industry. Michael Hayden, the C.I.A. director, worries that his agency has become “a farm team for these contractors.” ... Can a government acquisitions officer who might someday like a job at a contractor really evaluate the contractor’s bid objectively? ...

The good news is that Congress seems to have finally caught on to the scale of the problem. The intelligence authorization bill that passed the House last month included ... promising first steps. But the inspectors general of America’s intelligence agencies must become more aggressive in policing how contracts are awarded — and in halting cost overruns before they reach the billions. The intelligence community should limit the parasitic practice of bidding back... It should also fine companies — or at least stop rewarding them — when they fail to deliver on time and on budget.

Congress should enact more comprehensive legislation, establishing oversight procedures to govern the many conflicts of interest that arise when agencies and industry are this close. If our spy agencies are truly going to protect us, they must learn how to develop — and retain — their own in-house expertise.

Comments

[evagrius]

It's fairly obvious now that the federal government is just a temp agency for private interests.

[ken melvin]

The only success that matters is getting the contract. We were spending some #35 billion/yr on intelligence pre-9/11. Republicans a more inclined to give government money to businessmen. They don't care how much is spent, the more the better, as long as it goes through 'private enterprise's' fingers.

[real person from the real world]

The trend to use contractors is a real problem everywhere, not just IT, and wastes millions of dollars for the gov't:

NY Times 6/25: Don’t Privatize Our Spies

There are times outsourcing can make sense, but when outsourcing becomes the rule, rather than the exception, hang on to your wallet.

[robertdfeinman]

Since Mark Thoma started with a comment about liberty I don't think citing a short essay of mine is too out of place:

Surveillance vs Civil Liberties

I use the historical example of the use of secret police by the Czar as an illustration. As in every such case this leads to a loss of civil liberties and repression of domestic political critics. It is usually a sign of a failing regime and, in more cases than not, does not prevent the type of social disruption that is feared.

[Lafayette]

It's fairly obvious now that the federal government is just a temp agency for private interests.

And, we'd all be thankful if this only applied to FEMA and actually resulted in those incompetents of accomplishing some good.

[gordon]

As with military spending, a major issue here is pork. I take the liberty of reproducing a comment I made on Angry Bear under the post " On Bush’s Accusation of Democratic Irresponsibility" (June 21). Military spending was the issue there, but I suspect espionage/surveillance spending could be treated the same way...

"One of the problems faced by members of Congress is that military spending is valuable pork. It seems to me that an important part of Congressional activity is securing a good slice of military pork for your electorate. Maybe a pork-substitution strategy is the way to go for US progressives - find civilian pork which can substitute for military pork.

"In this connection, I suspect that benefits which can be accessed by a wide cross-section of the population might not work as "civilian pork". One of the characteristics of pork is that the politician seeking to obtain it also seeks to control who gets it. There is no benefit for him/her in seeing pork go to people who don't support (fund or vote for) the pork-provider. "Welfare" or other widely-available benefits are not controllable in that sense. So, to be effective, civilian pork has got to be in the form of projects which can be delivered to supporters and denied to opponents.

"This may turn out to be no more than a formula for calculated waste in the form of bridges to nowhere or space exploration. But if you feel strongly enough about the negative consequences of military pork, you might not mind."

[marcello]

outsourcing your SPYING ? that must be the most insane thing I've ever heard. And I thought privatizing prisons was off the scale, but this, this, how do you top this ? Privatizing the White House? The U.S. government has completely lost it. (Your favorite diety) help you all.

[Lafayette]

marcello: outsourcing your SPYING ?

You've not understood.

Hi-tech spying consists of trolling the bars around a collection of hi-tech offices where the nerds hang out. (And, this is just an example.)

Go into one of these bars as an non-local and you're spotted immediately. So, this sort of "soft-intelligence" about what companies are up to, is farmed out to locals.

Intelligence nowadays is either "humint" (human intelligence) or "sigint" (signal intelligence). The ears in the stars is typical of the latter. Trolling bars is typical of the former. Both are important.

Anecdote: When the ears above us picked up a conversation between Airbus and an Indian airline regarding the negotiation of a large contract, the NSA (to whom the ears/eyes belong) signaled Boeing, who rushed right in with a contending offer.

Now, that is what I call "bang for your buck". But, is it "fair trade". No, not really. Still, everyone does it.

Think of this scenario: You're the top geek at Google (rich and bachelor) and, lo and behold, a luscious blond pops up on your favorite dating site and hungers for your body. Hollywood or reality? You tell me ...

[sbirnbaum]

This comes as no surprise. The War in Iraq has been outsourced, why not the CIA? Since we have passed the point of being a democratic republic and turned into a pure capitalistic government, outsourcing every aspect of the government seems logical. It doesn't make it right.

So many people are asking, "What can we do to change things?" All I believe we can do is keep the sources of accurate information flowing to the public and hope but I think we are past the point of no return. We can't depend on elections to turn things around because of the tampering by everyone of the voting machines. After all, since we are hostage to corporations, it is in their best interest to elect the group of people who will serve their needs to make billions.