"Hiring spies": Privatization of intelligence activities

Résumé du document

This quotation, which introduces Dana Priest and William M. Arkin's article in The
Washington Post "A hidden world growing beyond control" - the first in a series of several articles investigating on the United States' intelligence community - seems to underline a very important and somewhat preoccupying phenomenon : the growing privatization of intelligence activities. Indeed, it is know acknowledged and incontrovertible that following the 9/11 attacks on the United States, there has been and dramatic increase in intelligence privatization, especially because of the growth of intelligence activities after the attacks and the global expansion of the "War on Terror"
declared by the Bush administration.

Privatization of security and military activities is historically very old (Ancient Greeks and Romans used to hire mercenaries for certain missions and specific tasks) and has been an ongoing process for centuries. It is therefore not a recent phenomenon. And as spying is also very old - some say it is "the second oldest profession" - it seems only logical that intelligence activities and spying would be subject to privatization as well.

Extraits

[...] Moreover, as private companies and contractors were hired by the agency to fulfill certain tasks with full immunity (contractor facilities grew from 41 in 2002 to 1265 in 2006), this was seen as a clear intrusion of the private sector in public affairs. And after major legal actions took place, the Protect America Act of 2007 was passed in order to fill the legal void. The second set of activities is rendition. Unlike the case of electronic surveillance, which was justified by technical purposes, private involvement in extraordinary rendition was clearly part of a maneuver to avoid oversight. [...]

[...] Even if such an image is somewhat false, we cannot put aside the consequences of profit motive in intelligence activities. On this matter, a senior CIA official was quoted saying that «there's a commercial side to it that i frankly don't like . I would much prefer to see staff case officers who are in the chain of command and making a day-in or day-out conscious decision as civil servants in the intelligence business.» But incentives of private contractors aren't the only issue. [...]

[...] However, in the case of hard and software outsourcing, the pool of potential contractors remains small, which means privatization of intelligence activities increases in other sectors. This hypothesis can be verified when studying the involvement of private contractors in direct covert operations, whether it be in management or in execution. For example, Abraxas, a Virginia based company founded by former CIA officers, elaborates «covers» for overseas case officers. Human intelligence (HUMINT) also relies on private contractors, as it was the case in Iraq and is still the case in Afghanistan : the british company Aegis Defense Services Ltd was awarded a $300 million contract in 2004 that explicitly required hiring analysts which were given «NATO equivalent secret clearance». [...]

[...] It must be said that it was the entire US military-industrial complex which exploded, which includes private security and private intelligence companies. With America waging two wars, starting in Afghanistan in 2001 and then in Iraq in 2003, the traditional branches of the military and of the intelligence community were overwhelmed by the never-ending and enormous tasks and missions. Completing them came to a huge toll on the economy and on human casualties. And as every conflict, and on a smaller scale, every battle has its priorities (combat, intelligence gathering, logistics, VIP protection, etc), and because the military was unable to cope with all these tasks, the Bush administration and the Department of Defense (DoD) started entering in contracts with multiple private military companies (PMC) and private intelligence companies some of which are linked, and others subsidiaries to larger companies. [...]

[...] This paper also showed that these contractors are somewhat essential to the intelligence community, at least in some areas such as hard and software provision. However some facts remain extremely troubling, such as outsourcing certain activities in order to avoid oversight, as in the cases of interrogation or extraordinary rendition. Questions related to cost, spending and «drain brain» issues are also very disturbing. And in order to conclude this essay, we can once again make a last comparison between intelligence and security privatization : on the one hand, in the case of PMCs, scandals such as Blackwater's activities in Iraq fostered the United States and Iraq to rethink accountability of these companies, through very debated episodes strongly covered by the media. [...]