Dana Priest and William Arkin’s reporting on Top Secret America in the Washington Post was an important media event. Its various graphs and installments nicely illustrate the sheer magnitude of US intelligence privatization. Mind you, the size and the compartmentalization of the US intelligence community is difficult to grasp and a cause for many problems of its own. Add to that the even more elusive layers of contracting and sub-contracting (an estimated 265’000 contractors have top-secret clearances) and one gets a security state that has grown beyond that what anyone can call reasonable by a long stretch of imagination. (If only McNulty had a fraction of that cash for the fight against drugs in Baltimore…)

Here are a few more thoughts on both the content and the style of the WaPo story.

First off, the sprawling privatization of US intelligence is, of course, hardly news to the engaged reader. The WaPo must be criticized for not even referring to Tim Shorrock, the real authority on this subject. He was the first author to have studied post 9/11 intelligence contracting, and he did it in a much more systematic and problem-centered fashion (albeit with less colorful graphs and less floury language on Washington suburbia). His book, Spies for Hire, is a compelling read that tells us why, where and how the US arrived at a situation where an incredible 70 percent of its enormous intelligence budget ends up in the hands of private companies. One can also find his data set, here. Shorrock obtained an unclassified document from the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) that corroborates his basic estimate. After his book release, the CIA and the main stream media (MSM) simply ignored Shorrock’s research. The former called his figures ‘way off the mark’ and the latter shunned an awfully gripping story. Why? Surely, it would be too simplistic to associate big advertising companies of MSM, such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman with this. Fact is, though, it took MSM a long time to pick it up.

Second, and more importantly, the WaPo piece is also short of analysis. Now that the MSM has picked up the story, it does not seem to know what to do with it. The WaPo story hardly raises the important conclusions that ought to be drawn from this incredible intelligence-industrial complex. More concretely, what are the strategic drawbacks when private companies influence public intelligence policy? All of these 1,913 companies pursue their shareholders’ rather than the public interest. Who can deny that the industry shapes intelligence policy making when the contractors are so deeply entwined with those who decide on the contracts, sometimes even overseeing the work of fellow contractors? Companies want more contracts for their business to flourish. To do so, they will pull all possible strings to convince the intelligence community (IC) that their service are not only top-notch quality but also indispensable for counter-terrorism. (One interesting part in the WaPo story was how some IT gadgets developed by corporate America for their intelligence services create envy amongst colleagues, branches etc, which, of course, leads to even more profit). It’s no longer just research and development but actually inherent government functions that are being sold and re-sold like commodities. Not only can private companies bid for such functions, they can also help define what a government function in the intelligence domain should look like, now and in the future. They continue to win large contracts (consider, for example, the latest 100 million contract awarded to Blackwater) despite their often-times very problematic, direct and unaccountable involvement in enhanced interrogation, torture and assassinations in the field or their exploitation of the federal budget from their plush new offices in suburbia. For an example of the former, grab a copy of Spies for hire. Shorrock gives the reader a much more contextual understanding of how the private company CACI directed torture at Abu Ghraib. All this is something, that the WaPo authors « soft-pedaled » in the output of their two-year investigation. (Marcy Wheeler is right on the mark on this and uses stronger words for their lack of critical reporting.)

Furthermore, the story has direct ramification for an important political process that currently takes place in Washington: the confirmation by the US Congress of Obama’s nominee for the Director of National Intelligence, Retired Air Force Lt. General James R. Clapper. Over the past few weeks, Mr. Clapper has oftentimes been criticized for his close ties to the DoD (suggesting that he might not have what it takes to steer the IC independently from the Pentagon) but an even more worrisome career pattern is often overlooked. Again, Tim Shorrocks:

Shortly after leaving the helm of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1999, Clapper served a two-year term as president of the Security Affairs Support Association, the largest organization of contractors for the NSA and the CIA. In 2005, it was renamed the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA), and remains one of the least-known but most powerful organizations in U.S. intelligence. The centrality of INSA to the intelligence “enterprise” can be seen in its last two chairmen: the Bush administration’s Mike McConnell and Obama’s John Brennan.

This is just a snippet from Tim Shorrock’s interesting reporting on Clapper (for similar work on George Tenet and Mc Connell, see his site or Jeremy Scahill’s latest on the subject, or – for contextual daily updates – Marcy Wheeler). By not mentioning Clapper’s confirmation hearing the day the WaPo released their TopSecretAmerica story, the paper missed -intentionally or not- a great chance to put the implication of their investigative reporting into direct context for their readers.

It should be clear from all of the above that robust oversight over the propriety and legality of the entire intelligence community is not only a matter for soft, peace-loving utopians and public administration purists. Failed intelligence oversight has strategic dimensions. It’s about making sure that enough money is being spent to keep a democracy safe and this may also require some duplication. But having little means or (more likely) little political will to rein in on corporate America’s exploitation of the federal budget is not only costly but leads to skewed prioritization of its basic needs and capabilities.

Many of you will have thought about the parallel – and much more visible – debate about private military and security companies (PMSCs) influence in Afghanistan and Iraq. Personally, I think there is a lot to learn from this comparison. First, the US government is currently trying to insource previously outsourced mandates. For example, take the newly created Civilian Expeditionary Workforce (CEW). Amongst other things, it is an effort to have DoD civilians deployed in theater so that the combat units can focus better on their military operations. Providing mobile security for the troops, for example, has been a cause for enormous accountability problems (the Blackwater shooting in Baghdad’s Nisour Square amongst others) and to have these units gradually replaced by CEW personnel is a step in the right direction. It’s insourcing because CEW personnel are employees of the US government and are under the direct command of the military when deployed abroad. This closes some important accountability gaps even if it does not, of course, mean that instances like Nisour Square won’t reoccur. It may also not guarantee that malfeasance allegations will be sufficiently investigated. Still, the « military-industrial complex » leads the way for improved accountability by insourcing and downsizing its private components. Will the « intelligence-industrial complex » follow suit and is James R. Clapper as Director of National Intelligence the right man for this important task? Probably not.

Finally, a thought, borrowed from Allison Stanger’s excellent testimony to the Commission of Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. She rightly says that “the argument that security provided by the state is preferable to that provided by a collection of warlords is difficult to maintain when the United States itself lacks the capacity to wage war without the reliance on private militias”. I think this line of reasoning can be expanded to the intelligence domain. Intelligence is an integral part of security sector reform. What credibility does America (or any other nation for that matter) have when it comes to its help in building intelligence and police-led intelligence structures in a post-conflict country, when, back at home, it hires contractors for pretty much everything?