![]() ![]() And he casts light on a "shadow Intelligence Community" made up of former top intelligence officials who are now employed by companies that do this spy work, such as former CIA directors George Tenet and James Woolsey. Shorrock exposes the kinds of spy work the private sector is doing, such as interrogating prisoners in Iraq, managing covert operations, and collaborating with the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans' overseas phone calls and e-mails. He explores how this partnership has led to wasteful spending and threatens to erode the privacy protections and congressional oversight so important to American democracy. Shorrock shows how corporations such as Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, CACI International, and IBM have become full partners with the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the Pentagon in their most sensitive foreign and domestic operations. And it's a business that the government has tried hard to keep under wraps.ĭrawing on interviews with key players in the Intelligence-Industrial Complex, contractors' annual reports and public filings with the government, and on-the-spot reporting from intelligence industry conferences and investor briefings, Spies for Hire provides the first behind-the-scenes look at this new way of spying. This outsourcing of intelligence activities is now a $50 billion-a-year business that consumes up to 70 percent of the U.S. Starting during the Clinton administration, when intelligence budgets were cut drastically and privatization of government services became national policy, and expanding dramatically in the wake of 9/11, when the CIA and other agencies were frantically looking to hire analysts and linguists, the Intelligence Community has been relying more and more on corporations to perform sensitive tasks heretofore considered to be exclusively the work of federal employees. All of these are vital intelligence tasks that traditionally have been performed by government officials accountable to Congress and the American people. ![]() Analyzing data from spy satellites and intercepted phone calls. Tracking down terrorists in the Middle East. In Spies for Hire, investigative reporter Tim Shorrock lifts the veil off a major story the government doesn't want us to know about - the massive outsourcing of top secret intelligence activities to private-sector contractors. ![]()
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