It’s safe to say that most Americans, if they’d heard of Booz Allen at all, had no idea how huge a role it plays in the U.S. intelligence infrastructure. They do now. On June 9, a 29-year-old Booz Allen computer technician, Edward Snowden, revealed himself to be the source of news stories showing the extent of phone and Internet eavesdropping by the National Security Agency. Snowden leaked classified documents he loaded onto a thumb drive while working for Booz Allen at an NSA listening post in Hawaii, and he’s promised to leak many more. After fleeing to Hong Kong, he’s been in hiding. (He didn’t respond to a request for comment relayed by an intermediary.)
The attention has been bad for Booz Allen’s stock, which fell more than 4 percent the morning after Snowden went public and still hasn’t recovered. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Select Committee on Intelligence, has called for a reexamination of the role of private contractors in intelligence work and announced she’ll seek to restrict their access to classified information. Booz Allen declined to comment on Snowden beyond its initial public statement announcing his termination.
The firm has long kept a low profile—with the federal government as practically its sole client, there’s no need for publicity. It does little, if any, lobbying. Its ability to win contracts is ensured by the roster of intelligence community heavyweights who work there. The director of national intelligence, James Clapper—President Obama’s top intelligence adviser—is a former Booz Allen executive. The firm’s vice chairman, Mike McConnell, was President George W. Bush’s director of national intelligence and, before that, director of the NSA. Of Booz Allen’s 25,000 employees, 76 percent have classified clearances, and almost half have top-secret clearances. In a 2003 speech, Joan Dempsey, a former CIA deputy director, referred to Booz Allen as the “shadow IC” (for intelligence community) because of the profusion of “former secretaries of this and directors of that,” according to a 2008 book, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. Today Dempsey works for Booz Allen.
It’s possible that fallout from the Snowden revelations will lead to significant changes in intelligence contracting. The Senate intelligence committee has been pressuring spy agencies for years to reduce their reliance on contractors. And in the age of the sequester, even once untouchable line items such as defense and intelligence spending are vulnerable to cuts.
Yet conversations with current and former employees of Booz Allen and U.S. intelligence officials suggest that these contractors aren’t going anywhere soon. Even if Snowden ends up costing his former employer business, the work will probably just go to its rivals. Although Booz Allen and the rest of the shadow intelligence community arose as stopgap solutions—meant to buy time as shrunken, post-Cold War agencies tried to rebuild after Sept. 11—they’ve become the vine that supports the wall. As much as contractors such as Booz Allen have come to rely on the federal government, the government relies on them even more.
Edward Snowden was not hired as a spy. He’s a mostly self-taught computer technician who never completed high school, and his first intelligence job was as a security guard at an NSA facility. In an interview in the Guardian, he says he was hired by the Central Intelligence Agency for his computer skills to work on network security. In 2009 he left for the private sector, eventually ending up at Booz Allen. The job he did as a contractor for the NSA appears to have been basic tech support and troubleshooting. He was the IT guy.
People in intelligence tend to divide contract work into three tiers. In the first tier are the least sensitive and most menial jobs: cutting the grass at intelligence facilities, emptying the trash, sorting the mail. In classified facilities even the janitors need security clearances—the wastebaskets they’re emptying might contain national secrets. That makes these jobs particularly hard to fill, since most people with security clearances are almost by definition overqualified for janitorial work.
Snowden, with his computer expertise, fit in the middle tier: people with specialized skills. When the U.S. military first began ramping up its use of contractors during the Vietnam War, these jobs made up much of the hiring—the Pentagon was desperate for repairmen for its increasingly complex weapons and transport systems. Also in this tier are translators, interrogators, and investigators who handle background checks for government security clearances. Firms such as CSC and L-3 Communications specialize in this tier. Booz Allen competes for some of that work, but it tends to focus on the highest tier: big contracts that can involve everything from developing strategies to defeat al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb to designing software systems to writing speeches for senior officials. Tier three contractors often are, for all intents and purposes, spies—and sometimes spymasters.
by Drake Bennett and Michael Riley, Bloomberg Businessweek | Read more:
Image via: Wired
The attention has been bad for Booz Allen’s stock, which fell more than 4 percent the morning after Snowden went public and still hasn’t recovered. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Select Committee on Intelligence, has called for a reexamination of the role of private contractors in intelligence work and announced she’ll seek to restrict their access to classified information. Booz Allen declined to comment on Snowden beyond its initial public statement announcing his termination.The firm has long kept a low profile—with the federal government as practically its sole client, there’s no need for publicity. It does little, if any, lobbying. Its ability to win contracts is ensured by the roster of intelligence community heavyweights who work there. The director of national intelligence, James Clapper—President Obama’s top intelligence adviser—is a former Booz Allen executive. The firm’s vice chairman, Mike McConnell, was President George W. Bush’s director of national intelligence and, before that, director of the NSA. Of Booz Allen’s 25,000 employees, 76 percent have classified clearances, and almost half have top-secret clearances. In a 2003 speech, Joan Dempsey, a former CIA deputy director, referred to Booz Allen as the “shadow IC” (for intelligence community) because of the profusion of “former secretaries of this and directors of that,” according to a 2008 book, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. Today Dempsey works for Booz Allen.
It’s possible that fallout from the Snowden revelations will lead to significant changes in intelligence contracting. The Senate intelligence committee has been pressuring spy agencies for years to reduce their reliance on contractors. And in the age of the sequester, even once untouchable line items such as defense and intelligence spending are vulnerable to cuts.
Yet conversations with current and former employees of Booz Allen and U.S. intelligence officials suggest that these contractors aren’t going anywhere soon. Even if Snowden ends up costing his former employer business, the work will probably just go to its rivals. Although Booz Allen and the rest of the shadow intelligence community arose as stopgap solutions—meant to buy time as shrunken, post-Cold War agencies tried to rebuild after Sept. 11—they’ve become the vine that supports the wall. As much as contractors such as Booz Allen have come to rely on the federal government, the government relies on them even more.
Edward Snowden was not hired as a spy. He’s a mostly self-taught computer technician who never completed high school, and his first intelligence job was as a security guard at an NSA facility. In an interview in the Guardian, he says he was hired by the Central Intelligence Agency for his computer skills to work on network security. In 2009 he left for the private sector, eventually ending up at Booz Allen. The job he did as a contractor for the NSA appears to have been basic tech support and troubleshooting. He was the IT guy.
People in intelligence tend to divide contract work into three tiers. In the first tier are the least sensitive and most menial jobs: cutting the grass at intelligence facilities, emptying the trash, sorting the mail. In classified facilities even the janitors need security clearances—the wastebaskets they’re emptying might contain national secrets. That makes these jobs particularly hard to fill, since most people with security clearances are almost by definition overqualified for janitorial work.
Snowden, with his computer expertise, fit in the middle tier: people with specialized skills. When the U.S. military first began ramping up its use of contractors during the Vietnam War, these jobs made up much of the hiring—the Pentagon was desperate for repairmen for its increasingly complex weapons and transport systems. Also in this tier are translators, interrogators, and investigators who handle background checks for government security clearances. Firms such as CSC and L-3 Communications specialize in this tier. Booz Allen competes for some of that work, but it tends to focus on the highest tier: big contracts that can involve everything from developing strategies to defeat al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb to designing software systems to writing speeches for senior officials. Tier three contractors often are, for all intents and purposes, spies—and sometimes spymasters.
by Drake Bennett and Michael Riley, Bloomberg Businessweek | Read more:
Image via: Wired
