70% of intel budget goes to contractors & Bush has outsourced presidents daily brief

[yurbud]

If you don't like the intel you get, hire someone who will tell you what you want to hear.

This has disturbing implications and makes it look like Bush has done even more damage to our intelligence aparatas than he has to the military.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/26/1410253

Thursday, July 26th, 2007
Outsourcing Intelligence: Author R.J. Hillhouse on How Key National Security Projects Are Contracted to Private Firms


"Red alert: Our national security is being outsourced. The most intriguing secrets of the 'war on terror' have nothing to do with al-Qaeda and its fellow travelers. They're about the mammoth private spying industry that all but runs U.S. intelligence operations today... the private spy industry has succeeded where no foreign government has: It has penetrated the CIA and is running the show." Those are the opening lines to a recent article in the Washington Post by R.J Hillhouse, a blogger and novelist who closely tracks the privatization of the nation's intelligence agencies.

According to Hillhouse more than 50 percent of the National Clandestine Service has been outsourced to private firms such as Abraxas, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. Hillhouse's article in the Washington Post created a firestorm of controversy within the intelligence community. A week later the Office of the Director of National Intelligence responded defending the use of private contractors.

Now Hillhouse has exposed that the reach of these corporations has extended into the Oval Office. Private companies are now heavily involved in creating the analytical products that underlie the nation's most important and most sensitive national security document – the President's Daily Brief. And there appears to be few safeguards from preventing corporations from inserting items favorable to itself or its clients into the President's Daily Brief in order to influence the country's national security agenda.

R.J. Hillhouse joins us now in Tulsa, Oklahoma...

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/26/1410253

[atreides1]

1. This is total BS

"If you don't like the intel you get, hire someone who will tell you what you want to hear."

First of all those who work for those companies only collect the information, and by the way they use the same satellites and communications equipment that is used by US intelligence agencies.

They do not, and I repeat, do not select what dumb ass gets briefed on, that decision is in the hands of the circus act at the WH, all they do is collect the intelligence and then pass it on to the "govies" who then pass it on to their bosses.

If you want to slam the higher ups feel free, but the people collecting the intel do not pad the information that they submit to the powers that be, that is done, it it's done, by the office hacks!

[yurbud]

2. I hope you are right. But there is a problem with anyone who serves two masters

in this case, our national security and their corporate employer.

[yurbud]

3. I can't believe this ones an orphan

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

4. This should be headline news. I recommended earlier. eom

[yurbud]

5. ummm, thanks, Ommm!

[Richard Steele]

6. Government of the corporations, by the corporations, and FOR the corporations. recommended