QinetiQ seems to be the destination of choice for higher-level CIA and DIA types, while the operators involved in the worst sorts of GWOT abuses went into the Blackwater bullpen.
QinetiQ is the privatized outfit that was spun off from Porton Downs, the British biowarfare establishment that achieved some unwanted notoriety after the unexplained death of bioweapons researcher Dr. David Kelly. That company has taken over many of the DIA's domestic surveillance functions once performed by MZM, which also got its share of bad publicity, much of it involving CIFA. Tom Burghardt reports:
Though CIFA is gone, the DoD’s new office will retain many of the characteristics of its predecessor, including DIA’s reliance on outsourced contracts to private defense and security firms. According to a July 22, 2008 Memorandum from Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England obtained by Cryptome,
On August 3, 2008, all DoD CIFA CI missions, responsibilities, functions, and authorities as well as all associated resources including all personnel, support contracts and contractors, and appropriate records and archives shall transition in place to DIA. Personnel transfer notifications, as appropriate and required, shall be accomplished in advance of the August 3, 2008, transfer from DoD CIFA to DIA.
Major CIFA contractors included QinetiQ, a British-owned defense and intelligence firm based in McLean, Virginia. Investigative journalist Tim Shorrock reported in January for CorpWatch that QinetiQ’s “Mission Solutions Group, formerly Analex Corporation, had just signed a five-year, $30 million contract to provide a range of unspecified ’security services’.” Interestingly enough, Cambone became a QinetiQ vice president when he left the Pentagon and CIFA signed the QinetiQ deal a scant two months after he was hired. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.
CIFA’s brief included a Directorate of Field Activities, tasked with “preserving the most critical defense assets;” the Counterintelligence and Law Enforcement Center, designated as the office to “identify and assess threats;” and Behavioral Sciences, the office that provided “a team of renowned forensic psychologists are engaged in risk assessments of the Guantanamo Bay detainees,” according to Shorrock.
Will the CIFA shut-down and the transference of its intelligence brief to DIA mean that a privatized military-surveillance complex is now a relic of the corrupt Bush regime? Hardly. According to estimates, some 30-40% of DIA personnel are outsourced contractors themselves.
Indeed, Washington Technology reported that “the Defense Intelligence Agency is planning a billion-dollar contract for information technology and services.” According to the brief report, the contract “to be known as the Solutions for Information Technology Enterprise, will be open to Defense Department intelligence agencies, the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines Corps as well as non-DOD agencies involved in intelligence.” (emphasis added)
Back in April, the publication reported that eight giant multinational defense and security firms “won prime contracts” from DIA “for military intelligence analysis services.” The companies included BAE Systems Inc., Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., CACI International Inc., Concurrent Technologies Corp., L-3 Communications Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp., Science Applications International Corp. and SRA International Inc. In other words, the usual suspects!
I repeat my question:
Looks like the same nest of spiders at the center of a lot of webs. Why are CACI, L3, BAE, etc. still getting new intel contracts - why are none of these companies ever disbarred, except the small-fry, like MZM? Was MZM set up as a fall-guy for the rest?
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