CIA Contractors Get the Boot
By Jody Ray Bennett for ISN
In his latest budget proposal announced on 6 April, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates called for the Pentagon to reduce the amount of private contractors it employs, replacing many of them with thousands of federally employed civil servants.
If the budget is approved, private defense giants like General Dynamics, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, CACI and SAIC might begin to experience some of its first significant external pagelosses since the post-9/11 business boom.
In a special Department of Defense external pagebriefing, Gates stated that this proposal “will reduce the number of support-service contractors from our current 39 percent of the Pentagon workforce to the pre-2001 level of 26 percent, and replace them with full-time government employees [with a] goal […] to hire as many as 13,000 new civil servants in FY '10 to replace contractors and up to 30,000 new civil servants in place of contractors over the next five years.”
But large defense companies are not the only ones that will feel the pain of budget cuts. No more than 48 hours after Gates gave his briefing, Director Leon Panetta sent an agency-wide e-mail announcing that the CIA would no longer employ private military and security contractors (PMSCs) to interrogate detainees or guard secret sites abroad:
“No CIA contractors will conduct interrogations [and the] CIA no longer operates detention facilities or black sites and has proposed a plan to decommission the remaining sites. I have directed our Agency personnel to take charge of the decommissioning process and have further directed that the contracts for site security be promptly terminated. It is estimated that our taking over site security will result in savings of up to $4 million.”
Seeds of bad apples
Private companies that were contracted by the CIA for interrogation operations made headlines in 2004 during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. After media external pagereports brought the scandal to light, an August 2004 external pagepaper released by the Pentagon found that Titan Corporation (now L-3 Communications) and California Analysis Center, Inc (external pageCACI) employees had participated in abuse or failed to report offenses at Abu Ghraib.
Misconduct by contractors that occurred demonstrated a perception in both public and private spheres that private employees could enjoy certain operational privileges outside of legal constraints. In 2006, a CIA contractor in Afghanistan external pagebeata man to death in a detention center after telling military guards: “I know you cannot touch the prisoner, but I can, because I have special rules.” The man allegedly turned himself in voluntarily after he learned that he was wanted for questioning by the American forces.
While Abu Ghraib helped catalyze the discussion of accountability that was already beginning with regard to armed PMSCs operating in Iraq and Afghanistan, a little known congressional scandal that developed parallel to Abu Ghraib galvanized the attention toward the use of private contractors for national security.
In November 2005, a California congressional representative external pageresigned after pleading guilty to accepting bribes from at least three private companies in return for defense contracts. Dubbed the “external pageCunningham Scandal,” investigations found that Rep Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R) had taken at least US$1.4 million in bribes from the totally unknown MZM Inc, the same company that prior to the scandal had been awarded a contract by the CIA.
One external pagereportfound that MZM vice president, Lt Gen James C King, retired just three years earlier from working “on the same floor” with Michael Hayden at the National Security Agency (NSA). Hayden would later become the director of the CIA. Fearing a backlash against its image, MZM quickly changed its name to external pageAthena Innovative Solutions, which seems to have since have external pageassociations with CACI.
The pressure from Congress forced then-CIA director Michael Hayden to external pagecut10 percent of intelligence contracting from the total one-third of the entire CIA workforce enjoyed by private companies. By June 2007, the CIA would ban “bidding back” - the practice when “contracting firms [hire] former CIA employees and then [offer] the employees' services to the CIA within the first year and a half of their retirement from the agency.”
Panetta’s move to bar contractors from participating in interrogation operations and providing physical security for detention and interrogation centers is the latest in the developing relationship with contractors and the CIA.
Blowback privatized?
In much of the intelligence community, the term “blowback” is used to describe the unintended consequences that, often after providing support, assistance or aid, develop against one’s intended goal or overall interests. Will PMSCs that were once employed by the DoD and CIA perceive Gates and Panetta’s actions as a blowback to the industry? Or, do the illicit actions of private contractors during CIA operations demonstrate a similar type of blowback for the agency itself?
In an effort to retain support and confidence within the CIA, Panetta has external pageremained consistent in his conviction that agency interrogators that participated in torture interrogations should not be external pagesubjectto "any investigation, let alone prosecution,” despite US Department of Justice external pagedisclosures that reveal torture programs occurred in violation of US and international laws, all of which can substantiate external pagecrimes of war.
Furthermore, a law is currently being drafted by the Iraqi parliament that would place foreign companies that operate on its soil under Iraqi jurisdiction. In an external pageinterview conducted by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Abbas al-Bayati, a chair of the defense and security committee of the Iraqi National Assembly stated the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed between the US and Iraq in November 2008 did not protect private companies from prosecution in Iraqi courts.
While the law is aimed at Iraqi jurisdiction over armed security companies like Xe (formerly Blackwater), Triple Canopy and Dyncorp, CIA interrogation contractors may have also been held subject to the government of Iraq - something that Panetta would undoubtedly not have wanted to occur for obvious reasons. His opposition to agent prosecutions and firing of private contractors - who often have somewhat of a tense relationship with non-contractor employees throughout government service - can be seen as a way to galvanize support and ordinance from an agency that is adjusting to a new democratic leadership.
On the other hand, support and external pagerecruitmentfrom outside of the Agency has been more difficult for the CIA to reach. In its own sort of institutional blowback, the CIA failed for the first time in several years to hold a recruitment at an Illinois university after “members of the Campus Antiwar Network (CAN), Iraq Veterans Against the War and the International Socialist Organization joined forces to protest the CIA [and expose] the agency’s external pagedark history of assassinations, political sabotage and torture.”
Nevertheless, the CIA remains far from damaged, at least in terms of its budget and manpower. If Gates’ newest budget proposal passes, the Agency will surely see a burst in other areas of its operational budget. Indeed, it was this in this area that Gates made his first budget proposal: an increase for “intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support […] by some $2 billion.”
Critics see the move by the CIA to bar interrogation and security contractors from its operation as a bittersweet victory; it only took eight years of a Bush administration torture scandal to jar even the slightest of responses by congress and the CIA. For industry it means that PMSCs may have to continue searching for opportunities whereby part of its competitive advantage encompasses the engagement of ethical behavior, regardless of whether or not contractors were simply following orders from up the chain of command.