The CIA Illegally Let the Wrong People Do Intelligence Work, Declassified Report Finds

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The CIA Illegally Let the Wrong People Do Intelligence Work, Declassified Report Finds

May 1st, 2016

Awake Goy

The report said the CIA “relies heavily on independent contractors to accomplish important facets of its mission,” particularly at the National Clandestine Service, the covert arm of the agency responsible for clandestine operations around the world. The report, dated June 22, 2012 but only declassified last month, raised numerous red flags about the CIA’s use of independent contractors throughout all divisions within the agency, and for work performed work in areas that included covert operations and protective security services overseas.

By law, that work must be done by CIA employees.

The OIG did not scrutinize the CIA’s “industrial contracts” with firms such as Booz Allen Hamilton, but instead reviewed independent contracts into which the agency enters with individuals, who the report said are made up largely of retired CIA case officers.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, reviewed the OIG report.

“I’ve had concerns for years about the extensive reliance on contractors by the government, and the intelligence community in particular,” Feinstein told VICE News. “The Senate Intelligence Committee has focused in the past on bringing [independent contractors’] jobs back in-house where possible, and it’s an area we’ll continue to focus on.”

The use of independent contractors by US intelligence agencies exploded after 9/11. At the CIA, the number of contractors working for the agency at one point surpassed the number of actual agency employees. At the end of the 113th session of Congress in January 2013, one year after the OIG concluded its audit, the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a report submitted to the Senate that it was concerned about the “dramatic increase in the use of contractors by the [intelligence community] since 9/11.”

Although there were some efforts by the intelligence community to reduce the number of independent contractors by either ending their contracts or hiring them as government employees, “data reviewed by the Committee indicate that some elements of the [Intelligence Community] have been hiring additional contractors after they have converted or otherwise removed other contractors, resulting in an overall workforce that continues to grow.”