Spies-for-Hire Raking in the Cash (Updated)

Outside contractors were supposed to save the federal government money. But, in the U.S. intelligence community, at least, that's not how things have panned out. A typical contract worker in the spy agencies rakes in 65
percent more than the average federal employee, according to the Office of the Direc­tor of National Intelligence. A spook-for-hire takes home $207,000, on average -- compared to a civil servant's $125,000 average salary.

That's making a huge impact on the nation's spying budget. Because these 27,000 contractors now make up more than a quarter of the intelligence workforce, by the most conservative estimate.

What kind of jobs are those contractors doing? Ronald Sanders, asso­ciate director of national intelli­gence for human capital provided *Defense News *with rough esti­mates."

About 27 percent of contractors are supporting in­formation collection and opera­tions, 22 percent provide IT serv­ices, 19 percent support data analysis, another 19
percent perform administrative functions and 4 percent perform research and development activities, he said. The functions being per­formed by the remaining 9 percent were not defined.

According to Federal Computer Week, the intelligence agencies claim that the majority of contractors were hired for their "unique expertise." But the explanation doesn't exactly wash. As an earlier ODNI report noted*, *“contractors recruit our own employees, already cleared and trained at government expense, and then
‘lease’ them back to us at considerably greater expense.”

Budget cuts during the 1990's "reinventing government" push gutted the intelligence community, Sanders says. Then 9/11 hit, and suddenly the spies need to ramp up n a hurry. Throw in the "workers at companies that build spy satellites and computer equipment, cafeteria staffers or security guards," the Los Angeles Times notes, and outside "contractors would account for about 70%" of the folks working for the spy agencies. Despite that, “we do not — repeat, do not — believe we are over-reliant on contractor personnel to accomplish our mission,” Sanders tells Federal Computer Week.

[Photo: EthicalCorp]

UPDATE: DANGER ROOM contributor Michael Tanji yawns at the latest report. "Because that hasn’t been going on for decades," snarks the intel veteran.

Look, done properly, contracting is an effective, inexpensive way to solve the government’s problems. I stress “properly” because, let’s face it, it is not unheard of for people to retire/resign from our Uncle’s employ and then log another 10, 15, 20 years doing the same job in the same office in the same agency they just left. The whole point of using contractors is… to employ needed unique expertise that could not be found in the government.

Now, when its clear that a contractor is just filling out an agency’s roster because manpower ceilings preclude the hiring of feds, well, that’s not the contractor’s problem, that’s a fight the Executive and Congress needs to sort out. Don’t blame the dog for wanting to hunt.

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