Businessweek | Booz Allen and its competitors are able to keep landing contracts and
keep growing, critics charge, not because their expertise is
irreplaceable but because their Rolodexes are. Name a retired senior
official from the NSA or the CIA or the various military intelligence
branches, and there’s a good chance he works for a contractor—most
likely Booz Allen. Name a senior intelligence official serving in the
government, and there’s a good chance he used to work for Booz Allen.
(ODNI’s Sanders, who made the case for contractors, is now a vice
president at the firm, which declined to make him available for an
interview.) McConnell and others at Booz Allen are quick to point out
that the contracting process has safeguards and oversight built in and
that it has matured since the frenzied years just after Sept. 11. At the
same time, the firm’s tendency to scoop up—and lavishly
pay—high-ranking intelligence officers once they retire suggests the
value it places on their address books and in having their successors
inside government consider Booz Allen as part of their own retirement
plans.
Rich contractor salaries create a classic public-private revolving
door. They pull people from government intelligence, deplete the ranks,
and put more experience and knowledge in the private sector, which makes
contractors even more vital to the government. “Now you go into
government for two or three years, get a clearance, and migrate to one
of the high-paying contractors,” says Steven Aftergood, who heads the
Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.
That’s what Snowden did. “You have to have a well-developed sense of
patriotism to turn that money down,” Aftergood says.
As a result, says Golden, the headhunter, a common complaint in spy
agencies is that “the damn contractors know more than we do.” That could
have been a factor in the Snowden leak—his computer proficiency may
have allowed him to access information he shouldn’t have been allowed to
see. Snowden is an anomaly, though. What he did with that
information—copying it, getting it to the press, and publicly
identifying himself as the leaker—cost him his job and potentially his
freedom, all for what appear so far to be idealistic motives. The more
common temptation would be to use knowledge, legally and perhaps not
even consciously, to generate more business.
In the wake of the Snowden leak, Congress is paying more attention to
contractors like Booz Allen and the role they play in intelligence
gathering. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say that the ease with
which Snowden was able to gain access to and divulge classified
information highlights the need for greater oversight of contractors’
activities. “I’m just stunned that an individual who did not even have a
high school diploma, who did not successfully complete his military
service, and who is only age 29 had access to some of the most highly
classified information in our government,” Senator Susan Collins (R-Me.)
told reporters on Capitol Hill on June 11. “That’s astonishing to me,
and it suggests real problems with the vetting process. The rules are
not being applied well or they need to be more strict.”
Changing them, however, may be easier said than done. “At the very
highest level, whether at the White House or the Pentagon, there will
always be a contractor in the room,” says Golden. “And the powers that
be will turn around and say, ‘That’s a brilliant plan, how do we make
that work?’ And a contractor will say, ‘I can do that.’ ”
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