Last month in one of my blog pieces I highlighted the danger of armed private contractors performing inherently governmental functions.

But it's not just the Pentagon that relies on private contractors.....intelligence gathering agencies, like the CIA, depend on private contractors.  What does that say about national security when the government depends not on career Civil Service employees, but on profit making corporate contractors, especially when there is a constant revolving door between these contractors and government.

Mike McConnell, Dubya's Director of National Intelligence, was the personification of the dangers of the privatization of intelligence.

As Glenn Greenwald once wrote: "In a political culture drowning in hidden conflicts of interests, exploitation of political office for profit, and a rapidly eroding wall separating the public and private spheres, Michael McConnell stands out as the perfect embodiment of all those afflictions.  Few people have blurred the line between public office and private profit more egregiously and shamelessly than he.  McConnell's behavior is the classic never-ending "revolving door" syndrome:  public officials serve private interests while in office and are then lavishly rewarded by those same interests once they leave.  He went from being head of the National Security Agency under Bush 41 and Clinton directly to Booz Allen, one of the nation's largest private intelligence contractors, then became Bush's Director of National Intelligence (DNI), then went back to Booz Allen, where he is now Executive Vice President.

"But that's the least of what makes McConnell such a perfect symbol for the legalized corruption that dominates Washington.  Tellingly, his overarching project while at Booz Allen and in public office was exactly the same:  the outsourcing of America's intelligence and surveillance functions (including domestic surveillance) to private corporations, where those activities are even more shielded than normal from all accountability and oversight and where they generate massive profit at the public expense.  Prior to becoming Bush's DNI, McConnell, while at Booz Allen, was chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, the primary business association of NSA and CIA contractors devoted to expanding the privatization of government intelligence functions.  

"Then, as Bush's DNI, McConnell dramatically expanded the extent to which intelligence functions were outsourced to the same private industry that he long represented.  Worse, he became the leading spokesman for demanding full immunity for lawbreaking telecoms for their participation in Bush's illegal NSA programs -- in other words, he exploited "national security" claims and his position as DNI to win the dismissal of lawsuits against the very lawbreaking industry he represented as INSA Chairman, including, almost certainly, Booz Allen itself.  Having exploited his position as DNI to lavishly reward and protect the private intelligence industry, he then returns to its loving arms to receive from them lavish personal rewards of his own."

Jeremy Scahill now writes at The Nation about how intelligence became big business drawing on a discussion with the "CIA's former top counterterrorism official, Robert Grenier, participated in a rare public discussion on issues ranging from the incredible extent to which the US has relied on contractors to fill sensitive national security positions; to battlefield contractors in Afghanistan; to allegations of contractor involvement in "direct action" (lethal) operations, as well as commenting on Blackwater owner Erik Prince's reported involvement in a secret CIA assassination program."

"It is difficult to access detailed information about the extent to which US intelligence activities are privatized, primarily because the budgets of the eighteen intelligence agencies operated by the United States are mostly classified. In 2007, journalist Tim Shorrock, who wrote the definitive book on the privatization of intelligence, Spies for Hire, obtained and published an unclassified document from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence showing that 70 percent of the US intelligence budget was spent on private contractors. No documents on these classified budgets have been made public since.

"While Grenier provided a utilitarian rationale for the CIA using contractors, he veered away from discussing the political expediency private forces offer the CIA by providing unattributable forces specializing in plausible deniability.

"Grenier was visibly uncomfortable discussing the issue of Blackwater and "direct action,"......

"While there is little chance that there is a US government contract with Blackwater floating around showing the CIA hired Blackwater to kill people, this type of contracting inherently creates gray areas that ultimately benefit the secrecy of the operations. There is no doubt that Blackwater forces have killed plenty of people in Iraq and Afghanistan and that not all of these "kills" have been defensive security operations.

"The Obama administration has continued the US policy of overwhelming reliance on private contractors at every level of the US national security apparatus and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, the administration has dramatically increased the number of contractors from Bush-era levels. In Iraq, while the overall US presence is decreasing, the percentage of  contractors within the total US force continues to rise. But it is not just on the battlefield. According to a recent Congressional investigation, some 69 percent of all Department of Defense personnel are private contractors. The CIA's recent $100 million contract with Blackwater for "security" services globally is a clear sign that this trend continues unabated at the agency under Leon Panetta.

"The Commission on Wartime Contracting recently examined the issue of the use of contractors in sensitive operations at a hearing called, "Are Private Security Contractors Performing Inherently Governmental Functions?" One of the experts who testified, Dr. Allison Stanger, professor and director of the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs at Middlebury College, said that the government use of contractors has become a necessity, rather than a choice, but she painted a sober picture of the implications of the United States using such forces. It "blurs the line between the legitimate and illegitimate use of force, which is just what our enemies want. Al Qaeda's operatives have no country and are private actors waging war on the United States. Terrorists may receive funding from states, but they are by definition non-state actors," Stanger said. "If the United States can legitimately rely on non-state actors wielding weapons to protect our interests, why can't Al Qaeda or the Taliban, especially when contractor misdeeds appear to go completely unpunished?"

The privatization of intelligence gathering, thanks to GOP and DINO administrations, has become a dangerous reality.

However, putting the cart before the horse has been a consistent MO of government, especially of conservative and right wing GOP administrations and triangulating DINO administrations.  Their answer to Stanger's last question is usually, whatever the US does is not unlawful, (no matter defying precedent, the constitution, or rules of law) only when those we deem terrorists do it is it unlawful.

And this use of mercenary or intelligence gathering private contractors, paid so much more than regular US troops and US Civil Service employees (and often defrauding US taxpayers), is on the dangerously slippery slope of playing havoc with our national security, and, as we have seen with private mercenary companies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the concept of non-state actors not accountable to the government or the people of the United States is already here. 

The military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned about, Hydra headed corporate controlled government now rules