Spies for Hire: The Secret WORLD of Intelligence Outsourcing Audiobook (Free)

Running spy sites overseas. Searching for terrorists in the centre East. Interrogating foe prisoners. Analyzing data from spy satellites and intercepted phone calls. All of these are vital intelligence tasks which have typically been performed by authorities officials responsible to Congress and the American people. But that is no longer the case.

Starting during the Clinton administration, when intelligence budgets were cut drastically and privatization of federal government solutions became about Spies for Hire: The Secret WORLD of Intelligence Outsourcing country wide policy, and growing dramatically in the wake of 9/11, when the CIA and additional companies were frantically seeking to hire experts and linguists, the intelligence community continues to be relying more and more on corporations to perform sensitive tasks heretofore considered to be exclusively the task of federal employees. This outsourcing of intelligence activities is currently a $50 billion-a-year business that consumes up to 70 percent from the U.S. cleverness budget. And it’s really a business that the federal government has attempted hard to keep under wraps.

Drawing on interviews with major players in the intelligence-industrial complex, contractors’ annual reviews and public filings with the government, and on-the-spot reporting from intelligence sector conferences and investor briefings, Spies for Hire supplies the first behind-the-scenes understand this new method of spying. Shorrock shows how corporations such as Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, CACI International, and IBM have grown to be full partners with the CIA, the Country wide Security Company (NSA), as well as the Pentagon within their most sensitive foreign and domestic procedures. He explores how this collaboration has resulted in wasteful spending and how it threatens to rot the privacy protections and congressional oversight that is so vital that you American democracy.

Shorrock exposes the types of spy function the private sector does, such as interrogating prisoners in Iraq, managing covert operations, and collaborating with the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans’ overseas phone calls and e-mails. And he casts light on a ‘shadow intelligence community’ made up of previous top cleverness officials who are actually employed by businesses that do that spy work, such as previous CIA directors George Tenet and Adam Woolsey. Shorrock also traces the rise of Michael McConnell from his days as head from the NSA, to being truly a top executive at Booz Allen Hamilton, to time for government as the nation’s chief spymaster.

From CIA covert actions to NSA eavesdropping, from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo, from your Pentagon’s techno-driven war in Iraq to the coming global battles over information dominance and control of cyberspace, contractors are doing it all. Spies for Hire goes behind today’s headlines to focus on how private companies are aiding the development of a fresh and frightening national surveillance state.