The Spy Who Billed Me

Congrats to WaPo's Steve Fainaru

Warmest congratulations to the Washington Post's Steve Fainaru for winning the Pulitzer Prize in the international affairs category for his phenomenal reporting on private military corporations in Iraq!  Over the past year he as been without peer in the mainstream media for his exceptional work.  The following pieces were the basis for the prize:

 

• A Chaotic Day On Baghdad's Airport Road (April 15, 2007)
• Iraq Contractors Face Growing Parallel War (June 16, 2007)
• Cutting Costs, Bending Rules, And a Trail of Broken Lives (July 29, 2007)
• For Abducted Guards, Iraq Wasn't Just About Money (July 30, 2007)
• Where Military Rules Don't Apply (Sept. 20, 2007)
• Guards in Iraq Cite Frequent Shootings (Oct. 3, 2007)
• How Blackwater Sniper Fire Felled 3 Iraqi Guards (Nov. 8, 2007)
• Iraqis Detail Shooting by Guard Firm (Nov. 26, 2007)
• Warnings Unheeded On Guards In Iraq (Dec. 24, 2007)

 

Well deserved, Steve!   Bravo!

Three Claps for Clapper: CIFA in the Crosshairs

Longstanding rumors about the imminent demise of the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity's (CIFA) seems to be finally proving themselves to be true.  The New York Times reports today that the Department of Defense Deputy Director for Intelligence, Gen. James Clapper, has recommended dismantling CIFA.  CIFA was involved in controversial domestic spying programs. 

CIFA's had a key role in the Duke Cunningham scandal and the prominent role intelligence contractors play at CIFA. 

The NYT neglected to mention that CIFA is the government's most heavily outsourced intelligence agency. Over 30 corporations provide 90% of CIFA's staff--that's a blue green ratio of 1:9.    CIFA's prime contractors are the usual suspects such as SAIC. 

The DoD Inspector General has found inconsistencies between CIFA's procurement practices and procurement regulations that have resulted in overpayment for office space.  CIFA was involved in further "inconsistencies" between procurement law and its multimillion dollar contracts with MZM, a benefactor of former Congressman Duke Cunningham.

The center piece of CIFA's domestic intelligence programs was the TALON database which logged unconfirmed reports of "suspicious" incidents within the US.  These suspicious incidents have included various protests by peace groups, including Quakers.  The Pentagon announced in August 2007 that it was shuttering the TALON program, effective the following month.  Without the TALON data to sift through, it's unclear what CIFA contractors have been doing in the interim.

One possibility is noted by the NYT is mentioned in documents obtained by the ACLU:

Newly declassified documents released on Tuesday shed more light on another activity coordinated by the Pentagon’s counterintelligence office, issuing letters to banks and credit agencies to obtain financial records in terrorism and espionage investigations.

Despite its rather verbose mission statement, CIFA's purpose has been nebulous since its creation by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. 

Many consider CIFA to be the largest boondoggle in the Intelligence Community.   

Pentagon Asserts Authority Over Contractors--Finally

Five years into the Iraq War, the most heavily outsourced war in history, the Pentagon has issued a memorandum clearly giving authority of military commanders over the civilian contractors in their areas of operation.  Until now, lines of authority have been unclear and local commanders often been frustrated with contractors with seemingly no accountability.  A year and a half ago the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ)  was amended to extend jurisdiction to contractors serving alongside DoD personnel in a war or contingency operation, but the DoD did not issue guidelines on the amended code.  In fact, no one seemed to notice the changes for several months until after the question was called by a 2006 Christmas shooting by a Blackwater armorer in the Baghdad Green Zone.

The memorandum outlines how commanders should respond to civilian contractors who break federal laws, including granting them court-martial authority, albeit in cases in which the Department of Justice determines that it will not initiate criminal proceedings.  This authority is not extended to include Department of State contractors, although the DoS was notified of the changes.

A policy buried in the memo does raise some potentially interesting questions for CIA contractors:

Commanders possess significant authority to act whenever criminal activity may relate to or affect the commander's responsibilities, including situation in which the alleged offenders' precise identity or actual affiliation is to that point undetermined.

The CIA and its contractors do not operate under Department of Defense authority, but rather under the authority of the Chief of Mission (i.e. Ambassador), even though both military and intelligence may be operating parallel in a particular region.  Things can get particularly sticky in cases were the CIA uses some time of military cover (i.e. individual, such as guys posing as DoD civilian contractors, or organizational cover in which military cover is used to hide an Agency base, etc.)  Now the memo allows commissioned, warrant, petty and noncommissioned officers to detain DoD contractors believed to be committing crimes.  It's easy to see how in the flurry of trying to quell a potential problem, local MPs could detain civilians who ostensibly fall under this memo and its references.  The real issue would be what to do with them...

If the military lets these guys go because it is discovered that they actually fall under the Chief of Mission and thus are a Department of Justice problem, their cover is blown.  However, if the cover façade is maintained, the military might actually end up having to let the accused perps go because they don’t have jurisdiction.

In actual practice, these situations are generally resolved by hustling the alleged perps out of country as quickly as possible back to CONUS, which was the Department of State/Blackwater solution to the 2006 Christmas shooting before anyone had discovered the changes to the UCMJ. 

This assumes, however, that the perps are willing to cooperate.  What if they are not, a la Frank Terpil?  Then we'll find out whether Chavez can really measure up to Fidel's hospitality. 

**** 

Note to regular readers.  My apologies for the long delay between posts.  It's been a slow news period, one that coincided with me being hit by a particularly nasty flu bug.  Needless to say, backlogged while I was sick, so it took a little longer to get around to regular posts. I expect to be more active in the next few weeks. 

As contractor news has been rather slow, tips are particularly welcome right now and can be emailed to rjh AT thespywhobilledme.com.

Blackwater Enters the Campaign: Hillary calls for a ban

Just as Blackwater had finally fallen from the headlines and the boys in Moyock thought their State Department contract would be quietly renewed, their worst nightmare has hit:  Blackwater is a campaign issue.  In an ironic twist of politics, Erik Prince is now on the same side of the contractor issue as Obama--more or less.

Senator Hillary Clinton broke her longstanding silence on private security contractors in Iraq.   Her senate office announced late Thursday that she is co-sponsoring a bill to ban "Blackwater and other private mercenary firms in Iraq." 

The timing of the announcement is particularly curious.  It comes less than a day after the investigative journalist and Blackwater critic Jeremy Scahill published a piece in the Nation in which the Obama campaign conceded that, "if elected Obama will not 'rule out' using private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq."  The campaign also informed Scahill that Obama would not be signing on to legislation banning the use of contractors in war zones by 2009 .  Ignoring that the issue of funding contractors versus government employee positions is a Congressional one, the campaign also informed Scahill that Obama would increase State Department funding so that State could build their own ranks and eventually replace contractors.

Scahill noted the difficulty of the position:

The senior adviser acknowledged that Obama could find himself in a situation where, as President, he continues using forces he himself has identified as "unaccountable." The Obama campaign, in other words, may have painted itself into a corner.

It appears that Clinton's campaign realized the risk Obama was taking and picked up the issue in an attempt to outflank Obama on the left and pick up the vote of Blackwater opponents.

I spoke with Scahill about the coincidental timing.  "For over a week I tried to get Hillary Clinton's campaign and Senate staff to issue a policy statement reflecting her position on her potential future use of PMCs in Iraq if she won the presidency. Silence. Then, the day after my story comes out revealing that Obama will not "rule out" using them, all of a sudden Hillary Clinton becomes the most important political figure in the US to call for a "ban" on Blackwater et al."  Scahill said.  "Where was her call for a ban after Nisour Square?"

Maybe somewhere underneath the Oval Office drapery measurements?

Senator Clinton targeted what has become America's most hated company with unusually strong rhetoric, clearly intended for emotional appeal, something her campaign has sorely lacked: 

"From this war's very beginning, this administration has permitted thousands of heavily-armed military contractors to march through Iraq without any law or court to rein them in or hold them accountable.  These private security contractors have been reckless and have compromised our mission in Iraq.  The time to show these contractors the door is long past due.  We need to stop filling the coffers of contractors in Iraq, and make sure that armed personnel in Iraq are fully accountable to the U.S. government and follow the chain of command," said Senator Clinton. 

Thousands of heavily-armed contractors marching through streets?  Contractors marching?  More like lounging around Liberty pool in Speedos.   

Obama seems to be confident enough in his lead that he can risk political fallout of the acknowledgment that whoever becomes the next president will have little choice but to continue reliance upon contracted security.  The math is simple.  The number of Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp personnel in Iraq is nearly equal to the number of Diplomatic Security Service officers worldwide (approximately 1395 vs. 1450.)  The US government is not in a position to replace them. 

Obama's campaign seems to understand something about the contracting issue and now that Senator Clinton has taken a position, it's time for her to do her homework and maybe even bring on a new national security advisor who understands the complexity of the issues. 

I hear that Cofer is available...

 

****

Disclaimer:  In no way do I endorse either of these candidates, although I do admit that if Cofer signed on as their national security advisor, I would support a Prince/Scahill ticket.

Contractor's Website Reveals Clandestine CIA Programs

Is there any way one can figure out some of the CIA's most highly guarded secrets from a corporate website? 

Absolutely.   

I’ve done it.   (And you can count on it that America’s friends and enemies alike have, too.) 

Recently while researching a piece for The Spy Who Billed Me, I took a break and reviewed my internet logs to see who was curious about my recent writings on the black sites.  Among hundreds of hits on the page (and thousands in the logs), one in particular jumped out.  It was a single page view that lasted for some fifty seconds and it came from an unmasked site, a common signature.  I backtracked it and was shocked at what I found.   

Typically members of the Intelligence Community have their IPs masked when they visit the blog, living no fingerprints, but not this one.  The hit was from a company I had never heard of before, but with less than a minute on their site, I knew I had discovered one of the Intelligence Community's most secretive contractors, one of the A teams.  The big surprise was that this corporate website leaked secrets like Zubaydah after his first thrifty-five second waterboarding.

I'm sure many are skeptical that a contractor would reveal clandestine ops on their sites, but keep in mind their sites are also marketing themselves to the corporate world and sometimes they say a little too much, believing that they have coded their information enough to protect it.   

So let's see what can be deduced from an open source, available to all of America's friends and enemies on the world wide web. We’ll dissect the company's website and see just how well intelligence outsourcing is working from an operational security perspective. 

(Note:  Not that every intel agency worth it's salt hasn't already scooped up this info, but out of respect for Intelligence Community sensibilities, I'll call the Dulles toll road corridor contractor "Heckle and Jeckle Gizmos" and I won't quote directly from the site.) 

 

Now the first question when reviewing Heckle and Jeckle's site, or any contractor's for that matter, is to ask: who do these guys work for?  This can help quickly zero in on what they're up to.   

Heckle and Jeckle boast that most of their employees have TS/SCI clearances, many based on a particularly thorough procedure, the highest level of security clearances. There are but a handful of government agencies that require this for contractor access and really only two major intelligence agencies that do so. One of them is located in Langley, Virginia a couple of miles from the eastern entrance to the Dulles Toll Road and it has well-known, overt satellite offices stretching out west thereon at various exits. The other is located in Ft. Meade, Maryland.   

For those who live as far out of the Beltway as I do, these clearances suggest that Heckle and Jeckle are doing business with the CIA and NSA.

The specific governmental entities Heckle and Jeckle provide outsourced services for can be quickly narrowed down though the geography of their corporate offices which are located near Dulles airport in northern Virginia; in Cumberland County, North Carolina; Virginia Beach, Virginia and Tampa, Florida and if we dig a little we discover they have staff co-located at an Annapolis Junction Maryland facility.  To the uninitiated, that means they contract with the CIA, work extensively with Army and Navy tier-one Special Forces Teams as well as Special Operations Command (SOCOM) with a little NSA thrown in.   

When it comes to who is working for whom in the Intel Community, geography doesn't lie:  Location, location, location. 

 

For purposes of our analysis, the next question then becomes , what is Heckle and Jeckle's specialty?  According to their site, it's specialized communications, including nonattributable communication systems and communications devices that function in hostile environments.  In fact, their employees have experience working in hostile and denied areas and have immediate availability to deploy as part of a team or alone to ply their trade abroad or in the US.  (Private domestic spying, anyone?) 

Go-bags packed, ready to deploy with teams raises the obvious follow up question: which teams?   

Anyone know any teams in Virginia Beach or Fayettenam? 

And where would they be tagging along with these Special Forces teams?  Maybe to the Special Forces Club in London, but Heckle and Jeckle’s employees' background suggests foreign hostile or denied areas.   

Now what could they possibly do in hostile, denied or politically sensitive areas?   

Again, the contractor’s website gives us the answer:   Heckle and Jeckle's comm equipment has offensive and defensive capabilities.   

Offensive communications--can you say clandestine ELINT and SIGINT collection?   

In laymen's terms, setting up in a house that happens to be in the path of a highly directional signal or on top of just the right cable, but in this case the metaphorical houses are probably in such friendly spots as Iran or wherever the yellow brick road of GWOT contracting leads. 

To pull the conclusions of our open-source intelligence (OSINT) together, Heckle and Jeckle teams stand ready, custom-designed high-tech gadgets in hand, for clandestine missions in enemy territory to covertly and remotely intercept foreign communications or penetrate information systems.  This can be done independently or in conjunction with SEAL or Delta or other secret squirrel teams on behalf of SOCOM and the CIA.   

In other words, they set up black sites albeit a different type than has been in the news lately.  To put it into context, such black sites such as covert listening posts in hostile territories and even in friendlier ones where discovery could create international tensions count among the Intelligence Community's blackest secrets.  And now, thanks to the About page on Heckle and Jeckle's website, we know that the CIA is outsourcing this to Heckle and Jeckle, whose identity would make it somewhat easier to uncover the black collection sites.   

Now that's serious OPSEC. 

(We can only hope that they outsource the cover aliases they use when establishing and serving these sites.)

 

 

Digging inside the website, particularly into its previous versions which can be found in the internet archive, we can create an even more revealing picture of what Heckle and Jeckle are up to.   

From job descriptions for various types of engineers they're seeking, we learn that their main facility is near the Dulles Toll Road in northern Virginia.  Since contractors tend to locate their main facilities near their contracting agencies, this suggests that the bulk of their work is for the Directorate of Science and Technology (DS&T) at the CIA, the relevant offices of which are conveniently located nearby. No surprise.  DS&T provides the equipment that the National Clandestine Services uses to do its job.

In 2005 the firm began posting job openings (although it's questionable how many linguists and engineers know enough about H&J to to go directly to their site looking for a job.)  These are rich with details indicating various clandestine programs, OSINT just waiting to be scooped up.

Here we learn that Heckle and Jeckle are seeking subject matter experts (SME) in Arabic to work with its customer's teams in Annapolis Junction, MD.  This can only be the National Security Agency.  The NSA is primarily made up of contractors and providing them with SMEs is nothing special.  Let's move on.   

Heckle and Jeckle also brag about a micro-electromechanical facility which becomes particularly interesting in conjunction with their job openings announcements.  Reviewing the skill sets they're looking for, it quickly becomes apparent that they design and program their own computer chips, so they're clearly creating proprietary cutting-edge gadgets.  It's notable how frequently they're searching for engineers with experience in one of the most miserable operating systems for mobile devices:  Windows mobile.  They're also regularly seeking programmers versed in another mobile device language:  Symbian.  Now this information taken in conjunction with their specialty and their prior claims of micro-electromechanical facilities suggests they're designing and creating a lot of mobile, hand held covert communications devices.   

And here I'd venture a pure guess that these are probably designed to look like standard run-of-the-mill Treos and other smart phones, blending their “intelligent phones” into the mobile world.  The largest consumer of such gizmos is, of course, the CIA's DS&T, adding to suspicions that Heckle and Jeckle is a major DS&T contractor.  The primary use of such covert communications gear is for communications with nonofficial cover officers (NOCs) and agents.  So the information on Heckle and Jeckle's site suggests that they are likely designing and creating the latest must-have accessories for NOCs and agents, a far cry from the clunky COVCOM gear of yesteryear.   (And from the Agency's point of view, knowledge of this would be a serious security breech.  Keep in mind the CIA does not even allow contractors to acknowledge their affiliation with the Agency, let alone divulge the programs they are working on, particularly such sensitivities ones.)

 

Not only have CIA programs been compromised, so have SOCOMs.  Judging from the job postings for positions in Florida, Heckle and Jeckle are doing data mining and analytical work for SOCOM.  Among other things that can be deduced, they search for relational patterns of terrorist activity and affiliations, looking at a wide array of seemingly innocuous relationships using open source and clandestinely gathered data, particularly focusing upon financial transactional data.  I'm betting they have a very sophisticated quantitative model that they're constantly tweaking that underlies this process. 

Again, Heckle and Jeckle job postings give us hints to other SOCOM programs.  It appears that Heckle and Jeckle are involved in tracking SOCOM assets worldwide.  Moving beyond Heckle and Jeckle's own website to other open sources, it's possible to learn some of the specs of related handhelds including whose low-earth orbiting satellites they use.  Digging a little deeper, it's also possible to discover the code name of Heckle and Jeckle's RF geolocation program...

 

US national security is compromised by the Intelligence Community's heavy dependence upon corporations, corporations whose websites sometimes spill out some of the darkest government secrets to those who know how to read them.  Last week's revelations by D/CIA Hayden that CIA contractors have been involved in enhanced interrogation techniques at detention facilities (i.e. waterboarding at black sites) should make it clear even to the casual observer that private corporations are integrally involved in the Intelligence Community's most sensitive and secretive clandestine and covert programs.  Nothing is off-limits.  Corporate involvement in clandestine programs raises operational security concerns that only exist because these companies market their services to the private sector, capitalizing upon their exotic experience with the US government.   

In other words, we're taking risks with our national security, risks we don't have to take.  Perhaps some of the risk can be mitigated through restrictions upon contractor marketing and better contractor policing.  As a big fan of the private sector and of government outsourcing, I don’t like to think that the problem is inherent to outsourcing, but at the moment, it’s hard to imagine it otherwise.  A Congressional ban on using government contracting experiences for marketing purposes may be one partial solution.   

The Director of National Intelligence McConnell has been a strong proponent of increased use of open-source intelligence, OSINT.  It's overdue that the Intelligence Community takes OSINT for seriously counterintelligence (CI) purposes (and it comes as no surprise that CI uses of OSINT was a notable omission in the ODNI's Open Source Conference last summer.)  This needs to be immediately addressed--our national security depends upon it.  Eliot, are you listening?

I'm sure some in the Intelligence Community will be appalled that I have publicly posted this analysis, particularly since it involves a key clandestine player, but keep in mind, what I’ve done is an exercise in OSINT, an exercise the Intelligence Community should have done long ago.   Whereas the contents of this article might come as a surprise to intelligence professionals in Ouagadougou and Ulaanbaatar, they won't be in Moscow, Beijing or even Tehran.   

And they shouldn't be in McLean.

"Heckle and Jeckle" are the ones who posted the raw intel on their own website and they're the ones who left their corporate electronic footprints on my blog.  It's particularly ironic, since they're specialists in covert communications.  It's equally ironic that I've protected their identity when they’ve hardly bothered to hide our national secrets.   It is not my intent to hurt the company.

It's my sincere hope that as a result of this post, the Intelligence Community pays a little more attention to the operational security compromises of the divided intelligence contractor mission of serving the public interest while marketing those same services to the corporate world.  As I wrote in the Washington Post last summer, corporations have succeeded where few foreign governments have:  they've penetrated the CIA.  Now it's up to the Agency and the Intelligence Community to ensure that programs are not further compromised as a result of this wide-scale industrial penetration. 

***

(And if anyone needs assistance closing up the gaps from someone who discerns faint patterns within reams of seemingly unrelated data, I rent out for parties.) 

Greening of the Black Sites, Pt. 3: Blue Isn't Always Best

Save for Siobhan Gorman at the Wall Street Journal (non-firewalled text here),  most of the press was snoozing when D/CIA Hayden made the revelation that contractors were involved in enhanced interrogation techniques at the detention centers (i.e. contractors were waterboarding at the black sites.) after the Senate Select Intel Committee violated its unofficial don't ask, don't tell policy regarding contractors.   Of course, this is but the tip of the iceberg concerning contractor involvement at the sites (and in clandestine and covert actions, for that matter.) 

To better understand contractor involvement, it's worth a close read of D/CIA Hayden's well-chosen words to help answer a few key questions such as: are contractors running the entire project?

 

HAYDEN:  We are not outsourcing this. This is not where we would turn to
Firm X, Y or Z, and say, This is what we would like you to
accomplish. Go achieve that for us and come back when you're done.
That is not what this is.
   This is a governmental activity under governmental direction and
control, in which the participants may be both government employees
and contractors, but it's not outsourced.

This might seem contradictory to say that their not outsourcing interrogations when clearly contractors are involved.  What he seems to be claiming is that teams of interrogators consist of blue badgers and both shades of green, that is industrial and independent contractors.  There are some aspects of the detention sites that have been entirely outsourced to contractors, but D/CIA Hayden sidestepped that, not that Congress was asking.

At the sites, Industrial contractor employees are contracted out as Subject Matter Experts (SMEs ) such as interrogators, psychologists, doctors, and others.  Some industrial contractor “bodies” are actually retirees or former employees under independent contract to the industrial contractor (rather than their employees) who are then leased back to the Agency, also as SMEs.  Others still are individuals who have independently contracted themselves as SMEs directly to the Agency without an industrial contractor middleman, these are referred to internally as “ICs.” Both types of industrial contractor SMEs  are typically rented to the Agency under a cost plus fixed fee, level of effort (CPFF-LOE) contract by the corporate contractor which means that there is no fixed deliverable other than the blue badged project manager/contracting officer's technical rep's (PM/COTR) satisfaction with the quality and quantity of work being performed on an hourly basis without regard to any specific result being achieved or not being achieved.  (As I mentioned in earlier posts, green badger involvement developed out of necessity because of the lack of skilled experts in the CIA.  Private companies rounded up the necessary talent, often recruiting away from the CIA, and offered it back to the Agency to assist in their manpower shortages.)

I believe what D/CIA Hayden is staying is that the interrogation function is not contracted out to either an industrial contractor firm or independent contractor with the contractor being given full leeway to get results.  In other words, it's not the case that a blue badger can suggest to a green badger that it would be a good idea to beat the crap out of a detainee while the blue badger is on a break.  While there's nothing contractually to prevent this since green badgers cannot be bound by agency procedures, D/CIA Hayden is suggesting that, since practically speaking r green badge interrogators have to follow the same procedures (under direct blue badge PM/COTR oversight) before applying special interrogations techniques as blue badgers (i.e., cable Headquarters, get permission from the Director of the National Clandestine Service and now the White House), they are de facto controlled at the risk of losing their contracts if they do not voluntarily comply.  All evidence has pointed to this procedure being followed religiously.

Now D/CIA Hayden also told Congress the next day:

HAYDEN:  They [contractors] are bound by the same rules enforced for the
Office of the Central Intelligence Agency.

This is where things start to get interesting.  Within the context it seems that D/CIA Hayden was explaining that contractors were following the established (and arguably cumbersome) protocol for applying enhanced interrogation procedures as discussed above.  However, contractors are under no legal obligation to follow National Clandestine Service (NCS) regulations.  They may do so willingly if the blue badge project manager (PM/COTR) enforces (and understands) NCS regs.  In fact, major contracting began in the 1990s specifically as a workaround to bureaucratic regulations that were hindering the functioning of a key program. 

In theory it might be possible to write adherence to NCS regs into a contract, but anything in a contract has to agree with Federal Acquisitions Regulations (FAR).  However, it's highly doubtful that anyone would want to bind contractors to Agency regs, because (1) the COTR would want to keep his options open and (2) an industrial contractor’s legal eagles might have some heartburn about accepting the liability of such a contract.

My understanding is that contractors generally stay within NCS regs unilaterally because they were raised by the system and tend to know them better than their junior blue badge project manager/COTR.  In fact, I've heard many stories of veteran green badgers instructing blue badgers in the regs when they were being asked to violate them, as well as in the limits of their (the COTR’s) authority.  As one green badger once told me in regard to blue badgers, "It's fascinating how poorly trained these guys are."

So far from the "contractors gone wild" images of Departments of Defense and State contractors in Iraq, at the CIA it's often contractors keeping their CIA supervisors in line, a sad commentary of the depth of the personnel crisis at Langley.

The Greening of the Black Sites, Pt. II. Contracting Out for Waterboarders

Today D/CIA Hayden revealed to Congress that he believes CIA contractors have been involved in waterboarding. 

REP. SCHAKOWSKY:  Were contractors involved in the waterboarding
of al Qaeda detainees?

      GEN. HAYDEN:  I'm not sure of the specifics.  I'll give you a
tentative answer:  I believe so.  And I can give you a more detailed
answer --

Of course, he didn't follow up with more details in that questioning.  What General Hayden didn't say is that Independent Contractors (ICs, as opposed to corporate contractors) have been very involved in the interrogation program at the black sites due to severe CIA personnel shortages. 

In the aftermath of 9/11, the Agency was shorthanded because of the Clinton budget cuts of the 1990s and was unable to perform multiple critical functions in-house.  It began contracting sensitive projects out to industrial contractors as well as ICs who were usually CIA retirees with the needed skills and experiences.  In the case of the interrogations, several ICs with backgrounds in interrogation and SERE training were recruited to interrogate high value detainees in the black sites. 

The use of corporate Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) from time to time cannot be ruled out given the high degree of corporate involvement in the sites and given the talent pools some corporations have amassed.

To the Agency's defense, contracting out for interrogators was a necessity to perform the task presented them.  In the case of the black site interrogations, even with the ICs, the CIA's personnel shortage limited the number of detainees who were held at the sites to a few dozen because there simply were not enough interrogators.  The overflow was sent to remote wings of foreign prisons to await their turn.  

One claim by D/CIA Hayden is troubling:

      REP. SCHAKOWSKY:  And are they [contractors] bound by the same rules enforced
for other government personnel?

     GEN. HAYDEN:  They are bound by the same rules enforced for the
Office of the Central Intelligence Agency.   

According to my understanding of Federal Acquisitions Regulations (FAR), contractors by definition are not bound by the same rules as civil servants in a federal agency.  That's the subject for a future post. 

The CIA's Black Sites Have Gone Green

In yesterday's hearing before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, Director of Central Intelligence Mike Hayden admitted to using contractors in the CIA's secret prisons, the so-called black sites, an issue that was first raised last summer on The Spy Who Billed Me.  From yesterday's exchange:

FEINSTEIN:  I'd like to ask this question: Who carries out these [enhanced interrogation] techniques?
Are they government employees or contractors?

   HAYDEN: At our facilities during this, we have a mix of both
government employees and contractors. Everything is done under, as
we've talked before, ma'am, under my authority and the authority of
the agency.
   But the people at the locations are frequently a mix of both --
we call them blue badgers and green badgers.

   FEINSTEIN: And where do you use only contractors?

   HAYDEN: I'm not aware of any facility in which there were only
contractors. And this came up...

   FEINSTEIN: Any facility anywhere in the world?

   HAYDEN: Oh, I mean, I'm talking about our detention facilities.
I want to make something very clear, because I don't think it was
quite crystal clear in the discussion you had with Attorney General
Mukasey.

Today Senator Feinstein has asked Attorney General Muskey whether the use of contractors in coercive interrogation techniques (i.e. enhanced interrogation techniques) is legal.  Specifically, Senator Feinstein asked:

Does the Department of Justice agree that such interrogations are an inherently governmental activity? 

What are the Department’s views on the legality of using contractors to perform interrogations involving so-called “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques”? 

And what are the Department’s views on whether contractors are protected by the provisions of the Detainee Treatment Act that protect U.S. Government personnel from retroactive liability for using officially authorized interrogation techniques?

Whether or not interrogation with enhanced techniques is an "inherently governmental activity" is an excellent question and we all know that inherently governmental activities at the CIA have been handed over to green badgers to such an extent that the Agency is no longer able to perform them.  Or as D/CIA Hayden put it, "In many instances, the individual best suited for the task may be a contractor.” 

 

An important dimension embedded in this question is whether these inherently governmental functions have been handed over to private individuals or corporations.  Senator Feinstein missed this fine point when quizzing D/CIA Hayden.  It's a critical distinction that the Senator needs to understand, that CIA contractors, "green badgers," come in two flavors, namely corporate and individual, the latter is referred to as an “IC” for Independent Contractor.  The corporate green badgers work for a company under contact with the CIA.  IC are directly contracted by the Agency.  (Rare exceptions to these two distinct types do exist--I do know of one case of a "double green" who is a SpecTal green badger at the Agency half time and the other half time he's contracted directly to the Agency as an IC.) 

The Agency has a long history of directly hiring its alumni and other specialized experts individually as ICs, even in very sensitive areas, to make up for staffing shortfalls.  The real shift since 9/11 has been the rise of corporate or industrial contractors who now dominate the Directorate of Intelligence and the National Clandestine Service to such extents that they could not function without them. 

This seems to be what Hayden was explaining:

HAYDEN:  This is not where we would turn to Firm X, Y or Z, and say, This is what we would like you to
accomplish. Go achieve that for us and come back when you're done. That is not what this is.

This is a governmental activity under governmental direction and
control, in which the participants may be both government employees
and contractors, but it's not outsourced.

FEINSTEIN: I understand that.

HAYDEN: OK. Good.

FEINSTEIN: Is not the person that carries out the actual
interrogation, not the doctor or the psychologist or supervisor or
anybody else, but the person that carries out the actual
interrogation a contractor?

HAYDEN: Again, there are times when the individuals involved are
contractors, and there are times when the individuals involved have
been government employees. It's been a mix, ma'am.

 

The interesting questions about the black sites that Senator Feinstein missed involve the extent of corporate involvement.  Senator Feinstein needs to ask the D/CIA:

Are the contractors involved in the enhanced interrogation techniques industrial or individual? 

Are industrial contractors involved in the facilities management of the black sites?

Are industrial contractors involved in black site security and detainee custody?

Have industrial contractors conducted renditions to black sites?  Has their involvement included providing security for the operation and physical handling of the detainee?

And the big question, which companies have performed these services?  (Hint:  Rounding up the usual suspects will not help much this time.)

It's a sad commentary on our government and the press that this important issue was first raised by a work of fiction and a blog and it's still a blog that is asking the most probing questions.

When and if these questions are finally asked and answered, it's then time to probe a little deeper and see if outsourcing the black sites is really a good idea for the US taxpayer.  Then perhaps Senator Feinstein will begin wondering just how cost effective firm fixed-price facilities management contracts can be if the contracts are based on a large surge capacity, but the companies are now only holding a handful of detainees in the sites.  By my napkin math, that would mean the CIA is paying millions for unused "surge" capacity, capacity that's likely to exist largely on paper.

 

The answer to these questions will be very interesting and I am confident they will raise greater questions of accountability, particularly as the public and Congress become aware of the extent of corporate involvement in the covert War on Terror as well as the covert side of the war in Iraq.  The question should be called about how far contractors should be involved in our government's dirty work, particularly activities that many believe are skirting the edge of the Constitution. 

Unfortunately, it's an election year, which means that if the larger questions are actually posed, they are likely to become highly politicized.  Not all corporate involvement is bad.  Some of the corporations that are integral in the CIA's blackest work are doing an excellent job for reasonable profits given the high risk they assume.  Personally, I worry more about the health of the Agency over the long term since it has lost the capacity to perform critical intelligence functions, let alone the ability to train the next generation of public servants to do so.

2008 Terror Day Planner: Download Yours Today

The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) has once again issued the National Counterterrorism Day Planner.  (The calendar is a whopping 24.5 MB, so only click on this link if you have the most robust of broadband connections--or a lot of time on your hands.  The basic content can be found here.)

The calendar itself is an interesting barometer of what the NCTC perceives as the greatest threats to the US in terms of groups, individual terrorists and types of threats.  It's no surprise that Bin Laden once again is the "Terror-mate" of the year, capturing the #1 position.  As expected, al-Zawahiri captured the #2 slot. 

The big upset was #3:  Abu Ayyub al-Masri, a relative new comer who does not even make the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list.  His high ranking is indication of how counterterrorism resources have lost their focus, thanks to Iraq.  Although Al-Masri only has $1 million on his head, this master of the Iraqi  vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED), edged out #4 al-Badawi who carries a $5 million bounty for his role in the USS Cole bombing as well as #5 al-Liby who also has a $5 million reward for his role in the East Africa US embassy bombings.

#6 Atiyah Abd al-Rahman is the other big upset, part of the $1 million club who beat other others in the elite $5 million set.   How did he do it?  One of the Administration's favorite four-letter words:  Iran.  According to the calendar, al-Rahman, "is the al-Qa'ida emissary in Iran...He recruits and facilitates talks with other Islamic groups to operate under al-Qa'ida."  The calendar also warns us that he "should be considered armed and dangerous."  You think?

Rounding out the top 10 are two members of the $5 million level and another newcomer who beat out several other $5 million scumbags.

#7 el-Maati (possible terrorist threats against the US, $5 million dollar man)

#8 al-Bahri (al-Qa'ida trainer, $5 million)

#9 Adam Gadahn (the American who has been in multiple al Qa'ida videos as a recruiter, $1 million.) 

#10 al-Quso (USS Cole attack planner and $5 million tango.)

Interestingly, Mullah Omar the former Taliban leader who carries a $10 million price on his turban, dropped to the #19 slot in October.

And not that politics would ever play into something like this, it is notable that two of the three non-Islamic terrorist groups that are profiled both are thorns in the Turkish government's side:  the PKK and the obscure Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front.  It almost seems as if someone is trying to make nice with the Turks--or at least convince them we share similar counterterrorist concerns.

The technical pages provide counterterrorism hints that, well, if our CT professionals need them, we are seriously f**ked.  The sage advice includes how to spot a "terrorist document:"

1. Physically altered passports 

2.Passports with serial numbers that are watch-listed as lost or stolen 

3.Handwritten documents that are easily forged or altered 

4. Multiple passports used by the same person with variations in the spelling/structure of the name and of date of birth 

5.Ambiguous or contradictory information submitted to consular or border control officials.

6.Absence of supporting documents to corroborate passport information

7. Passports with glued-in photographs

What about pages glued together because they did such a kindergarten glue job?  Then there's that telltale sign of UBL's name crossed out and "John Smith" scrawled over it.

My favorite nugget of wisdom came from a section "Radicalization: Myths and Reality:"

MYTH: There are visible “signs” of radicalization. 

REALITY: Changes in appearance during different stages of radicalization often are the same changes seen in individuals who are not being radicalized...

Beards?  Wrinkles?  Male pattern baldness?

Given that the NCTC is primarily staffed by contractors, it's a safe assumption that this important CT tool was created with heavy contractor involvement.  What I want to know is which contractors were involved in the production of this calendar and how many billable hours did they rack up? 

12. A CIA Contractor Christmas

Day One. Partridge in a pear tree: During the night-shift at the NSA, Booz Allen contractors suddenly have their online Christmas shopping interrupted when Booz Allen proprietary counterterrorist data-mining algorithms note an unusual spike in internet chatter of “persons of interest” using the term “partridge in a pear tree.”  Their NSA Contracting Officer’s Technical Rep is alerted.

 

Day Two. Two turtle doves. At the NSA, SAIC contractors discover a correlation between “partridge in a pear tree” and “two turtle doves.”  The NSA notifies the CIA. CIA analysts who are new to the job due to high Agency turnover do not recognize the turtle-dove/partridge-in-a-pear-tree pattern, but speculate that the combination of phrases indicates that a terrorist plan may have gone operational.  The White House is briefed.

 

Day Three. Three French Hens. Sources on the ground in Paris are unable to corroborate indications of French involvement.  Officers in the National Clandestine Service suspect the French hens are a false-flag and secretly hope that the Russians are back in the game.  Due to strong political pressure from the White House, CIA analysts concede that the Iranian involvement cannot be ruled out.

CIA interrogators at a black site in Burkina Faso send a cable to Headquarters requesting permission to gut slap an al Qaeda detainee who may hold valuable information. 

 

Day Four. Four Calling Birds. At the behest of the Administration, AT&T, MCI, Sprint and Verizon all hand over their calling data to third-party data warehousing companies that do not face the same legal restrictions as the telcos, creating a rendition program of sorts for data. The data warehousers frantically sift through calls.

CIA interrogators at the African black site are frustrated when Headquarters requests more details about potential information that could be acquired from the detainee if he is slapped. They curse the lawyers and compose a response.  A senior contractor overseeing facilities management at the site quips that they should suggest the detainee may volunteer information about five golden rings, but he never thinks the kids running the interrogation would not get the joke.  The 26 year-old  case officer in charge of the interrogation cables Headquarters that the detainee likely holds information about five golden rings.

 

Day Five. Five Golden Rings. New NSA intercepts discover “persons of interest” discussing “Five Golden Rings.”  With this new development, CIA analysts suspect terrorists are plotting to use five dirty bombs to radiate large areas of US metropolitan areas.

The Deputy Director of National Clandestine Service is excited that one of the black site detainee may know about the golden rings. Over the objections of his Assistant General Counsel, the Deputy Director approves the slap.

 

Day Six. Six Geese-A-Laying. A blogger who monitors al Qaeda internet sites and chat rooms contacts the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to alert them to a suspicious discussion among al Qaeda sympathizers about "six geese-a-laying."  The ODNI passes the intel along to the CIA and NSA and as word of the sites spread among Intelligence Community members, the sites are slammed with new visitors from overt beltway bandit IPs in northern Virginia and Anne Arundel county in Maryland.  Suspicious al Qaeda webmasters shut them down.

Meanwhile at the black site, a CIA interrogator trained in enhanced techniques, slaps the al Qaeda detainee. A CACI green badger interpreter with no formal training in interpretation misinterprets the terrorist’s mumblings as "seven swamis."   

The interrogators cable Headquarters with the raw intel and request permission not only to attention shake the detainee, but to apply sleep deprivation techniques, justifying the request with their suspicious they might receive additional information about possible Indian involvement, which may actually turn out to be Iranian since both words start with “I”, end with “n”, and have between six and seven letters.

 

Day Seven. Seven Swans-A-Swimming. NSA contractors Raytheon, Booz Allen and SAIC have all picked up chatter about seven swans a-swimming.  SAIC analysts at the National Counterterrorism Center rack up billable hours trying to reconcile this with CIA intel concerning the seven swamis.  Raytheon analysts at Defense Intelligence insist that the seven swans-a-swimming indicates that seaplanes are bringing the dirty bombs into the country.  With strong pressure from corporate and the DoD which has been pushing for funding for a satellite-based seaplane early warning system proposed by Raytheon, Raytheon green badgers at the ODNI push hard for the seaplane analysis and win out.  It is included in the President’s Daily Brief.

At the Pentagon, with the support of DIA’s General Clapper, the Air Force claims it should be the lead. The Navy argues that since the swans are swimming and not flying, clearly this requirement falls under their command’s area of responsibility. The Marines stand at the ready, prepared to toast and roast, then eat the swans, whether in the air, land or sea.

All the while, CIA case officers at the black site stare at the detainee, waiting on a response to their cable. Junior officers are afraid if they don’t put the detainee to bed soon, they may be accused of torture and face possible legal actions. Just to be on the safe side, they offer a can of Red Bull to the detainee. The Office of Medical Services on-site physician takes the detainee's blood pressure.

 

Day Eight. Eight Maids-A-Milking. The Department of Homeland Security alerts TSA agents to be on the watch for breastfeeding mothers who may have terrorist involvement. It issues alerts to local authorities.

With an attack on the Homeland seemingly imminent, a Fusion Center in Sacramento is used to circumvent various federal privacy laws. In a piecemeal version of Total Information Awareness, federal, local and state databases are fused with private marketing databases. Contractors search through billions of records from phone and credit card and internet search companies to find breastfeeding behavioral patterns suggestive of terrorist involvement. They come up with an additional 226,351 persons of interest in the Golden State. The FBI and local authorities work overtime to investigate all leads. None turn up anything actionable, but the 226,351 persons of interest are added to the TSA’s No-Fly list anyway just as a precaution. As a result to the extra additions to the 600,000 strong list, holiday air travel is snarled.

At the black site, a cable is received approving administration of sleep deprivation. The 26 year-old case officer in charge of the interrogation is relived that his decision to push the envelope with the Red Bull has not endangered his career.  He’s secretly proud he’s carrying on the tradition of the Agency’s bad boys and starts calling himself “Captain Bull,” after the legendary, bat-wielding Beirut interrogator “Captain Crunch.”

 

Day Nine. Nine Ladies Dancing. Fearing more sexual harassment training seminars, analysts throughout the Intelligence Community dismiss intercepts concerning nine ladies dancing and omit all references to them from their reports.

 

Day Ten. Ten Lords-a-Leaping. The same day that the phrase “ten lords-a-leaping” is correlated with the previous NSA intercepts, ten members of the British House of Lords are killed in Baghdad by a suicide bomber. They were on their way to observe the British pullout in Basra under the protection of a Blackwater PSD team. Blackwater claims that it was not allowed to fire upon a rapidly approaching white Toyota containing the explosives because the vehicle did not fit the suicide bomber profile as outlined by the State Department’s acting head of Diplomatic Security.  At a well-attended press conference the Iraqi Minister of Interior charges that Blackwater was negligent and should have known to fire upon the occupants of the suicide vehicle. He holds up a twisted, charred bumper that he claims was from the VBIED.  Plastered to it is the damning yellow bumper sticker: How’s My Driving? Call 1-800-Al-QAEDA.  International headlines claim Blackwater is responsible for the British Lord’s deaths because its operators should’ve correctly identified the VBIED.  Congressman Waxman vows to hold Blackwater accountable for its unforgivable lack of aggression.

Meanwhile at the black site, sleep deprivation is proving to be ineffective and a cable is sent to Headquarters requesting permission to waterboard the detainee.

 

Day Eleven. Eleven Pipers Piping. Outsourced analysts at the CIA and Department of Energy are convinced that the latest NSA intercept, “eleven pipers piping” is a thinly veiled reference to aluminum tubes.  Aluminum tubes could really only be used in a centrifuge enrichment program to develop atomic weapons, they explain.  Under pressure from the Vice President’s office, it’s determined that the earlier information from the CIA’s detainee program about seven swamis was misinterpreted.  It’s now thought the seven swamis were an indirect reference to seven Pakistani nuclear scientists working with Iranians on nuclear weapons.

The black site interrogators receive permission to waterboard the detainee. Before the procedure begins, the lead interrogator collapses from the stress that he will end up in front of Congressional committees and in court for his actions. The detainee is horrified at the sight of his interrogator crying in a fetal position.  He's is convinced something so horrific is about to happen to him, he breaks before they can position the Saran wrap over his mouth to protect him from drowning.  The detainee explains that al Qaeda is now working with Iran to help them with their nuclear weapons development program.  He confirms every suspicion of his interrogators. The black site cables Langley with confirmation that the seven swamis swimming was actually seven Pakistani nuclear scientists assisting Iranian WMD development.

 

Day Twelve. Twelve Drummers Drumming. On the twelfth day of Christmas, the world wakes up to New York Times headlines, "U.S. Says Ahmadinejad Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts.”  On the same day, twelve top administration officials appear on Sunday morning talk shows. 

On Meet the Press Cheney claims that Iran is "trying, through its illicit procurement network, to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium -- specifically, aluminum tubes."  Condi Rice appears on CNN's Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer and warns "we don't want the smoking yule log to be a mushroom cloud." Then she recites the evidence in the reverse order in which it was gathered: "Twelve drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping, ten lords a leaping, nine ladies dancing, eight maids a milking, seven swans a swimming, six geese a laying, five golden rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree.” 

Blitzer pauses for a commercial break.

Meanwhile at the black site, the CIA contractors and interrogators are watching CNN via satellite and realize what they’ve just done. The contractors fire off a cable to their corporate headquarters, explaining what’s happened and their indirect role in the folly. 

But corporate is ecstatic. 

The employees at the black site and everyone even remotely associated with their chain of command in the firm all receive special Christmas bonuses (a reimbursable expense on their contract).  Their company stock in their 401(k)s quadruple due to increased business thanks to the war with Iran.

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Happy Holidays, everyone!  RJH

Note:  I've surprised to see how quickly this is spreading across the internet.  I'm happy for people to post it elsewhere, but please give a link back and/or credit it something like: "by R J Hillhouse who writes the national security blog, The Spy Who Billed Me.  Her most recent book is Outsourced."  Thanks!