(Forge Books) is about the turf wars between the Pentagon and the CIA and the privatization of national security.
Congratulations to the normally publicity-shy private intelligence corporation Abraxas whose CEO and founder Richard H. Helms was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2006 National Winner in the Emerging Category! According to the Abraxas press release on PR wire:
Abraxas provides customers insights and solutions enabling them to mitigate threats and exploit opportunities in their marketplaces.
Gotcha.
In an interview in 2005, Mr. Helms gave a somewhat less vague answer:
We have the largest aggregate of analytical counter-terrorism capabilities, outside of the U.S. Government, and are foremost among competitors in intelligence experience.
The LA Times gave an even clearer description of Abraxas' business recently when it wrote that Abraxas' business involves creating covert identities for CIA non-official cover case officers.
Much of Abraxas' award-winning growth has occurred due to the unique business niche it found-- leasing employees and services back to the CIA to help the Agency make up for personnel shortages caused by too many mid-career CIA employees being lured by higher salaries to work for private intelligence corporations. In case your head is spinning, it should be. Outsourcing at the CIA has worsened the problem that it was supposed to solve. (The earlier-referenced LAT article reported that the poaching of Agency staff had become so severe that the CIA Director had to intervene and stop private companies from recruiting at the CIA's own cafeteria.)
Abraxas does have the reputation of providing an excellent product. And this should come as no surprise given its claim in the press release to have "over 5,000 years of experience"--the same number of years of experience as human civilization itself. Just imagine how high the Abraxan IQ must be when you add together that of their 250+ employees...
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