Outsourcing Intelligence

At this point, I'd be hard pressed to think of another way this administration could both sabotage national security and give corporate America another fat handout. But the GOP has no such problems.

These positions and thousands like them are part of a growing trend at the Pentagon to contract out intelligence jobs that were formerly done primarily by service personnel and civil service employees.

But, by using contract employees, government agencies lose control over those doing this sensitive work and an element of profit is inserted into what is being done. Also, as investigations have revealed, politics and corruption may be introduced into the process.

The office of Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte has quietly begun to study the contracting issue because "it already is a problem," a senior intelligence official said in a recent interview.

The thing about this issue is that anyone reading the article will come to the glaringly obvious conclusion in about 0.4 seconds: paying people for producing information that suits your agenda isn't how national security works.

Are the neo-fascists so braindead that they don't recall Soviet-era informing, where people were rewarded by the government for turning in their friends and family? A system like this doesn't lead to solid prosecutions of known criminals, but costly witch hunts and vendettas.

Are they so obsessed with the 'free market' (which they gladly rig to help out donors) that they want intelligence gatherers whose motive is the bottom line instead of the good of the nation?

Apparently so.