Book 'Spies for Hire' exposes the underbelly of intelligence

ByABC News
May 26, 2008, 10:54 PM

— -- U.S. government agencies that collect "intelligence" (the word carries an ironic ring because so much of the information is outdated or incorrect) about the nation's alleged enemies employ tens of thousands of people.

Those same agencies, with acronyms such as CIA, NSA (National Security Agency) and NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) spend billions on salaries, travel, buildings and equipment. Despite all those resources, the agencies spend far more on private contractors, who carry out large chunks of the spying without strict supervision.

Freelance investigative journalist Tim Shorrock has successfully tackled a topic carrying a high degree of difficulty: exposing how private corporations employ former high-ranking federal government and military officials to generate huge profits from secret contracts with the CIA, NSA and various baronies in the Defense Department.

In Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing, Shorrock penetrates the covert world of corporations such as CACI International, ManTech International and Booz Allen Hamilton, while simultaneously penetrating the covert world of government agencies spending billions of taxpayer dollars unaccountably.

Dozens of previous books by other authors have examined the failures of information collection and analysis, especially leading up to and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Shorrock breaks new dirt by focusing on the business of intelligence, the bottom line in dollars at the private corporations that win government contracts, often without competitive bidding or even public disclosure after the ink is dry.

Gaining entry into conventions of defense contractors usually closed to journalists, sitting through hearings by congressional committees whose members are regularly stonewalled by the government agencies they are supposed to oversee, reading through partially declassified documents, Shorrock does a remarkable job of learning as much as he does.

At some junctures, the book is difficult to read because it is peppered with acronyms, descriptions of highly technical hardware and a huge number of unfamiliar corporate names. It helps that Shorrock's writing style is clear, and his passionate case for open government is inspiring. It also helps that from time to time Shorrock intersperses anecdotes involving real people to break up the arduous study of statistics and technospeak.