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News :: Miscellaneous |
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The CIA's Contract Employees |
Current rating: 0 |
by Commandante Lucas
(No verified email address) |
15 May 2001
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Since these folks have showed up in the news lately in connection with the shooting down of a missionary plane in Peru that killed a woman and her daughter with one shot, I thought you might want to know more about the not-officially CIA people that complicate our lives. The comments about use by the CIA of contract employees in penetrating academia and the Peace Corps is particularly interesting. |
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See also:
http://www.spiescafe.com/stuff/stuff010501.htm
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Article Part 1: The Question |
by Commandante Lucas
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: -1
15 May 2001
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From Spies Cafe’s John Macartney:
CIA CONTRACT EMPLOYEES?
Last week, I sent the question below to three intelligence discussion groups on the internet and received some enlightening answers. Nevertheless, the whole subject of CIA contractors still seem a bit confusing. Does anyone else want to contribute to this?
MY QUESTION (last week): CONTRACT EMPLOYEES?
The aircrew of the (USAF owned?) jet, a Cessna Citation, that provided radar information that led the AT-37B to the missionaries' float plane were, according to all press reports, "CIA contract employees."
Likewise, according to press, the individual that made the unfortunate misidentification 2 years ago of the Chinese Embassy's building in Belgrade was also a "CIA contract employee." In that case, an analyst (and retired US Army officer) who worked at Langley in a CIA non-proliferation office. (NY Times, 11Apr99)
Over the years, I have seen many other references in press to CIA contract employees -- some serving at Langley, others, like the aircrew, abroad. Also, in some press reports, CIA contract employees are foreigners. The whole category of "CIA contract employees" prompts my post.
SO WHAT IS THE STATUS OF CIA CONTRACT EMPLOYEES?
We can all understand contractors who manufacture and sell sensors, for example, or maintain exotic software for the Agency, or fix a leaky roof. But in many cases these "CIA contract employees" seem to be doing the real business of collecting or analyzing intelligence.
SO MY QUESTIONS?
- What is the status of CIA contract employees?
- Do many of them work full time?
- Do some stay on for a career?
- Do they number in the hundreds, or the thousands?
- Do contract employees sometimes move into career positions?
- Also, I am aware that retired CIA acquaintances of mine, including former case officers, still work for the Agency from time to time as, I suppose, retired annuitants. Is their status then "CIA contract employee"?
John Macartney
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Article Part 2: The Answers |
by Commandante Lucas
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
15 May 2001
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BELOW ARE SOME ANSWERS I GOT BACK.
As you can see, addressing this matter reminds one of the parable about blind men groping an elephant trying to ascertain what it is. There seems to be an infinite variety of CIA contract arrangements.
1) John -- I'm in the process of becoming a "CIA contract employee" myself, so perhaps I can shed some light on this. Many "beltway bandit" consulting firms, such as SAIC, where I work, do contract work for CIA. We go through the full security process (which is where I'm at, waiting for my investigation/adjudication to be completed), then get a green agency badge which denotes we have "staff-like access." We largely work full-time, and our retirement status is conferred by the company we work for, not CIA.
My guess is that contract employees number well into the thousands, much like NRO, which would collapse and cease functioning were it not for their contractor base.
Retired CIA employees who go back to work for the agency are categorized differently, I think they're called "special consultants" or something like that. Hope this helps.
--John Vanore [now at SAIC, a Washington consulting firm, Vanore was a Navy intelligence officer and is still in the Navy reserves. --jdmac]
2) Hello, I am not CIA and never have been, but I turned down a contract offer last month. But judging on the experience of friends and associates, many contract employees are long term "permanent" workers who are on a different remuneration package.
A contract employee may work with full timers and do the same job. Contract employees have more flexibility. At least one fellow seemed to have floated back and forth between the Peace Corps and working as a CIA contract employee. It was hard to tell which of his two masters he served.
Contract employees can do things that employees can not. Recall Don Wilber who had the big write up in the New York Times in the last year. Don was a contract employee for 20 to 30 years. Don maintained non agency pursuits including other Non Government consulting clients, numerous book deals, teaching, an interest in a magazine, and other things that would have been more difficult if he was a full timer. He was certainly a career contract employee.
I suspect contract employees number in the thousands but certainly not all fit into the role of "spy". As for full timers going back in, I suspect it is on contract -- I cannot imagine how else they could but someone else will have to answer.
Best wishes, --Barry O'Connell [O'Connell is an author and Washington consultant and specialist on Southwest Asia; currently he is with the State Dept's Foreign Service Institute. --jdmac]
- 3) John: I won't address CIA contract employees insofar as they relate to the DDI, CIA's analytical arm. I think they may be individual contractors, or companies, universities, inter alia, because as you noted, we can all understand that genre: Some are green-badged and come and go at will, others work "off-campus" in their own venue.
Let me focus on the DDO's clandestine service instead. A key point to keep in mind is that the CIA evolved from the OSS's old boy net, through the CIG, to the 1947 vintage CIA, on the basis of "trust" ... that has always been the key word at the Agency. Trust.
Those who are born (historically, there have been many of family units in the agency ... fathers, sons, wives) or bred (case officers who come up through the Camp Perry farm schools, the two groups being non-exclusive, evolve into positions of increasingly greater "trust", with greater access to the inner secrets.
DDO personnel see themselves as the President's men, capable of rapid response, in whatever manner may be deemed appropriate. Thus, if an indigenous contractor -- a pilot, mechanic, logistics operator, photographer, street monitor -- is the best man for a certain job, Chiefs of Station and Case Officers have the authority and substantial funds in the local currency to enter into contracts with these individuals, or with companies (I have seen safe drawers entirely filled with banknotes in a local currency, all in high denomination bills). Each station has a "finance officer" who tracks expenditures and prevents abuses.
If a contract asset is going to have "enhanced access", or a more in-depth need to know, or is going to be in a position which incurs risk to himself or others, a US citizen might be used in lieu of a "local".
Thus, in the field, one sees a hierarchy of "trust", risk and utility:
Case officers have full access to almost all aspects of a particular case, and are fully trusted with the secret aspects.
Lower on the list would be retired annuitants who might be brought onboard to work a particular area, a certain language (or combination of languages), to handle an individual agent (possibly one the retiree recruited while he/she was active), or for a particular problem in which the annuitant is an expert.
Next down the hierarchy would be US citizen contractors, such as the pilots from the old Civil Air Transport, Southern Air, China Air, and a dozen other such entities. These have often been former military personnel.
Still lower on the hierarchy would be "locals" who might be entrusted as drivers, logistics, maintenance, or courier personnel who support a local station. And an agent such as Oleg Penkovsky could be viewed as a "contract employee", since an agreement may have been made to exfiltrate Oleg and his family if and when necessary, something which was not possible when the time arose to do so.
Some contract assets remain employed for decades, and receive pensions. Most are hired through, or at least paid, by intermediaries so that no direct interface with Agency personnel is required. The duration and closeness of their relationship to the Agency is directed related to their value, the degree to which trust exists, the element of risk involved in their work, and the Agency's needs at the time.
In general, once a member of the family, always a member of the family, and former assets may be contacted after a hiatus in employment and be asked to assist with a special task at any time. The DDO has the responsibility, the authority, and the ability to do whatever is required to get the job done, so the nature of the "contracts" effected vary enormously.
Handing somebody a few thousand dollars in local currency for a bit of information, is, in effect, a contract, and it may be a one-time thing. Paying a CIA retiree a stipend, in addition to his retirement pay, for aperiodic collection against targets of opportunity, where the former employee may run a restaurant in a third world nation (possibly set up with the Agency's help) is a contract effort. Training and paying a team of indigenous, border crossing infiltrators to place a tap in a telecommunications facility may be a contract effort.
[this by a former CIA contractor]
4) CONGRESS ALSO HAS QUESTIONS ABOUT CIA CONTRACT EMPLOYEES, and the matter may soon be the subject of hearings: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/28/world/28PLAN.html
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