New York TIMES / June 9, 2013

Leaker’s Employer Became Wealthy by Maintaining Government Secrets

By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM and ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON — Edward J. Snowden’s employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, has
become one of the largest and most profitable corporations in the
United States almost exclusively by serving a single client: the
government of the United States.

Over the last decade, much of the company’s growth has come from
selling expertise, technology and manpower to the National Security
Agency and other federal intelligence agencies. Booz Allen earned $1.3
billion, 23 percent of the company’s total revenue, from intelligence
work during its most recent fiscal year.

The government has sharply increased spending on high-tech
intelligence gathering since 2001, and both the Bush and Obama
administrations have chosen to rely on private contractors like Booz
Allen for much of the resulting work.

Thousands of people formerly employed by the government, and still
approved to deal with classified information, now do essentially the
same work for private companies. Mr. Snowden, who revealed on Sunday
that he provided the recent leak of national security documents, is
among them.

As evidence of the company’s close relationship with government, the
Obama administration’s chief intelligence official, James R. Clapper
Jr., is a former Booz Allen executive. The official who held that post
in the Bush administration, John M. McConnell, now works for Booz
Allen. [surprise!!]

“The national security apparatus has been more and more privatized and
turned over to contractors,” said Danielle Brian, the executive
director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group
that studies federal government contracting. “This is something the
public is largely unaware of, how more than a million private
contractors are cleared to handle highly sensitive matters.”

It has gone so far, Ms. Brian said, that even the process of granting
security clearances is often handled by contractors, allowing
companies to grant government security clearances to private sector
employees.

Companies like Booz Allen, Lockheed Martin and the Computer Sciences
Corporation also engage directly in gathering information and
providing analysis and advice to government officials. Booz Allen
employees work inside the facilities at the N.S.A., among the most
secretive of the intelligence agencies. The company also has several
office buildings near the agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Md.

The company employs about 25,000 people, almost half of whom hold top
secret security clearances, providing “access to information that
would cause ‘exceptionally grave damage’ to national security if
disclosed to the public,” according to a company securities filing.

In January, Booz Allen announced that it was starting work on a new
contract worth perhaps as much as $5.6 billion over five years to
provide intelligence analysis services to the Defense Department.
Under the deal, Booz Allen employees are being assigned to help
military and national security policy makers, the company said. ....

more at 
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/10/us/booz-allen-grew-rich-on-government-contracts.html

-- 
Jim Devine /  "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your
own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
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