Booz-Allen the most profitable spying organization in the world

Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), focused more and more on government work. In 2008 it split off its less lucrative commercial consulting arm—under the name Booz & Co.—and became a pure government contractor, publicly traded and majority-owned by private equity firm Carlyle Group (CG). In the fiscal year ended in March 2013, Booz Allen Hamilton reported $5.76 billion in revenue, 99 percent of which came from government contracts, and $219 million in net income. Almost a quarter of its revenue—$1.3 billion—was from major U.S. intelligence agencies. Along with competitors such as Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), CACI, and BAE Systems (BAESY), the McLean (Va.)-based firm is a prime beneficiary of an explosion in government spending on intelligence contractors over the past decade. About 70 percent of the 2013 U.S. intelligence budget is contracted out, according to a Bloomberg Industries analysis; the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says almost a fifth of intelligence personnel work in the private sector.

It’s safe to say that most Americans, if they’d heard of Booz Allen at all, had no idea how huge a role it plays in the U.S. intelligence infrastructure. They do now. On June 9, a 29-year-old Booz Allen computer technician, Edward Snowden, revealed himself to be the source of news stories showing the extent of phone and Internet eavesdropping by the National Security Agency. Snowden leaked classified documents he loaded onto a thumb drive while working for Booz Allen at an NSA listening post in Hawaii, and he’s promised to leak many more. After fleeing to Hong Kong, he’s been in hiding. (He didn’t respond to a request for comment relayed by an intermediary.)

The attention has been bad for Booz Allen’s stock, which fell more than 4 percent the morning after Snowden went public and still hasn’t recovered. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Select Committee on Intelligence, has called for a reexamination of the role of private contractors in intelligence work and announced she’ll seek to restrict their access to classified information. Booz Allen declined to comment on Snowden beyond its initial public statement announcing his termination.

GRAPHIC: Chart: How Booz Allen Hamilton Swallowed Washington  The firm has long kept a low profile—with the federal government as practically its sole client, there’s no need for publicity. It does little, if any, lobbying. Its ability to win contracts is ensured by the roster of intelligence community heavyweights who work there. The director of national intelligence, James Clapper—President Obama’s top intelligence adviser—is a former Booz Allen executive. The firm’s vice chairman, Mike McConnell, was President George W. Bush’s director of national intelligence and, before that, director of the NSA. Of Booz Allen’s 25,000 employees, 76 percent have classified clearances, and almost half have top-secret clearances. In a 2003 speech, Joan Dempsey, a former CIA deputy director, referred to Booz Allen as the “shadow IC” (for intelligence community) because of the profusion of “former secretaries of this and directors of that,” according to a 2008 book, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. Today Dempsey works for Booz Allen.

The large-scale hiring of intelligence contractors can be traced directly to Sept. 11. The al-Qaeda attacks triggered a bipartisan chorus on Capitol Hill for more and better intelligence—and correspondingly massive increases in the federal budget to pay for it. There’s plenty of evidence that the effort has disrupted terrorist plots. It has also created a lot more contractor work. The intelligence community had been shrinking throughout the 1990s; with the Soviet Union gone, intelligence didn’t seem as important to politicians, and there were budget cuts and a wave of retirements at the CIA, NSA, and DIA. In late 2001 the only way to get enough experienced people to meet demand was with contractors, many of them the same experts the government had trained decades before and then let go. “We were able to expand very, very quickly by using contract personnel,” said Ronald Sanders, then ODNI’s associate director for human capital, in a 2008 call with reporters. “They were able to come in quickly and perform the mission even as we were busy recovering the IC’s military and civilian workforce.”
Contractors such as Booz Allen were seen as a temporary measure—surge capacity—to give the government time to hire and train its own employees. Michael Brown, a retired rear admiral, tells about trying to develop the Navy’s cyberwarfare programs in 2001. None of his personnel were cybersecurity experts, so he trained Navy linguists—traditionally considered some of the brainier sailors—for the job. “The Navy was able to use contractors to augment those trainees while it developed a permanent program,” Brown says. He himself now works for RSA Security (EMC), a Bedford (Mass.) cybersecurity company that does a lot of business with the government.

As the government intelligence workforce has grown, however, contractor head count hasn’t returned to pre-Sept. 11 levels. In the 2008 interview, Sanders said only 5 percent of contractors working for various intelligence agencies were for “surge requirements.” In a report published this March, the Senate intelligence committee complained that “some elements of the IC have been hiring additional contractors after they have converted or otherwise removed other contractors, resulting in an overall workforce that continues to grow.” The ODNI’s public affairs office disputes this, saying “core contractor personnel” has been cut by 36 percent since 2007.

According to the ODNI, a typical contractor employee costs $207,000 a year, while a government counterpart costs $125,000, including benefits and pension. One of the most notorious projects was the NSA’s Trailblazer. Intended as an advanced program to sort and analyze the vast volume of phone and Web traffic that the NSA collects hourly, Trailblazer was originally set to cost $280 million and take 26 months. Booz Allen was part of a five-company consortium working on the project. (SAIC was the lead contractor.) “In Trailblazer, NSA is capturing the best of industry technology and experience to further their mission,” Booz Allen Vice President Marty Hill said in a 2002 press release. In 2006, when the program shut down, it had failed to meet any of its goals, and its cost had run into the billions of dollars. An NSA inspector general report found “excessive labor rates for contractor personnel,” without naming the contractors. Several NSA employees who denounced the waste were fired; one, a senior executive named Thomas Andrews Drake, was charged under the Espionage Act after he spoke to a reporter. (The charges were eventually dropped.)

A U.S. Department of Homeland Security computer systems contract awarded to Booz Allen around the same time had similar issues. Over the course of three years, costs exploded from the original $2 million to $124 million, in large part, auditors at the Government Accountability Office would later report, because of poor planning and oversight. But even when the problems came to light, as the Washington Post reported, DHS continued to renew the contract and even give Booz Allen new ones, because the agency determined it couldn’t build, or even run, the system on its own.
Booz Allen spokesman James Fisher and NSA spokeswoman Vaneé Vines both declined to comment on Trailblazer. (Former NSA Director Michael Hayden has since said publicly that the project failed because the spy agency’s plan for it was unrealistic.) Fisher also declined to comment on the DHS contract; Peter Boogaard, a spokesman for that agency, did not immediately return a call for comment.

Booz Allen and its competitors are able to keep landing contracts and keep growing, critics charge, not because their expertise is irreplaceable but because their Rolodexes are. Name a retired senior official from the NSA or the CIA or the various military intelligence branches, and there’s a good chance he works for a contractor—most likely Booz Allen. Name a senior intelligence official serving in the government, and there’s a good chance he used to work for Booz Allen. (ODNI’s Sanders, who made the case for contractors, is now a vice president at the firm, which declined to make him available for an interview.) McConnell and others at Booz Allen are quick to point out that the contracting process has safeguards and oversight built in and that it has matured since the frenzied years just after Sept. 11. At the same time, the firm’s tendency to scoop up—and lavishly pay—high-ranking intelligence officers once they retire suggests the value it places on their address books and in having their successors inside government consider Booz Allen as part of their own retirement plans.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-20/booz-allen-the-worlds-most-profitable-spy-organization

Booz Allen Hamilton: Far worse than Blackwater:

Booz Allen Hamilton is a government contractor, with 99% of its revenue coming from the US government. Not only does it receive money from the NSA, but also the US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, US Marine Corps, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and ... the IRS. In addition, Booz Allen is heavily connected to the CIA.

Among the individuals involved in running the company, we have:

James Clapper - current Director of National Intelligence (DNI), head of NSA, the man who lied to Congress about the fact that NSA is actively spying on Americans, is a former executive

Mike McConnell - a current executive of the company, had Clapper's job (DNI) during George W. Bush's administration (keep it in the family, eh?) -- he worked for Booz Allen before Bush, then worked for Bush, then back to Booz Allen after Bush

James Woolsey - former CIA Director, current executive (see Jan Helfeld's interview of Mr. Woolsey where it becomes clear that Woolsey has no interest in discussing principles, only war)

Melissa Hathaway - former executive, also worked for McConnell during the Bush administration.

Ian Brzezinski - former executive, son of Zbigniew Brzezinski, co-founder of the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller, central figure in the NWO crowd, and mastermind of Operation Cyclone

Dov Zakheim - this character is ... unbelievable:

1993 - His company, System Planning Corporation, had a subsidiary called Tridata Corporation, which was the company that "oversaw" the investigation of the 1993 WTC bombing

2000 - Part of the neocon Project for a New American Century, he is co-author of "Rebuilding America's Defenses," in which he is credited with the infamous line, "... some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."2001 - He is appointed Comptroller of the Pentagon, in which $2.3 trillion promptly goes "missing"

2001 - Attack on 9/11 occurs; some people are suspicious of his connections, since his company, SPC, in involved in flight systems capable of remote controlling aircraft, and because he was the guy who leased 32 Boeing 767 aircraft to McDill Air Force Base (2 of the 9/11 aircraft were 767's), and McDill is close to Elgin AFB, which was the location that was to be used if Operation Northwoods had gone live

2004 - Goes to work for Booz Allen Hamilton.

2012 - Advisor on Middle East policy for Mitt Romney campaign (gee ... ya think Romney would have gone to war in the Middle East???)

Booz Allen Hamilton is owned by the Carlyle Group.

One of the big investors in the Carlyle Group was the Bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia. Yeah ... THAT Bin Laden family. And instrumental in being the "go between" for Carlyle/Bin Laden was a guy by the name of George H. W. Bush. Maybe you've heard of him.

The CEO of the Carlyle Group (remember, they OWN Booz Allen Hamilton) is Frank Carlucci. Mr. Carlucci has quite a resume:

Nixon Administration - Director of the Office for Economic Opportunity (the "War on Poverty" -- and a great place to decide who gets government contracts)

Carter Administration - Deputy Director of the CIA

Reagan Administration - National Security Advisor and Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld is Carlucci's protoge)

He is or has been with the Project for a New American Century and a member of the Board of Trustees for the RAND Corporation, a CIA front that develops policies that the Military Industrial Complex then carries out.

You want a NWO guy? Carlucci is your man. And CEO of Carlyle Group, owner of Booz Allen Hamilton, spying on YOU.

At RAND, his specialty was Middle East policy. What do you know? That was also the specialty of Graham Fuller, CIA guy who was the father-in-law of Ruslan Tsarni, uncle of Tamarlan Tsarnev, suspected Boston bomber.
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/06/booz-allen-hamilton-far-worse-than.html#more

Snowden sought Booz Allen job to gather evidence on NSA surveillance:

Edward Snowden secured a job with a US government contractor for one reason alone - to obtain evidence of Washington's cyberspying networks, the South China Morning Post can reveal.

For the first time, Snowden has admitted he sought a position at Booz Allen Hamilton so he could collect proof about the US National Security Agency's secret surveillance programmes ahead of planned leaks to the media.

"My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked," he told the Post on June 12. "That is why I accepted that position about three months ago."

During a live global online chat last week, Snowden also stated he took pay cuts "in the course of pursuing specific work". He said: "Booz was not the most I've been paid."

In his interview with the Post, Snowden divulged information that he claimed showed hacking by the NSA into computers in Hong Kong and the mainland.

"I did not release them earlier because I don't want to simply dump huge amounts of documents without regard to their content," he said.

"I have to screen everything before releasing it to journalists."

Asked if he specifically went to Booz Allen Hamilton to gather evidence of surveillance, he replied: "Correct on Booz."

The documents he divulged to the Post were obtained at Booz Allen Hamilton in April, he said. He intends to leak more of those documents later.

"If I have time to go through this information, I would like to make it available to journalists in each country to make their own assessment, independent of my bias, as to whether or not the knowledge of US network operations against their people should be published."

Two days after Snowden broke cover in Hong Kong as the source of the NSA leaks, Booz Allen Hamilton sacked him.
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1268209/snowden-sought-booz-allen-job-gather-evidence-nsa-surveillance