Spies for Hire: New Online Database of U.S. Intelligence Contractors by Tim Shorrock, Special to CorpWatch November 16th, 2009

CorpWatch Releases Online Database of U.S. Intelligence Contractors Joint project with SPIES FOR HIRE author Tim Shorrock Now available at SPIES FOR HIRE.org SPIES FOR HIRE CorpWatch press release-FIN.pdf For immediate release November 16, 2009 WASHINGTON – Starting today, journalists, activists, and corporate researchers will be able to use the Internet site SpiesForHire.org to track the nation’s most important intelligence contractors. Increasingly, secret drone attacks in Pakistan, CIA prisons in Guantanamo, and domestic surveillance of American citizens, have drawn public scrutiny to U.S. intelligence. These and other policies have triggered calls for criminal investigations and congressional commissions to investigate possible abuses in the post-9/11 “war on terror.” But there's a big piece missing from the national debate about spying: the role of private intelligence contractors. After journalist Tim Shorrock’s 2008 investigation, U.S. officials confirmed that 70 percent of the U.S. intelligence budget goes directly to private companies working under contract to the CIA, the NSA, and other agencies. With the U.S. intelligence budget estimated at $60 billion a year, the outsourced business of intelligence is a $45 billion annual industry. To help the public and media understand this new phenomenon, CorpWatch is joining today with Shorrock, the first journalist to blow the whistle on the privatization of U.S. intelligence, to create a groundbreaking database focusing on the dozens of corporations that provide classified intelligence services to the United States government. This database expands on Shorrock’s 2008 book, SPIES FOR HIRE: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. SpiesForHire.org’s detailed descriptions and histories of the companies that make up this new class of mercenaries will make it your guide to the new U.S. Intelligence-Industrial Complex. Included are defense giants such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon; lesser-known but still influential companies such as Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC, and CACI International; and dozens of Beltway Bandits that have set up shop in D.C. and environs to feed the government's insatiable appetite for contract intelligence.