Unintelligence in Federal Intelligence Agencies

The Bush administration has found yet another way to waste taxpayer money while providing huge sums to private contractors. According to a survey of activities in 2007 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, about a third of the federal professional intelligence workforce now consists of contractors, mostly in the Washington, DC area.

Out of a total workforce of about 100,000 people some 37,000 are private employees that cost the government (we taxpayers) about $207,000 annually, compared with about $125,000 for civilian federal employee’s salaries and benefits.

Contractors have lured people with important skills with higher salaries and benefits and have also siphoned off federal employees. With this outsourcing, taxpayers are the losers.

What does this $82,000 worker cost gap amount to yearly? About $3 billion annually is being provided to private contractor businesses that could be avoided by hiring government employees. This is incredible Bush administration fiscal insanity, but totally consistent with how Republicans changed their views on the federal government.

In the past, Republicans used to focus on shrinking the federal government and its spending. But then it shifted because they saw how increased federal spending could be used to increase revenues to the corporate sector, even though this requires incredible deficit spending, borrowing and costly debt. What has happened in the intelligence sector has also happened in the defense area. In other words, huge numbers of contractors perform in Iraq in addition to our military personnel.

To be clear, all these figures do not include workers such as food-service employees or contract guards, but only those actually performing or assisting intelligence functions.