{"id":47940,"date":"2014-09-29T12:00:10","date_gmt":"2014-09-29T11:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=47940"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:29:43","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:29:43","slug":"who-profits-from-our-new-war-inside-nsa-and-private-contractors-secret-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/09\/who-profits-from-our-new-war-inside-nsa-and-private-contractors-secret-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Profits from Our New War? Inside NSA and Private Contractors\u2019 Secret Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

A massive war operation is being waged to track and kill ISIS — and it’s a lot more than cruise missiles.<\/em><\/p>\n

A massive, $7.2 billion Army intelligence contract signed just 10 days ago underscores the central role to be played by the National Security Agency and its army of private contractors in the unfolding air war being carried out by the United States and its Gulf States allies against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n

That war was greatly expanded Monday night when U.S. forces launched a \u201cmix of fighter, bomber, remotely-piloted aircraft and Tomahawk\u201d cruise missiles against ISIS targets in Syria. The Central Command said the strikes were led by the United States with support from Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n

INSCOM\u2019s \u201cglobal intelligence support\u201d contract will place the contractors at the center of this fight. It was unveiled on Sept. 12 by the U.S. Army\u2019s Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), one of the largest military units that collects signals intelligence for the NSA.<\/p>\n

Under its terms, 21 companies, led by Booz Allen Hamilton, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, will compete over the next five years to provide \u201cfully integrated intelligence, security and information operations\u201d in Afghanistan and \u201cfuture contingency operations\u201d around the world.<\/p>\n

The NSA is best-known to Americans for its awesome power to spy on the electronic communications of governments and populations around the world. But it is also a critical part of the Pentagon chain of command, particularly during wartime, and collects most of its intercepted communications from a global web of listening posts and military intelligence units operated by INSCOM and the other armed services.<\/p>\n

INSCOM<\/a>,\u00a0which was created in 1978, has been at the cusp of U.S. policy in the wars on terror from the initial campaign against the Taliban in the fall of 2001 to the latest war against ISIS.\u00a0\u00a0Much of the top-secret work under the new INSCOM contract will take place at NSA\u2019s networks of listening posts, and will \u201csupport complex, classified, compartmented, and\/or unique ground-based and airborne reconnaissance and electronic intelligence collection and production systems,\u201d the Pentagon said.<\/p>\n

\u201cArmy INSCOM supports NSA very heavily,\u201d Tony Shaffer, a former Army intelligence officer, who worked at the command from 1991 to 1995, told Salon. While he was stationed in Afghanistan after the 9\/11 attacks, Shaffer said, \u201cEvery mission I ran outside the wire was pretty much supported by INSCOM, which is NSA\u2019s ground collector.\u201d Shaffer wrote about his experiences in the book \u201cOperation Dark Heart.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

According to contract documents<\/a> available on INSCOM\u2019s website, INSCOM\u2019s contractors will be based at the NSA\u2019s massive surveillance station at Fort Gordon, Georgia, where thousands of analysts monitor and listen in on cellphone calls and emails flowing out of the Middle East, as well as listening stations in Fort Bragg, San Antonio, Hawaii, Colorado, Germany and South Korea.<\/p>\n

INSCOM announced the global intelligence contract two days after President Obama, in a speech to the nation, essentially declared war on ISIS in Iraq and Syria and outlined a campaign of airstrikes and combat actions to \u201cdegrade and ultimately destroy\u201d the terrorist group.<\/p>\n

Key to the war will be battlefield intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, known by its military acronym ISR,\u00a0that is fed to U.S. pilots, drones, special forces operators and military advisers to track and kill ISIS fighters and their allies. Signals intelligence, a key component of ISR, is analyzed by the NSA and combined with imagery and maps provided by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). Together, NSA signals and NGA imagery provide the \u201cears and eyes\u201d that allow pilots and soldiers to find their targets and blow them up.<\/p>\n

The INSCOM contract will provide the facilities and logistics support \u201cfor ground and air-based ISR systems\u201d and provide operational support to both NSA and the NGA, the command said.<\/p>\n

The top contractors on the INSCOM contract are already involved in the war. Lockheed Martin, for example, makes the Hellfire missiles that are used extensively in U.S. drone strikes (in 2013, it also won a three-year contract to train INSCOM\u2019S \u201cArmy intelligence soldiers\u201d in \u201canalytical and operational disciplines\u201d). Northrop Grumman makes the Global Hawk surveillance drone, one of the most formidable weapons in the U.S. arsenal. Both companies have large intelligence units.<\/p>\n

The role of contractors at the command is spelled out by BAE Systems, which has its own INSCOM website. \u201cWe enhance the U.S. Army\u2019s ability to detect, decide, and act on vital intelligence in real-time,\u201d BAE says<\/a>. \u201cFrom Intelligence Analysis to Persistent Surveillance, BAE Systems is proud to provide essential and sustainable end-to-end solutions and support to the warfighter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because of its direct role in warfare, INSCOM has become the training ground for many top NSA officials and was central to the career of Army Gen. Keith Alexander, who retired this year as the longest-serving NSA director in U.S. history.<\/p>\n

Alexander, who recently started his own contracting company called IronNet Cybersecurity, came to NSA directly from INSCOM, which he commanded at the time of the 9\/11 attacks on New York and Washington. It was from INSCOM that he and then NSA director Michael J. Hayden ordered the warrantless surveillance of U.S. persons and their email and Internet communications that now stands as one of the most controversial practices of America\u2019s post-9\/11 intelligence system.<\/p>\n

INSCOM \u201cis where Alexander grew up,\u201d Tom Drake, who worked as a senior executive at NSA for seven years before becoming a whistle-blower<\/a>, told Salon. \u201cThat\u2019s where he got his contractor ties.\u201d In fact, INSCOM happens to be one of the most contracted units of the NSA\u2019s SIGINT empire, and has long been a business driver of the intelligence industrial complex.<\/p>\n

As I first reported<\/a> in\u00a0Salon\u00a0in 2007\u00a0and later chronicled in my book \u201cSpies for Hire,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>70 percent of the U.S. intelligence budget is spent on private contractors. Much of this spending \u2013 estimated at around $70 billion a year \u2013 winds up at the NSA, where SIGINT operations, particularly for collection and analysis, were heavily outsourced at the turn of the century.<\/p>\n

\u201cHayden started the privatization, but it was really Alexander who built it,\u201d said Drake.<\/p>\n

Alexander\u2019s ties with INSCOM are extensive. One of the winning bidders on the new INSCOM contract is Sotera Defense Solutions<\/a>. Russell Richardson, its former CEO and a former INSCOM commander, is now one of Alexander\u2019s partners at IronNet and, under Alexander\u2019s command of INSCOM, was its \u201cchief architect.\u201d Before that, Richardson was a vice president of NSA contractor SAIC, where he ran INSCOM\u2019s so-called Information Dominance Center.<\/p>\n

INSCOM\u2019s ties with Booz Allen, the company that employed Edward Snowden at its top secret site in Hawaii, are equally close. Robert Noonan, who directs the company\u2019s \u201cmilitary intelligence account,\u201d served for 35 years in the military, including a stint as INSCOM\u2019s commanding general and the US Army\u2019s deputy chief of staff for intelligence. Roberto Andujar, the INSCOM contract leader at Invertix Corp., another contract winner, once served as the command\u2019s chief information officer (CIO).<\/p>\n

The revolving door between INSCOM and its contractors bothers Shaffer. \u201cIt\u2019s a cash-and-carry program,\u201d he said. \u201cYou go in there and get the knowledge, then you carry it out and get cash.\u201d<\/p>\n

The system is corrupted by the close relationships between the companies and their agencies, said Drake, who as a whistle-blower was nearly sent to prison for exposing the waste, fraud and abuse in a contracted program at the NSA that ended up losing over $7 billion \u2013 ironically the same amount as the INSCOM contract.<\/p>\n

The contractors on the INSCOM global contract will be involved at the highest levels of U.S. intelligence. According to the INSCOM documents, all contractors will be required to have security clearances to allow them to access highly classified special compartmented information and top secret intelligence networks. One of those networks, the documents say, is NSA\u2019s special network for SIGINT collection called NSANet.<\/p>\n

Apparently in response to Snowden\u2019s leaks of documents he found on NSANet, the INSCOM contract documents include warnings that contractors must notify Army security officials of \u201cany change in status of SCI-accessed personnel: marriage, divorce, name change, etc.,\u201d and inform them \u201cwithin 24 hours of when they become aware of derogatory information (arrests, security incidents, etc.).\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pentagon press office referred all calls on the contract to INSCOM. The command did not comment by press time.<\/p>\n

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has warned against any proposed changes to NSA procedures that could compromise its role in warfare. \u201cOur combatant commanders, our military, our individual men and women who are charged with the security of this country \u2013 they are as big of users and customers [of NSA-produced data] as anyone,\u201d he said last December in response to proposals from a White House committee reviewing NSA policy.<\/p>\n

__________________________<\/p>\n

Tim Shorrock<\/a> is the author of <\/em>Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 salon.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A massive war operation is being waged to track and kill ISIS — and it’s a lot more than cruise missiles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47940\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}