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Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A.

nytimes.com

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Re: Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A.

#21

Post by joe_the_user »

zokier wrote: post #18
joe_the_user wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government has a terrible record but with the government, there's a slim possibility of sunshine appearing sooner or later. With private industry, it's even less so.

I'm not so sure. With private industry a good willed (and relatively wealthy) entrepreneur can just make a cheaper offer and hope to get the job, and actually try to respect human rights. With government you are kinda stuck with what you got.

The thing that you have to realize is that the classified world is more like a club than an open market (as is the military contracting world in general).

Merely having a bunch of money in way qualifies you to bid for a large military contract.

Most if not absolutely all of the staff of private military contracting firms are ex-military of some sort. So you basically start out, for good or ill, with the ethos of the military and the baggage of the military. The only question is what kind of supervision will you give to more-or-less-the-same-guys. That's it. So the whole privatization theory is essentially a "let's do it faster with less supervision" equation. There's no way human rights enters into that equation.

Re: Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A.

#22

Post by bane »

snth wrote: post #17
bane wrote: post #12

I wonder what this kind of thing is called? Bounty Hunter? Mercenary? Vigilante? Somehow, none of those labels really seem to fit quite right. Is this sort of thing something new?

How about "Private Intelligence Contractor". Like "Private Military Contractor".

There's plenty of those. The fact that he's going it solo, vs. working on a contract makes this something uniquely different.

Re: Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A.

#23

Post by [deleted] »

joe_the_user wrote: post #11
w1ntermute wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from the oversight and human rights perspectives it seems like a really bad idea. Well, it's not like the government has a very good track record wrt human rights either.

Government has a terrible record but with the government, there's a slim possibility of sunshine appearing sooner or later. With private industry, it's even less so.

[deleted]

Re: Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A.

#24

Post by geekinthecorner »

joe_the_user wrote: post #11
w1ntermute wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from the oversight and human rights perspectives it seems like a really bad idea. Well, it's not like the government has a very good track record wrt human rights either.

Government has a terrible record but with the government, there's a slim possibility of sunshine appearing sooner or later. With private industry, it's even less so.

It's a lot easier to fire a contractor and replace them with a better contractor than it is to change an entire mode of thinking and operations within a branch of government.

Re: Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A.

#25

Post by law »

joe_the_user wrote: post #10
law wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, this is a terrific idea from the oversight and human rights perspectives. Let's consider a hypothetical for-profit corporation to which the government would outsource these operations. Under a broken system (what we have now), the management of these companies would have some sort of non-business relationship with the government officials responsible for awarding the contracts. Moreover, these companies, un…

You only know about non-classified private companies. Classified private companies today have pretty much carte blanche in similar fashion to the CIA or FBI. A friend of mine was unable to resolve a labor dispute with his classified employer because he could only sue them using a lawyer with clearance (and then his manager coerced him into signing a termination agreement... using a baseball bat! Again, try and sue?)…

That was pretty much the point of my comment. Non-classified companies get that status because of their corporate structure. The hypothetical company that I referenced would be structured such that being classified would be impossible.

Re: Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A.

#26

Post by law »

jdp23 wrote: post #15
law wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, this is a terrific idea from the oversight and human rights perspectives. Let's consider a hypothetical for-profit corporation to which the government would outsource these operations. Under a broken system (what we have now), the management of these companies would have some sort of non-business relationship with the government officials responsible for awarding the contracts. Moreover, these companies, un…

a hypothetical for-profit corporation like Blackwater? or the guys who were pimping Afghan teenage boys to warlords? yeah, that worked well.

Right, I tried to make it clear that our current system is broken... the for-profit corporation approach absolutely can work with transparency.

Re: Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A.

#27

Post by runjake »

joe_the_user wrote: post #21
zokier wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. With private industry a good willed (and relatively wealthy) entrepreneur can just make a cheaper offer and hope to get the job, and actually try to respect human rights. With government you are kinda stuck with what you got.

The thing that you have to realize is that the classified world is more like a club than an open market (as is the military contracting world in general). Merely having a bunch of money in way qualifies you to bid for a large military contract. Most if not absolutely all of the staff of private military contracting firms are ex-military of some sort. So you basically start out, for good or ill, with the ethos of the…

The usual practice is to buy an ex-IC (intelligence community) onto your company's board or an executive position purely for his connections.

Re: Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A.

#28

Post by shkb »

law wrote: post #26
jdp23 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a hypothetical for-profit corporation like Blackwater? or the guys who were pimping Afghan teenage boys to warlords? yeah, that worked well.

Right, I tried to make it clear that our current system is broken... the for-profit corporation approach absolutely can work with transparency.

Transparency in spying?

Re: Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A.

#29

Post by shkb »

law wrote: post #25
joe_the_user wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only know about non-classified private companies. Classified private companies today have pretty much carte blanche in similar fashion to the CIA or FBI. A friend of mine was unable to resolve a labor dispute with his classified employer because he could only sue them using a lawyer with clearance (and then his manager coerced him into signing a termination agreement... using a baseball bat! Again, try and sue?)…

That was pretty much the point of my comment. Non-classified companies get that status because of their corporate structure. The hypothetical company that I referenced would be structured such that being classified would be impossible.

So what would they be doing, unclassified spying? How would you advertise and award contracts for matters you want no one to know about?

Re: Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A.

#30

Post by kprobst »

shkb wrote: post #16
tsotha wrote: post #9

We probably need outfits like this. The CIA seems to have completely lost the ability to do human intelligence. They get punished when they deal with unsavory characters, which is a necessity in that business. So they don't bother, and rely instead on signals intelligence. Nobody ever got fired at CIA running a program to listen in on jihadi phone calls. But you're not going to pick up everything through signals inte…

Specifically they got their asses handed to them by the Soviets in human intelligence, and choose to do what they were good at. But why would you need a group like this, with all the problems of privatizing intelligence operations? Would reform be a better choice? Or the acknowledge that the disadvantages of covert operations are great enough to find an alternative (similar to how the disadvantages of conventional wa…

My reading of material like `The Sword and The Shield` and other books sourced from the Mitrokhin papers don't really support the idea that the Soviets had much success in HUMINT, especially after the 50s.
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