The Financial Times covers material that has been discussed elsewhere in this blog concerning outsourcing of covert activities. Yet I think they state the situation a little more directly:

US turns to private sector for spies

For Dave Tittle, who has run an executive placement company in northern Virginia for the last 30 years, business has never been so good. That is because Mr Tittle's speciality is supplying talent for the growing number of private companies that do the US government's spying.

"An awful lot of activity has been outsourced," says Mr Tittle, who himself once worked at the National Security Agency. "Anything that has to do with collection or analysis of intelligence data is being done by the private sector."

If the build-up to the Iraq war highlighted the extent to which the army relies on private contractors like Halliburton for logistical tasks like delivering fuel, then the recent prisoner abuse scandal has revealed similar trends under way in the nation's intelligence apparatus.

(Via Gary Farber.)

Imagine an increasing amount of CIA activity outsourced. Think about that for a while. And put that together with what we already know about the problems of miltary outsourcing: it's probably not really cheaper but it sertainly provides a fine layer of deinability. Think a bit about Steve Stefanowicz and Victor Bout and about the mysterious "John Israel."

Imagine.