More “Top Secret America” Myths Debunked: Contractor Costs Edition

In the July 20 installment of “Top Secret America,” The Washington Post unabashedly states:

"Through the federal budget process, the George W. Bush administration and Congress made it much easier for the CIA and other agencies involved in counterterrorism to hire more contractors than civil servants. They did this to limit the size of the permanent workforce, to hire employees more quickly than the sluggish federal process allows and because they thought - wrongly, it turned out -that contractors would be less expensive."

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) largely debunked this myth in its July 19 briefing paper, which states:

"It is true that core contract personnel are, on average, more expensive than their government counterparts. However, in some cases, contractor personnel are less costly, especially if the work is short-term in nature, easily available commercially, or requires unique expertise for immediate needs."

Fair enough. But even ODNI’s statement ignores the fact that no apples-to-apples comparison of contractor and federal employee costs has been conducted. Not for intelligence work. And not for other government work.

Post’s “Top Secret America” Miscasts Contractors as Profiteers

The July 20 Washington Post article questioning the intelligence community for tapping the vast array of private-sector talent to meet immediate intelligence needs after 9/11 glosses over the government’s most basic need: to respond with agility to changing threat environments.

But it does not gloss over less factual points. Namely, the second installment leads with the idea that government contractors, and the employees who work for them, are money grubbing profiteers only interested in serving their shareholders and with no interest in doing the public good.