For more than a decade I have regarded Booz Allen Hamilton as indistinguishable from the Central Intelligence Agency. However, I did not realize the degree to which they were flourishing.
The company employs about 25,000 people, almost half of whom hold top secret security clearances, providing “access to information that would cause ‘exceptionally grave damage’ to national security if disclosed to the public,” according to a company securities filing.
In January, Booz Allen announced that it was starting work on a new contract worth perhaps as much as $5.6 billion over five years to provide intelligence analysis services to the Defense Department. Under the deal, Booz Allen employees are being assigned to help military and national security policy makers, the company said…
The company, based in Virginia, is primarily a technology contractor. It reported revenues of $5.76 billion for the fiscal year ended in March and was No. 436 on Fortune’s list of the 500 largest public companies. The government provided 98 percent of that revenue, the company said.
We could save a lot of money by reverting to the old system of paying government employees to do intelligence work. It’s a lie that it’s cheaper to farm this work out to the private sector. It’s also clear that privatizing intelligence work is a security risk.
In the end, I’d rather deal with public employee unions than independent contractor lobbyists, too. In my mind, the best result of the recent NSA revelations would be if Booz Allen Hamilton and its investors went bankrupt.
