Xe/Blackwater News

Sounds like the brouhaha du jour in Fedland is news about Xe--formerly known as Blackwater--and its involvement in the secret CIA program revealed earlier this year. The New York Times has posted another scoop on this story, reporting that Xe officials help prepare remote-controlled drones to target top Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Indeed, it seems that private contractors--(in many cases, these were contracts with individual Blackwater officials, not the company)--have been involved in important intelligence operations at almost every level.

Most Americans probably look at this as a national security issue--and it is. But it's also an issue of human capital allocation. For instance, take a look at this quote from the NY Times article:

More than a quarter of the intelligence community's current work force is made up of contractors, carrying out missions like intelligence collection and analysis and, until recently, interrogation of terrorist suspects.

"There are skills we don't have in government that we may have an immediate requirement for," Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who ran the C.I.A. from 2006 until early this year, said during a panel discussion on Thursday on the privatization of intelligence.

For more opinion on how the current situation came about, you can check out our sister publication's Atlantic Wire.