Outsourced Intelligence

Takeaways from part two of the Washington Post's Top Secret America series today:

• The piece includes a specific estimate on the size of the intelligence contractor workforce: 265,000, a number the Post's reporters, Dana Priest and William H. Arkin, say was "vetted by several high-ranking intelligence officials."
• At the Homeland Security Department, the number of contractors equals the number of federal employees.
• Defense Secretary Robert Gates makes what he calls a "terrible confession:" that he doesn't even know how many contractors work in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
• The Post's investigation concludes flatly that contractors are more expensive than federal employees, citing a 2008 study by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that found contractors make up 29 percent of the workforce in intelligence agencies but cost the equivalent of 49 percent of their personnel budgets. Gates says contractors cost, on average, 25 percent more than federal employees.

Is there any doubt at this point that politicians' stubborn insistence over the last three decades or so on holding the line on the overall size of the federal workforce while looking the other way on the use of contractors has been a very expensive decision -- and has made it much more difficult even to get a handle on what agencies are doing on a day-to-day basis?