CIA ops moonlight in corporate world

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Begrijp nu waarom we bang moeten zijn voor Chinezen, die hacken om
geheimen te achterhalen.

Deze jongens hebben alleen hun eigen satelieten voor
communicatiesignalen en foto's met centimeter-detailering, eigen lijn
naar wereldwijde bankdetails, directe lijnen naar alle Westerse
inlichtingendiensten én directe lijnen naar Westerse paspoortdetails.

En dat voor een paar ton, geen geld.

Groet / Cees

CIA ops moonlight in corporate world
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32290.html
By EAMON JAVERS | 2/1/10 12:57 AM EST

* This article is adapted from the author's forthcoming book, 'Broker,
Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage.'

In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is
offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private
companies on the side — a policy that gives financial firms and hedge
funds access to the nation’s top-level intelligence talent, POLITICO has
learned.

In one case, these active-duty officers moonlighted at a hedge-fund
consulting firm that wanted to tap their expertise in “deception
detection,” the highly specialized art of telling when executives may be
lying based on clues in a conversation.

The never-before-revealed policy comes to light as the CIA and other
intelligence agencies are once again under fire for failing to “connect
the dots,” this time in the Christmas Day bombing plot on Northwest
Flight 253.

But sources familiar with the CIA’s moonlighting policy defend it as a
vital tool to prevent brain-drain at Langley, which has seen an exodus
of highly trained, badly needed intelligence officers to the private
sector, where they can easily double or even triple their government
salaries. The policy gives agents a chance to earn more while still
staying on the government payroll.

A government official familiar with the policy insists it doesn’t impede
the CIA’s work on critical national security investigations. This
official said CIA officers who want to participate in it must first
submit a detailed explanation of the type of work involved and get
permission from higher-ups within the agency.

“If any officer requests permission for outside employment, those
requests are reviewed not just for legality, but for propriety,” CIA
spokesman George Little told POLITICO.

There is much about the policy that is unclear, including how many
officers have availed themselves of it, how long it has been in place
and what types of outside employment have been allowed. The CIA declined
to provide additional details.

Generally, federal employees across the vast government work force are
allowed to moonlight in the private sector, but under tight guidelines,
that can vary from agency to agency, according to the federal Office of
Government Ethics.

“In general, for most nonpolitical employees, they may engage in outside
employment, but there are some restrictions,” said Elaine Newton, an
attorney at the Office of Government Ethics. She explained that agencies
throughout the federal government set their own policies on outside
employment, and that they all typically require that the employment not
represent a conflict of interest with the employee’s federal job and
that the employee have written approval before taking on the work.

But the close ties between active-duty and retired CIA officers at one
consulting company show the degree to which CIA-style intelligence
gathering techniques have been employed by hedge funds and financial
institutions in the global economy.

The firm is called Business Intelligence Advisors, and it is based in
Boston. BIA was founded and is staffed by a number of retired CIA
officers, and it specializes in the arcane field of “deception
detection.” BIA’s clients have included Goldman Sachs and the enormous
hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, according to spokesmen for both firms.

BIA has employed active-duty CIA officers in the past, although BIA
president Cheryl Cook said that has “not been the case with BIA for some
time.”

But the ties between BIA and the intelligence world run deep. The name
itself was chosen as a play off CIA. And the presence of so many former
CIA personnel on the payroll at BIA causes confusion as to whether the
intelligence firm is actually an extension of the agency itself. As a
result, BIA places a disclaimer in some of its corporate materials to
clarify that it is not, in fact, controlled by Langley.

BIA’s clients can put the company on a retainer for as much as $400,000
to $800,000 a year. And in return, they receive access to a variety of
services, from deception detection to other programs that feature the
CIA intelligence techniques.

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