by David Phinney
Monday March 18th 2024

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National Security Contracts into Three-Ring Circus

National Security Contracts into Three-Ring Circus

by David Phinney June 21, 2013 -- A contractor vetted a contractor to work for a contractor that is contracted to the U.S. National Security Agency – all for the security of U.S. taxpayers that the contractors are being paid to sometimes apparently surveil. This dizzying U.S. contractor cluster f#%k is becoming familiar routine [...]

Sitting on the Secret Spy Court: The Judges

Sitting on the Secret Spy Court: The Judges

by David Phinney Several judges made headlines by threatening reporters with prison sentences after refusing to reveal sources. One ruled on proceedings of the drilling moratorium following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill while owning investments in oil companies with drilling interests. Some have presided over serious terrorist [...]

Hiring National Security Contractors Is Dangerous Business

Hiring National Security Contractors Is Dangerous Business

When high-level government officials are reduced to blaming a single, low-level contractor employee for upending U.S. intelligence operations, then those high-level officials have a big problem. The troublemaker, Edward Snowden, was just one of over a million intelligence private employees with government security clearances. A high school [...]

Willing to Please

There once was a line of thinking that the sign of a good manager is when one knows his or her weaknesses and compensates those weaknesses with the strengths of a well-rounded staff. Good presidents also go out of their way to find the strongest thinkers of opposing views to help probe policies for their weaknesses and figure out where solutions [...]

Happy Birthday, CIA

Someone just sent me this link: from Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting: Extra! November/December 1997 One of the most evenhanded examples of mainstream coverage of the CIA's anniversary was on ABC News' website, where the report opens on a note of caution: "No doubt the nation's leading band of spies prefers to forget about the disastrous Bay of [...]