CorpWatch releases

Online database of U.S. intelligence contractors

Joint project with SPIES FOR HIRE author Tim Shorrock
Now available at SPIES FOR HIRE.org
Contacts:
! Tim Shorrock: E-mail: timshorrock@gmail.com Tel: 901/361-7441
! CorpWatch: Tonya Hennessey (project director):
E-mail: tonya@corpwatch.org Tel: 650/273-2475
For immediate release
November 16, 2009
WASHINGTON Starting today, journalists, activists, and corporate researchers will be
able to use the Internet site SpiesForHire.org to track the nations most important
intelligence contractors.
Increasingly, secret drone attacks in Pakistan, CIA prisons in Guantanamo, and
domestic surveillance of American citizens, have drawn public scrutiny to U.S.
intelligence. These and other policies have triggered calls for criminal investigations and
congressional commissions to investigate possible abuses in the post-9/11 war on
terror.
But there's a big piece missing from the national debate about spying: the role of private
intelligence contractors. After journalist Tim Shorrocks 2008 investigation, U.S.
officials confirmed that 70 percent of the U.S. intelligence budget goes directly to private
companies working under contract to the CIA, the NSA, and other agencies. With the
U.S. intelligence budget estimated at $60 billion a year, the outsourced business of
intelligence is a $45 billion annual industry.
To help the public and media understand this new phenomenon, CorpWatch is joining
today with Shorrock, the first journalist to blow the whistle on the privatization of U.S.
intelligence, to create a groundbreaking database focusing on the dozens of corporations
that provide classified intelligence services to the United States government.
This database expands on Shorrocks 2008 book, SPIES FOR HIRE: The Secret World
of Intelligence Outsourcing. http://books.simonandschuster.com/Spies-for-Hire/TimShorrock/9780743282246
SpiesForHire.orgs detailed descriptions and histories of the companies that make up
this new class of mercenaries will make it your guide to the new U.S. IntelligenceIndustrial Complex.
Included are defense giants such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon; lesserknown but still influential companies such as Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC, and CACI

International; and dozens of Beltway Bandits that have set up shop in D.C. and environs
to feed the government's insatiable appetite for contract intelligence.
These contractors, database users will find, do it all:
!

At the CIA, they conduct interrogations at Guantanamo, run stations in Iraq,

Afghanistan, and other hotspots, and help transport suspected terrorists
including some later found innocentto countries known to practice torture.

At the NSA, they work alongside agency employees at listening posts in

Maryland, Georgia, Hawaii, the UK, and elsewhere to monitor telephone calls
and emails between U.S. citizens and targeted foreigners.

From bases in Nevada and Virginia, they control the military and CIA Predators
that launch missiles at suspected terrorist bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Contractors also run covert operations, write intelligence reports that are passed
up the line of command all the way to the president, and advise agencies on how
to spend taxpayer dollars.

SpiesForHire.org is a component of CorpWatchs existing Crocodyl database on global

corporations. Based on Shorrocks research for his book and for CorpWatch, Salon,
Mother Jones, and other publications, the site will feature essential information ab0ut
each major contractor, such as its key executives for intelligence operations, its major
intelligence clients, and an analysis of its role in the U.S. intelligence system.
The database is an ongoing project. Starting from a base of a dozen companies and
intelligence agencies, it will eventually include all the major private sector players in the
business of U.S. government spying. Each profile will be regularly updated. Unlike
Crocodyl, which registered users can augment, SpiesForHire.org will be edited
exclusively by Shorrock and the CorpWatch staff, who will also vet and fact check any
volunteer or whistleblower contributions.
Since 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. governments use of private sector
contractors for tasks of war has made headlines: Halliburtons lucrative Iraqi
reconstruction contracts, CACI Internationals civilian interrogators at Abu Ghraib, and
Blackwaters (now Xe) shooting of noncombatants in Baghdadto name a few. Less well
known is U.S. contractor involvement in Latin America, for example in executing the
U.S. war on drugs in countries like Colombia.
This site will, for the first time, expose the size and scope of the private sectors influence
on U.S. intelligence agenciesand the governments unsettling efforts to hide the facts.
ABOUT CORPWATCH and CROCODYL (http://community.corpwatch.org)
A global community of non-profit, independent investigative research, journalism and
advocacy around issues of multinational corporate accountability and transparency, the

CorpWatch community of sites provides tools and resources for critical vigilance and
advocacy through a global effort of NGOs, journalists, activists, whistleblowers and
academics.
Through its family of websites and social media, we seek to expose multinational
corporations that that profit from war, fraud, environmental, human rights and other
abuses, and to provide critical information to foster a more informed public and an
effective democracy.
CorpWatch.org provides non-profit investigative research and journalism to expose
corporate malfeasance and to advocate for multinational corporate accountability and
transparency.
Crocodyl.org is an evolving compendium of critical research, posted to the public
domain as an aid to anyone working to hold corporations increasingly accountable.
Crocodyl enables disparate groups and individuals to pool our knowledge about specific
corporations in order to reduce the high cost of corporate research.
ABOUT TIM SHORROCK
Tim Shorrock is an investigative journalist who has spent a quarter-century researching
the intersection of national security and business. SPIES FOR HIRE, his
groundbreaking book on the privatization of U.S. intelligence, was published to great
acclaim in 2008 by Simon & Schuster, and released in paperback in May 2009.
Shorrocks work has appeared in many publications in the United States and abroad,
including The Nation, Salon, Mother Jones, Harpers, Inter Press Service, The Los
Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Progressive, The Journal of
Commerce, Foreign Policy in Focus, and Asia Times. He appears frequently as a
commentator on U.S intelligence and foreign policy, and has been interviewed on
Pacificas Democracy Now, Air America, and CBS Radio. Shorrock grew up in Japan
and South Korea, and now lives in Washington, D.C., where he researches government
contracts for an AFL-CIO union representing federal employees.