The Perpetual Hydra

Of all the revelations within the partial report that American senators issued about the CIA’s misdeeds, we should focus on the incredible amount of space devoted to the private sector. The extensive discussion of the role of private enterprise helped us better understand why creeping privatization was widely considered responsible for creating an uncontrollable monster.

Out of the 6,000 pages recounting the recent history of the CIA, only one-tenth was made public, and only after what were by all accounts an intense series of negotiations between representatives of the executive and members of the legislative branch, led by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. The partial publication describing the customs and practices of the CIA after 9/11 confirms that acts of torture were committed and legalized. It especially focuses on how contractual employees from the private sector were at the heart of the operations during which terror suspects were brutally interrogated.

The first lesson drawn from the chapters about the use of bloodletting professionals from outside the CIA and other intelligence agencies is how fast the Bush administration adopted this practice. More specifically, when the first person considered to be an important member of al-Qaida was captured, authorities decided to entrust the interrogation to a private sector specialist right away. To be precise, the Office of Technical Services, a CIA back-room organization, hired a former Air Force instructor who used to teach soldiers how to resist “savage” questioning. This man was — and still is, by the way — James Mitchell.

This man is an important figure in the history of the state’s monopoly on violence: He formulated the procedures used to torture individuals involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Afterward, the demand for his services increased at light speed since CIA professionals largely refused to use brute force. As a result, Mitchell started a business with a former Air Force colleague and hired experts in strong-arm tactics. In 2006, believe it or not, 73 percent of interrogations were carried out by contract workers from the private sector. And that’s not all. To avoid potential legal nightmares, all interrogations conducted overseas, particularly in Thailand and Romania, were outsourced to the private sector.

This confirms the revelations from the extraordinary investigation on the subject undertaken by journalist Dana Priest of The Washington Post. She revealed that the full-scale privatization of intelligence services became a hydra within the entire U.S. government apparatus. The numbers will make your head spin. After a one-year investigation — which was documented in an episode of the PBS program “Frontline” called “Top Secret America” — Priest’s first discovery was that the intelligence budget was 21 times larger than it was on Sept. 10, 2001.

Today, 1,931 businesses are operating in this niche sector, alongside 1,271 government departments responsible for the surveillance and safety of citizens. Here is an example of the madness that has consumed decision-making centers: In Washington, in a location the size of five Wal-Marts, 1,700 government employees rub shoulders with 1,200 “private” ones. The range of excesses quantified and decrypted by Priest was so vast that she needed to write a book to convey it all. Well, it’s already been said and I’ll say it again: Orwell’s Big Brother seems naive in comparison.