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"If you took away the contractor support, they'd have to put yellow tape around the building and close it down," said a former senior CIA official who was responsible for overseeing contracts before leaving the agency earlier this year.
This former official and more than a dozen other current and former U.S. intelligence officials interviewed for this story spoke on condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of intelligence contracting work.
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At the CIA, poaching became such a problem that former Director Porter J. Goss had to warn several firms to stop recruiting employees in the agency cafeteria, according to former officials familiar with the matter. One recently retired case officer said he had been approached twice while in line for coffee.
"It's like sharks in the water," said the officer, an overseas veteran who has handled assignments in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. "As soon as the word went around that I was leaving, my e-mail in-box was pinging. People were calling me at home."
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Another worry is that the reliance on contractors is eroding agency budgets. Sanders said a recent personnel study by the Senate Intelligence Committee found that contractors were typically paid 50% to 100% more than staff officers to perform comparable work — a disparity that can create internal tensions.
"It's a serious morale problem when you've got a guy in the field making $80,000 and a contractor making $150,000," said the former case officer who served in Iraq. "And the
is supposed to supervise the guy making twice the money."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-contractors17sep17,0,3821049.story?page=2&coll=la-headlines-nation