Monday, June 10, 2013

EXCLUSIVE Insider Speaks About Booz Allen: The Employer of the NSA Whistleblower, Edward Snowden

"If I was a little younger and a little crazier that would have been me. I know exactly why he did it," that was the comment that a former long-time Booz Allen Hamilton employee greeted me with, when I put a phone call into him to get his take on the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, an employee of Booz Allen.

My source had previously told me, before he left, that he was leaving Booz Allen because security at the firm was getting oppressive. At that time, he told me  that in the morning it took him about 10 minutes to log into his computer, because of all the security checks on the computer that he had to deal with.

At the time, he also told me that Booz Allen had put out employee wide emails, telling employees such things as that they were not to read Wikileaks pages on Booz Allen computers or at home. "I am getting out," he said. "I can't deal with it."

Now, he told me even more. He said no one talks anything illegal at Booz Allen, but there is a kind of code talk where things have a second deeper meaning. "If you understand how the game is played, and can check your integrity at the door, you can get very far in the firm and lead a cushy life," he said. If you are unwilling to play the game or are too naive to understand deeper meanings, you are not going to get very far. He said Booz Allen is infected with a culture that seeks power and access

He didn't go into what exactly goes on at Booz Allen that requires deeper meaning. I just got the sense it was a very dark world and that it was this dark world that my contact believed Snowden was horrified by and caused him to leak the information he did.

My source tells me that Booz Allen always had important USG contracts, but they really picked up when the Carlyle Group bought Booz Allen. That's when you really started to see the Penatgon and CIA contracts flow in, he said. He said that with Carlyle's strong USG contacts, they knew Booz Allen was a perfect firm to take over. He said that's when the firm really started to develop a national security mentality. He said that's when the firm became highly connected with the USG. He said he occasionally saw the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at Booz Allen headquarters, as well as Carlyle vice chairman John Michael "Mike" McConnell - former Director of National Intelligence (2007–2009); formerly Director of the National Security Agency (1992–96); retired in 1996 as Vice Admiral, United States Navy, among other high level players.

My source tells me that he fully expects Booz Allen, the Penatgon, the CIA, the NSA etc. to close ranks and go after not only Snowden, but his family. They will go after them in open ways and subtly. The full wrath of the USG is going to come down on them, he says. That's the way the military-industrial-intelligence complex works. Indeed, he says, its the real reason the intelligence part of complex was built, to deal with situations like this.

UPDATE:

NYT reports this morning:

Over the last decade, much of the company’s growth has come from selling expertise, technology and manpower to the National Security Agency and other federal intelligence agencies. Booz Allen earned $1.3 billion, 23 percent of the company’s total revenue, from intelligence work during its most recent fiscal year

As evidence of the company’s close relationship with government, the Obama administration’s chief intelligence official, James R. Clapper Jr., is a former Booz Allen executive. The official who held that post in the Bush administration, John M. McConnell, now works for Booz Allen[...] 
The company employs about 25,000 people, almost half of whom hold top secret security clearances, providing “access to information that would cause ‘exceptionally grave damage’ to national security if disclosed to the public,” according to a company securities filing.
In January, Booz Allen announced that it was starting work on a new contract worth perhaps as much as $5.6 billion over five years to provide intelligence analysis services to the Defense Department. Under the deal, Booz Allen employees are being assigned to help military and national security policy makers, the company said.[...] 
The company, based in Virginia, is primarily a technology contractor. It reported revenues of $5.76 billion for the fiscal year ended in March and was No. 436 on Fortune’s list of the 500 largest public companies. The government provided 98 percent of that revenue, the company said.

Its rapid growth, fueled by government investment after the Sept. 11 attacks, led to a 2008 buyout by the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm, followed by a public offering in 2010.

3 comments:

  1. The biggest fear of the USG and their corporate hangers on, is that there are many like Snowden who would like to talk. One man could lead to a trickle which could lead to a flood. That could bring the whole system crashing down.

    And so fear has to be maintained. They have to find a way to punish Snowden. His only hope is that a powerful foreign government is willing to protect him. They will only do that if their is something in it for them.

    Lysander

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    1. They don't call these clowns along with SAIC and the rest of their ilk "beltway bandits" for nothing. They've made a career of sucking on the government tit and selling out their countrymen for thirty pieces of silver. Hell, it's not even silver - it's fiat - they sold you out for pieces of green paper! Disgusting!

      Time to turn off the money and break them up. They have become evil and Anti-American...

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  2. Carlyle can both read the tea leaves and knows how to entice Uncle Sam to spend. Got to wonder about Carlyle's data center companies, they've bought more than one. Where do they fit in the whole shebang?

    I posted much of your interview in a piece:

    http://peureport.blogspot.com/2013/06/carlyle-downs-booz-culture.html

    Many thanks.

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