Waste and Fraud at the Central Intelligence Agency

Waste and fraud at the Central Intelligence Agency not only squanders taxpayers’ money but also endangers American lives.  When money is diverted away from intelligence missions on rogue state nuclear threats, for example, Americans are at risk.

 The CIA lacks financial accountability.  The subprime fiasco and the Madoff fraud occurred even with significant safeguards in place.  Imagine how waste and fraud can grow when hidden by federal secrecy laws.

 Secrecy is necessary to protect intelligence operations and identities, of course, but it is also used by the CIA bureaucracy to hide fraud and waste.

 After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Congress gave the CIA $3 billion to put more officers in foreign countries, in non-embassy assignments, in recognition of the fact that modern targets such as nuclear proliferators are not available for meetings with US diplomats.  This money disappeared to boondoggles and contracting companies run by former CIA employees, without a single additional, effective officer being placed in a non-embassy assignment overseas.

 Some CIA employees evade the limits imposed on federal salaries by quitting federal service and returning the next day as contractors, at double pay for the same job.  Half of CIA employees are now contractors.  This lucrative sleight of hand is carried out by contracting companies run by former CIA employees.

 When the CIA became a place to get rich, its otherwise talented and dedicated employees lost direction, in the same way that an army loses effectiveness when it begins to loot.  This has led to a mutation in intelligence operations, involving high-profile teams of CIA contract employees living in expensive hotel suites, when one CIA officer can do the job better.

 It’s also easier to spend money and create offices within the United States, and in violation of its founding charter the CIA has become primarily a domestic intelligence service.  Most CIA employees now live and work within the United States.  This domestic activity dulls the CIA’s focus on the threats to Americans which come from foreign countries.

 The creation of a whistleblower system may be the solution.  Any American who sees fraud can contact the FBI and expect a response.  CIA employees should have the same ability.

 If a single FBI agent, with full security clearances and a contact number, were assigned to the CIA with the ability to investigate reports of fraud and waste provided by CIA employees, it would set off a chain reaction of accountability.

The nature of why the CIA has run amok may be found in a 2001 Government Accountability Office report:  “Oversight of the CIA generally comes from two select committees of Congress and the CIA’s Inspector General.  We have broad authority to
evaluate CIA programs.  In reality, however, we face both legal and practical limitations on our ability to review these programs.  For example, we have no access to certain CIA ‘unvouchered’ accounts and cannot compel our access to foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information.  In addition, as a practical matter, we are limited by the CIA’s level of cooperation, which has varied through the years.  We have not actively audited the CIA since the early 1960s, when we discontinued such work because the CIA was not providing us with sufficient access to information to perform our mission.  The issue has arisen since then from time to time as our work has required some level of access to CIA programs and information.  However, given a lack of requests from the
Congress for us to do specific work at the CIA and our limited resources, we have made a conscious decision not to further pursue the issue.”

Improving oversight and establishing a whistleblower system can lead to dramatically improved intelligence operations and safety for Americans.

Ishmael Jones, a former Central Intelligence Agency case officer who focused on human sources with access to intelligence on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, contributed this article.  He is the author of “The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture.”