Customer Rating: 
Summary: Required Reading for An Alert and Knowledgeable Citizenry
Comment: Rather than reinvent the wheel, I'm going to quote liberally from an excellent full-length review of
this book from blogger Meteor Blades at Daily Kos:
"Spies for Hire is one of those
books so brimful of detail, including mergers and acquisitions by intelligence companies, that one
wishes for coded links and two or three charts illustrating the career trajectories and corporate
genealogy of a couple dozen of the key players."
Another reviewer told an unsourced
anecdote about an intelligence contractor who was downsized into driving a limo. Well, consider the
story of neocon visionary Stephen Cambone. A charter member of PNAC, Cambone was appointed as the
undersecretary of defense for intelligence at the Pentagon, a position of immense power and
influence, which was forged from the conflict between Rumsfeld and the CIA.
"Among his
other duties was overseeing "Copper Green," the interrogations, much of them by private contractors,
of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Cambone was so widely despised and feared at the Pentagon that an
Army general had jokingly said that "if he had one round left in his revolver, he would take out
Steve Cambone," according to the Washington Post's Thomas Ricks."
When Rumsfeld was
forced out of his job, his loyal retainer, Cambone was shown the exit a few months later, in January
of 2007. However, Cambone did not end up driving a limousine:
"In January 2008, the
Pentagon's Counter-Intelligence Field Agency granted a $30 million contract to the Missions
Solutions Group of QinetiQ North America...Just two months before that contract was awarded, QinetiQ
hired a new vice president for strategy. His name is Stephen Cambone."
So, why is this
book a must-read? I'll leave you with one more quote from a different source:
"In the
councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether
sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger
our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and
knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery
of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper
together."
--Dwight D. Eisenhower
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Oversimplifying
Comment: I saw this book at a local DC bookstore and had to sit down and spend a good amount of time reading
it, using the index as my guide going back and forth to areas I am very familiar with. In interest
of full disclosure, I have significant experience with the topic of the book. First thing I notice
is that book cover portrays a govt. badge (they don't look like that) with the Dollar sign formed
out of the chain. This tells me that this guy has an agenda: to "expose" the Intelligence industrial
complex. Well I hate to break it to Mr. Shorrock, but he never worked as a def. contractor and
obviously cherrypicks negative information to bolster his preconceived notion. Yes, the govt. uses
contractors. Big deal. Most of the contractors used are either prior government "blue badgers", be
it military, civilian or simply retired (thus returning to their previous job with those years of
experience), who have specific skills that were sorely lacking after 9/11 due to the budget cuts of
the 90s. On one hand people whine and moan about how the intel community failed them and on the
other they chastize efforts to correct those failures. While reading through the book, it became
evident as well that the author vastly oversimplifies the relationship (good and bad) between the
Intel communiy and the current administration. He also fails to explain that contract employees
don't really have the authority staff employees do. Moreover, one should look at the way government
is run to see why contractors are used more, over hiring new staffers: It takes nearly an act of
congress to fire a staff employee for bad performance, whereas a contractor's career is short lived
and can be fired on the spot. Hiring staffers also takes about two years to get them in the door and
train them, unacceptable given today's climate. Do contractors make more money? in most cases yes,
but there is great risk involved. Contracts can be terminated at a moments notice and the contractor
who brought much needed expertise to the fore is all of a sudden without work. I know of one man
(one example of many) who was a victim of knee jerk downsizing. He has a degree, multiple langauges
and a full clearance. He is now driving a limo in New York. Maybe shorrock should have interviewed
him, no?
