| Title | NSA's Loudest Defenders Have Financial Ties to NSA Contractors | |
| Date | Wednesday May 13 2015, @12:10PM | |
| Author | cmn32480 | |
| Topic | ||
| from the dept. | ||
The Intercept's Lee Fang has highlighted a few examples of loud National Security Agency allies that have financial ties to the agency and mass surveillance. The list includes Stewart Baker, the general counsel to the NSA from 1992 through 1994, Fox News military analyst Jack Keane, Retired General Wesley Clark, former Central Intelligence Agency chief James Woolsey, former Republican National Committee chair Jim Gilmore, former NSA director Mike McConnell, and Center for Strategic and International Studies President John Hamre. They have surfaced regularly in the media to denounce Snowden, and in the case of Woolsey, to call for Snowden to be "hanged by his neck".
These NSA cheerleaders have received millions of dollars from their involvement with NSA contractors. For example, Clark and Woolsey are advisors to Paladin Capital Group, "an investment advisor and private equity firm whose Homeland Security Fund was set up about three months after the September 11th attacks to focus on defense and intelligence-related startups":
At the time of Woolsey and Clark's anti-Snowden statements it included a stake in Endgame Systems, a computer network security company that had worked with the NSA, having reportedly counted the agency among its largest customers. Paladin was also invested in CyberCore, which had provided technological work to the NSA. Later, in 2014, Paladin invested in Shadow Networks, formerly known as ZanttzZ, which also provided tech work to the NSA.
Since 2009, [Jim] Gilmore has also worked for a major NSA contractor as member of the board of CACI International, for which he has been compensated with more than $1 million in cash and stock awards. CACI, the firm whose contractors were behind the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, has steadily increased its stake in the cyber intelligence business, acquiring the firm Six3 Systems, an NSA contractor, for $820 million two years ago.
Hamre received close to a quarter of a million dollars as a board member to NSA contractor Leidos, as he had the year prior. In 2013 and again in 2012, Hamre took close to quarter of a million dollars as a board member at SAIC, which has served as a major NSA contractor and which split to form Leidos. Also responsible for the [CSIS] report was former NSA director Mike McConnell — only identified by "Former Director of National Intelligence" rather than as vice chairman of NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, his role at the time.
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printed from SoylentNews, NSA's Loudest Defenders Have Financial Ties to NSA Contractors on 2024-04-19 19:13:43