Simon & Schuster published Tim Shorrock's "Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing," the first comprehensive investigation of the intelligence contracting industry. The book drew on years of reporting, interviews with key players in what Shorrock termed the "Intelligence-Industrial Complex," analysis of contractors' annual reports and public filings, and on-the-ground reporting from intelligence industry conferences and investor briefings.
Shorrock documented how intelligence outsourcing had become a $50 billion-a-year business consuming up to 70% of the U.S. intelligence budget — a figure he had first revealed through his journalism in 2007 after obtaining an ODNI procurement presentation. The book profiled the major contractors — Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC, Lockheed Martin, CACI International, and others — showing how they had become full partners with the CIA, NSA, and Pentagon in their most sensitive foreign and domestic operations, not merely support staff but participants in core intelligence functions including analysis, collection, and covert operations.
Key findings included the revolving door between intelligence agencies and contractors (exemplified by figures like Mike McConnell, who moved from NSA Director to Booz Allen Hamilton executive to Director of National Intelligence and back to Booz Allen); the lack of meaningful congressional oversight over contractor activities; the perverse incentives created when contractors helped shape the intelligence requirements they would then be hired to fulfill; and the security risks of granting hundreds of thousands of private employees access to the nation's most sensitive secrets.
"Spies for Hire" was published just months before the Carlyle Group completed its acquisition of Booz Allen Hamilton — an event that would further concentrate intelligence privatization in the hands of private equity. The book provided the intellectual framework that journalists, researchers, and policymakers would use to understand the intelligence privatization phenomenon for the next decade. When Edward Snowden's revelations erupted in 2013, Shorrock's work became essential context for understanding how a private contractor employee could access the NSA's most classified programs. The book remains the definitive account of how the post-9/11 era transformed American intelligence from a government function into a corporate profit center.