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Business News/ News / World/  Employer became wealthy by maintaining US govt secrets
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Employer became wealthy by maintaining US govt secrets

The US government has sharply increased spending on high-tech intelligence gathering since 2001

US President Barack Obama. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have chosen to rely on private contractors such as Booz Allen for intelligence work. Photo: Stephen Lam/Getty Images/AFP (Stephen Lam/Getty Images/AFP)Premium
US President Barack Obama. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have chosen to rely on private contractors such as Booz Allen for intelligence work. Photo: Stephen Lam/Getty Images/AFP (Stephen Lam/Getty Images/AFP)

Washington: Edward J. Snowden’s employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, has become one of the largest and most profitable corporations in the US almost exclusively by serving a single client: the government of the US.

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% of the company’s total revenue, from intelligence work during its most recent fiscal year.

The government has sharply increased spending on high-tech intelligence gathering since 2001, and both the Bush and Obama administrations have chosen to rely on private contractors such as Booz Allen for much of the resulting work.

Thousands of people formerly employed by the government, and still approved to deal with classified information, now do essentially the same work for private companies.

Snowden - who revealed Sunday that he provided the recent leak of national security documents - is among them. 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 executive. The official who held that post in the Bush administration, John M. McConnell, now works for Booz.

“The national security apparatus has been more and more privatized and turned over to contractors," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a non-profit group that studies federal government contracting. “This is something the public is largely unaware of, how more than a million private contractors are cleared to handle highly sensitive matters."

Companies such as Booz, Lockheed Martin and Computer Sciences Corp. also engage directly in gathering information and providing analysis and advice to government officials. Booz employees work inside the facilities at the NSA, among the most secretive of the intelligence agencies.

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.

Booz Allen, which notes in securities filings that its business could be damaged by leaks, acknowledged in a statement that Snowden had been an employee.

The company, based in Virginia, is primarily a technology contractor. It reported revenues of $5.76 billion for the fiscal year ended in March. The government provided 98% of that revenue, the company said. ©2013/The New York Times

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Published: 11 Jun 2013, 12:42 AM IST
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