Seems like a no-brainer: CIA does its own interrogations now

U.S. NEWS: "CIA Bans Interrogations By Outside Contractors," by Siobhan Gorman, Wall Street Journal, 10 April 2009.

A habit from the Bush years: black sites run by contractors. Contractors will still provide support services, like translators, but the CIA will run their own shows.

In retrospect, you'd like to think we could have a CIA that had enough bodies for such a delicate job.

Comments

[Andrew No Longer in Baghdad]

Actually, this is more chaotic than you might expect at first blush. The Army uses contractors in a huge way because their Human Intelligence Collectors - which they employ for tactical HUMINT source operations, are also their interrogators. So the Army augments the "safer" side with contractors. Trouble is, for all sides of this equation, CIA policies govern how DoD humint is collected - both from interrogations and source ops. So this is going to cause a huge inefficiency as people who'd been tasked with collection work get pulled back into do interrogations, rather than using contractors (who are, by and large, better at it, because they're older and more polished.)You called it a "habit from the Bush years" - which is only true because all sides of the HUMINT game realized how woefully inadequately staffed they were for COIN and sustained 4th gen warfare. The Army tried to quadruple its HUMINT collector slots, in fact and wound up with recruiting policies that pushed hordes of inexperienced and unsuited, substandard personnel into the positions. CIA also heavily plussed-up their numbers in the wake of 9/11, but they, too, pulled in a lot of dregs. Contractors are important - after all, you can fire them, and here, they're getting a bum rap. The organization efforts to "grow", and fill the national need without contractors have, thus far, failed miserably - and are poisoning the well for future generations.