Whistleblower's Employer Has Cozy Ties to Uncle Sam

If you haven't previously heard of Booz Allen Hamilton, the employer of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, it's not for its lack of ties with Washington, DC. Some 98% of the company's revenue in the past fiscal year came from its government contracts, and 23% of that—or $1.3 billion—came from intelligence work, including for the NSA, the New York Times reports. It's not just contracts that link the private firm to Washington: President Obama's top intelligence official, James Clapper, used to be a Booz Allen executive, and the man who held Clapper's job in the Bush administration works there now.

Close to half of Booz Allen's 25,000 workers have top secret security clearance: They have "access to information that would cause 'exceptionally grave damage' to national security if disclosed to the public," in the company's words. The Washington Post figures a leak was bound to happen thanks to the speedy post-9/11 outsourcing of intelligence jobs; a 2010 analysis by the paper found 1,931 private companies engaged in national security-related work. And the system in place for quietly reporting concerns is less clear to contractors than to government workers, a former NSA official tells the Times. (Does Booz Allen sound like the place for you? Here's your chance to join its ranks: It looks like Snowden's job is up for grabs, the Atlantic Wire notes. The site has the full job posting.)