I am not anti-spy agencies nor anti-war in any blanket sense. I believe the latter should only be applied in self defense and that entities, both individual and national, should have the right to be prepared it's reality. Thus, with regards to the former it is unfortunately a necessity of national security. That said I don't agree with nor sanction all things done in the name of black ops, clandestine services, intelligence gathering nor national security.

I believe intelligence services have been vital to protecting our national interests. The idea any country can go through its existence without a working knowledge of what is going on beyond its borders given how dangerous the world we live in can be seems naive. But, no aspect of government should be allowed to grow with little or no reigns. Nor should any aspect of government become so cancerous it cannibalizes other agencies so it can do what it wishes.

When intelligence agencies grow out of control this puts the lives of a nation's citizen's at risk. The fact many of those operations involve manipulating lives, organizations and nations only adds to that. The fact it has paramilitary units quietly killing people for what are considered national security interests of course only makes things worse. Those people are meant to be saving our lives not creating prolonged seasons of blowback for which they expect pay hikes as tokens of esteem.

As might be expected following 9/11 our intelligence agencies already in existence grew exponentially. We also created new ones which had mandates to be filled and people to fill them. In short more people were added to the lists of those operating in the field. Those people needed to be trained which takes time. Being as there was a need for seats to be filled and boots on the ground more private sector contractors were added to the roster.

This translated to more expenditures. Intelligence work already sucked up generous portions of our national budget before 9/11. Besides having decent funding on the books the CIA had been authorized by the CIA Act of 1949 to appropriate funds from any US government agency regardless of the amounts. The act specifies it may appropriate "such sums without regard to any provisions of law limiting or prohibiting transfers between appropriations [emphasis added]. Sums transferred to the Agency in accordance with this paragraph may be expended for the purposes and under the authority of sections 403a to 403s of this title without regard to limitations of appropriations from which transferred."

All such transfers were to remain unaccounted for. How much do you want to bet some of those billions going missing from the federal budget annually are as a result of the mystery appropriations? Have any federal accountants have been fired because they were unable to explain some of those discrepancies.

Ronald Sanders, an intelligence official in charge of reviewing contractor policies, revealed in an interview he believed the growth in contracting from 2002 to 2007 had been driven by necessity and was extremely haphazard. Most of these contractors are people who were formerly employed by the CIA or other intelligence services. Thus, the thousands of positions needed were staffed by so many private contractors they eventually outnumbered government employees.

This raises many questions about the risks inherent in letting so many private contractors in positions where they could raid our nations secrets. After 9/11 the numbers needed immediately were mostly filled. This means qualified people with experience were out there working in the private sector already in numbers sufficient to positions.

That itself is a scary thought. One wonders where those people were employed in the interim. Where exactly do private contractors with knowledge CIA agents have do for a living when employing those skill sets in the private sector? Were they working for corporations? If so were those American or foreign corporations? Were they working as consultants to foreign nations?

The truth is the actual numbers of contractors is still unknown. The most foolproof method of determining it, following a money trail, is also unable to be fully traced. If the CIA is extracting unknown quantities of money from no one knows where and using it to pay who knows who how do we know how can we keep track of what is our money to begin with?

There have already been deaths and allegations of bribes involving private contractors. CIA officers leave as government employees at $80,000 a year and come back as contractors at $150,000 a year at taxpayer expense after spending the mandatory amount of time working for who knows who. How nice. Unlike computer viruses, trojan horses, spyware and malware we have no way to root out effectively the bad apples in the bunch. And unlike computers when they become unusable national intelligence agencies can't be replaced. Washington take note.

To read about my inspiration for this article go to www.lawsuitagainstuconn.com.