Senate Grills DNI Nominee On Defense Contractors

Robert Hune-Kalter - Talk Radio News Service

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) nominee Gen. Jim Clapper testified Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee. If confirmed, he would become the fourth director of the fairly young department. 

Today, the Washington Post published the second of a three-part series detailing how heavily the Department of Defense (DoD) relies on contractors to do, among other things, intelligence gathering. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) expressed concern to Clapper over the large number of civilian contractors currently carrying out such work.

“The use of contractors needs to continue to decrease substantially,” said Feinstein.

Clapper told the committee that he believes the bloated number will come down naturally. History, he said, shows that the size of the nation’s intelligence community has fluctuated based on events.

“We were constricting facilities, [employing] fewer people, then 9/11 occurred. We put the breaks on screech, and then had to rejuvenate and re-expand the intelligence community,” he said. “Of course, the obvious way to do that is through contractors.”

Clapper said the giant number of contractors will swing back like a pendulum, and compared the situation faced by the intelligence community now, to the problem the U.S. faced after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the Pentagon reduced its intelligence force by 20 percent.  

Multiple members of the committee asked Clapper to confirm that the DNI is the clear leader of the intelligence committee.

“I would not have agreed to take this position on if I were to be a titular figure or a hood ornament,” he replied.  “There needs to be a clear, defined, [and] identifiable leader of the intelligence community to exert direction and control over the entirety of that community.”