FLASHBACK! President's Daily Brief Prepared By For-Profit Corporations

I missed this blog story when it was first posted by in 2007. However, it makes so much sense that I never even thought to consider the possibility. Since the government and corporations partner up in so many other areas, why wouldn't they partner up in intelligence gathering, including the President's Daily Brief, the most sensitive and confidential daily document in the country?

Who knows more about the international intelligence than a powerful multinational corporation with a presence in the regions at issue? As a result, the corporation carries "the weight of the combined intelligence agencies in the United States."

It’s true that the government pays for and signs off on the assessment, but much of the analysis and even some of the underlying intelligence gathering is corporate. Corporations have so penetrated the Intelligence Community that it’s impossible to distinguish their work from the government’s. Although the President’s Daily Brief has the seal of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, it is misleading. For full disclosure, the PDB [President's Daily Brief] really should look more like NASCAR with corporate logos plastered all over it.

UPDATE: Here is another article called "Intelligence Gathering" that further discusses this subject of for-profit, private corporations determining the course of U.S. intelligence.

Key functions of intelligence agencies are now run by private corporations. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) revealed in May that 70 percent of the intelligence budget goes to contractors.

For all practical purposes, effective control of the NSA is with private corporations, which run its support and management functions. As the Washington Post's Walter Pincus reported last year, more than 70 percent of the staff of the Pentagon's newest intelligence unit, CIFA (Counterintelligence Field Activity), is made up of corporate contractors.

Source: The Spy Who Billed Me; The Nation