Really good New York Times piece on WikiLeaked accounts of private security contractors. And while it’s not the main thrust of the piece, the following section shows how the murky legal rules and chain-of-command situation in Iraq worked to the contractors’ detriment as well as their benefit: The threats were not limited to insurgents, the [...]

Adam Goldman has another in his series of articles fleshing out the details of the torture that John Durham is investigating. Today’s story describes the former FBI-turned CIA guy, “Albert” threatened Rahim al-Nashiri with a drill–with the approval of Albert’s boss, “Mike.”

While you’re there, note this emerging pattern in Goldman’s reporting on torture: the return of torturers as CIA contractors.

The Washington Post has been turning lots of heads this week with a big series on intelligence contracting. The series has gotten a lot of people in DC talking about the problem with contractors. But we here at FDL have been talking about it for years, not least when we hosted Tim Shorrock–who wrote the book on intelligence contracting, Spies for Hire–for a book salon two years ago. As I pointed out on Monday, one thing Shorrock emphasized was the degree to which the contractors are partnering with the government to develop longterm strategy.

On Monday it’s expected that the Washington Post will debut a series by Dana Priest on military contractors, with an emphasis on intelligence contracting. We’ve known for some time there are far more contractors than troops, that we don’t know the exact number — which makes for a lot of interesting questions.

Rep. Alan Grayson says that legislation to deal with the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which he believes will pass the House shortly, will include a ban on direct campaign spending by any corporation who has a contract with the federal government.

Our concern should be focused not only on corporate interests behind the push for escalation in Afghanistan; we should be concerned about the “shadow army.”