The State Department’s $10 billion, five-year contract with private security firms is finally out. Guess who’s still a part of it?

Apart from aiming for another Pulitzer Prize, the other most (perhaps more) likely explanation for the style of the piece is that editors have tried so hard not to piss off the security establishment–and to stop short of voicing the conclusions that Dana Priest and William Arkin’s work support–that they’ve turned Priest and Arkin’s work into a bunch of disembodied fluff.

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.

I’m amused by the panic revealed in a memo the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a few weeks ago preparing all members of the intelligence community for an upcoming Dana Priest series covering the same terrain.

I’m not saying this is what’s happening. But if I were a big spook, I’d love to have someone with the skill set of Prince, off in a haven protected from American law, setting up an entity that can do what Blackwater does but do so with neither the legal oversight (as if that did us a damn bit of good) nor the requirement to be paid in cash.

In an article providing many new details about complaints from CIA about the DOD contractor, NYT’s Mark Mazzetti comes pretty close to admitting that this turf war focuses at least partly on whose contractors — rather than whose officers — are conducting the spying in Pakistan.