WASHINGTON — Four months after James R. Clapper left his federal job as head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in June 2006, he joined the boards of three government contractors, two of which had been doing business with his agency while he was there.
It was not the only revolving door entered by Clapper, who is now President Barack Obama’s nominee to be director of national intelligence.
In October 2006 he was hired full time by DFI International, which was trying to boost its consulting with intelligence agencies. In April 2007, when he returned to public service as the chief of the Pentagon’s intelligence programs, DFI paid him a $50,000 bonus on his way out the door, according to his financial disclosure statement. Five months later, DFI landed a contract to advise Clapper’s Pentagon office, though company officials do not recall collecting any revenue from the deal.
There was nothing illegal or unusual about any of thosemoves in Washington, where former officials frequently land jobs with private contractors they previously dealt with as government employees. When Clapper entered the private sector, he was prohibited by federal ethics laws from representing his new employers before his former agency for one year. The White House says Clapper played no direct role in the selection of his former firm to advise his Pentagon office.
Now, however, Clapper is poised to become intelligence chief at a time when Congress is asking questions about the explosive growth of private contracting in the $75 billion U.S. intelligence operation. Clapper strongly defended the close alliance between government and contractors in response to a Washington Post series last week.
Clapper, a retired Air Force general, was not asked about his private-sector ties during his confirmation hearing Tuesday, but senators peppered him with questions about the Post series.
Thirty percent of those with top secret clearances are contractors, the Post estimated, a level of privatization the paper said calls into question “whether the government is still in control of its most sensitive activities.”
Clapper challenged those conclusions. Acknowledging there are problems with contractor management, he nevertheless described the growth of contractors as “in some ways a testimony to the ingenuity, innovation and capability of our contractor base.”
Clapper, who also spent six years with government contractors after retiring from the Air Force in 1995, is hardly alone in his spins through the revolving door between government and contractors. A former director of national intelligence, retired Vice Adm. Mike McConnell, was earning a reported $2 million a year at Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the biggest intelligence contractors, before he was named to the federal post in January 2007. McConnell returned to Booz Allen in January 2009 to lead the firm’s national security business.
Clapper was paid a total of $172,842 by four companies from October 2006 to April 2007, his disclosure statementsshow, and another $36,500 by Georgetown University, where he was a part-time professor.
Matthew Travis, a former DFI official, said the intelligence contract did not end up being lucrative for the company.
“I am almost positive we never saw a dime of work out of this,” Travis said.
In a statement released Friday on Clapper’s behalf, the White House said, “Jim Clapper has devoted 40 years of his professional life in service to our country in and out of uniform. It is without doubt that he passed up large private-sector salaries to come back into government service after he retired from a 30-plus-year military career.”
Clapper told senators last week that he is well-suited to examine the use of contractors.
“I worked as a contractor for six years myself, so I think I have a good understanding of the contribution that they have made and will continue to make,” he said. “I think the issue is, what’s the magnitude? And most importantly ... how do we ensure that we’re getting our money’s worth ?”
Front Section, Pages 2 on 07/26/2010