The CIA’s expanding contractor security force

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 14:05:00 +0000

The Washington Post on Friday published another revealing report on the U.S.'s sprawling intelligence operations overseas. Greg Miller and Julie Tate reported on the CIA's Global Response Staff (GRS) -- a secret security force created after 9/11 which recruits "hundreds of former U.S. Special Forces operatives to serve as armed guards for the agency’s spies."

It was the GRS who were swift to the scene to fend off a second attack by militants on the U.S. consulate in Libya in September. Largely constituted of contractors working part of the year for substantial fees (up to $140,000), the GRS is one of the most dangerous assignments in the CIA's increasingly far-reaching tentacles. At any one time, around 125 GRS contractors are assigned around the world and, as the Post noted, "Of the 14 CIA employees killed since 2009, five worked for the GRS, all as contractors. They include two killed at Benghazi, as well as three others who were within the blast radius on Dec. 31, 2009, when a Jordanian double agent detonated a suicide bomb at a CIA compound in Khost, Afghanistan."

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The CIA’s expanding contractor security force