166 impressive, its operating margin on these contracts had doubled. As it turned out, it did not achieve these profits by increasing its core internal staff. In 2008, it had 22,000 employees on its internal staff, and in 2013, it had roughly the same number on its internal staff. What it expanded was the number of outside contractors it employed. It added in these five years, by one Wall Street analyst’s calculation, some 8,000 new external workers. They were employed as system administrators, infrastructure analysts, computer security specialists and other “geek squad” jobs at the NSA and other government agencies. Their main qualification was their prior secrecy clearances (which saved Booz Allen the expense of vetting them and also the loss income while waiting many months for a clearance.) Snowden therefore was highly-desirable from an economic point of view for Booz Allen. Even though he had no prior experience as an infrastructure analyst, and he had been detected being untruthful about his degree in computer sciences, he not only had a SCI secrecy clearance, but he was willing to take a cut in pay. In keeping with the Booz Allen business plan, such a recruit would provide another cog in its profit machine. Not only had the NSA outsourced much of its computer operations to private companies but the Clinton Administration in 1996 had privatized background checks for government employees requiring security clearances. The idea backed by Vice President Al Gore was to reduce the size of the Federal government by outsourcing investigating the backgrounds of millions of government applicants for jobs. The task had been previously been performed by FBI but it was assumed that a profit-making business could do it faster and more efficiently. The private company named United States Investigative Services (USIS) was purchased in 2007 for $1.5 billion by Providence Equity Partners, a rapidly-expanding investment firm founded only four years earlier by graduates of Bro