Hacker News Reader

Because of Good Will Hunting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrOZllbNarw

"You guys handle 80 percent of the intelligence workload. You're seven times the size of the CIA."

Haha. Well, I wouldn't be all the surprised if the the NSA was bigger employee wise. But budget wise, no way.

Yeah if they are paying administrators 150k/year can you imagine how much a contractor for their SAD division makes? Probably a huge amount compared to the average modern mercenary.

NCS does not employ contractors for SOD (which I assume is what you meant by "mercenary", SAD includes non-tactical units too). Pay is relatively modest compared to other lines of work within the Agency.

Edit: I realized after I commented that I dropped alphabet soup all over the uninitiated. NCS is the National Clandestine Service, which is the division of the CIA responsible for covert operations. Most people assume the Special Activities Division (SAD) is only the Special Operations Group (SOG). There are no "mercenaries" within SOG, only Specialized Skills Officers, whom are recruited and transfered from other Special Forces branches.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com