Location

Internatioal Spy Museum. After the 9/11 attacks, the government contracted for services due to a shortage of skilled personnel that followed the end of the Cold War. In August of 2009, The New York Times reported that "more than a quarter of the intelligence community's current work force is made up of contractors, carrying out missions like intelligence collection and analysis and, until recently, interrogation of terrorist suspects." Media reports identified Blackwater, the best known of these contractors, as a participant in a secret CIA al-Qaeda capture and assassins program, Kateri Carmola, professor of Political Science at Middlebury and author of Private Security Contractors and New Wars: Risk, Law, and Ethics; and Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army discuss how the use of contractors has helped or harmed the intelligence community and what the implications are for accountability or lack thereof. $12.50 per person; Members of The Spy Ring $10 per person