"Almost 60 percent of the cia is contractors doing everything from running agents to counterintelligence. There's a lack of oversight, lack of accountability, and brain drain. Taxpayers pay a lot of money to recruit people out of college and then send them through this elaborate training procedure down at the 'farm,' and then they're less than fully productive for maybe the first five years. Finally they start being productive, and that's when they start getting recruited by these contractors, who offer them twice as much money. And taxpayers end up paying twice as much for them through these contractors."

Read an extended interview with James Bamford about the Bush legacy here.