After the 9/11 attacks, the need for intelligence activities ran up against the extreme shortages of skilled personnel created by 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.” Blackwater (now known as XE) is the best known of these contractors and has been identified in media reports as a participant in a secret CIA program that sought to use special teams of assassins to kill or capture al-Qaeda leaders overseas. How has the use of contractors helped or harmed the intelligence community? What are the implications for accountability or lack thereof? Join 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 for this timely discussion.