WASHINGTON – All World Language Consultants Incorporated, in suburban Rockville, Md., is seeking experienced military interrogators to work in Iraq for $153,500 a year plus bonuses, with proficiency in Arabic “preferred but not required,” according to Yahoo’s Hot Jobs listings.

The U.S. Army element of the Multi-National Force-Iraq is looking for a private contractor to provide airborne surveillance over that country that will “provide situational awareness of the entire area of operations,” according to another Web announcement.

Lockheed Martin Corporation is seeking a counterintelligence analyst to work for the Pentagon’s newest intelligence agency, the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), in its Colorado Springs facility to “create and deliver briefings, write reports, and represent Counterintelligence Field Activity,” according to a Web classified ad.

These positions and thousands like them are part of a growing trend at the Pentagon to contract out intelligence jobs that were formerly done primarily by service personnel and civil service employees.

But, by using contract employees, government agencies lose control over those doing this sensitive work and an element of profit is inserted into what is being done. Also, as investigations have revealed, politics, and corruption may be introduced into the process.

The office of Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte has quietly begun to study the contracting issue because “it already is a problem,” a senior intelligence official said in a recent interview.

A related concern for intelligence agencies inside and outside the Pentagon is that the government is training people and getting them security clearances, but they then leave for better pay offered by contractors, sometimes to do the same work.

“Once cleared, they can get a higher salary outside and they are gone,” the official said. “We’re leasing back our former employees.”

The phenomenon is partly the result of Congress’ approving large funding increases for intelligence activities but not increasing the limit on the number of full-time persons that agencies can hire. “We don’t have the billets,” the official said, so the surge is taken care of by contracting out the jobs.

Retired Major General Paul Eaton, who ran Iraqi military training from 2003 to 2004, describes the hiring of civilians to do jobs previously done by the military as a “shell game” created by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to keep the “force strength static on paper.” In an op-ed piece in Sunday’s New York Times, General Eaton wrote, “This tactic may help for a bit, but it will likely fall apart in the next budget cycle with those positions swiftly eliminated.”

“The Pentagon ramped up so fast, it had to turn to contract personnel to have continuity,” said another former senior intelligence official who now does contract work. He pointed out that some jobs are so complex, military personnel on three-year rotations are facing reassignment just as they master their jobs.

The trend toward contracting for intelligence analysts will hurt the ability of the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency to retain and keep high quality people, said a former senior intelligence official who helped supervise the rebuilding of the CIA’s case officer and analyst corps. “It takes time to get the young up to snuff, and you need 10 to 20 years to get the value for that investment,” this former official said, asking for anonymity because of his past role in government.

John Brennan, the longtime CIA official who started up and headed the National Counterterrorism Center before his retirement, said contract personnel “bring on recognized expertise that exists outside government” and “often are needed as new (intelligence) systems are being built.”

Now a contractor himself, Mr. Brennan said it should come as no surprise that many younger military and government-trained intelligence personnel, who have top security clearances, are resigning to take jobs in the private sector.