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The US troops handling top-secret missions in Africa aren’t the only ones working for Uncle Sam. Despite the Pentagon pushing for more soldiers overseas, the government is outsourcing some of their own intel-gathering programs to private contractors.

We already know that Americans are apt to go abroad when it comes to items that are more affordable overseas. Is even managing the country’s intelligence too demanding to be divvied up within the ranks of the FBI, CIA or another US entity though? A report published this week by the Washington Post confirms just that. Joining the hundreds of US troops stationed across the continent of Africa — where the Defense Department is preparing to send an additional 3,000 servicemen in 2013 — are an underground intelligence operation staffed by private sector employees being paid by the Pentagon.

Along with at least 100 soldiers dispatched to central Africa last year to hunt disputed warlord Joseph Kony, the US manages a multi-pronged platoon of all types of servicemen to engage in largely secretive military missions. Instead of staking out foreign adversaries on their own, the US government is grabbing private contractors to fulfill the country’s own surveillance and spy missions.

Since at least 2009, the US has relied on a little-known project under the US Africa Command called Tusker Sands to scoop up intel overseas. By recruiting intelligence experts and military vets, the government has gone outside of the Pentagon to pull bodies staffed by private contractors for its spying needs.

“Deniability,” the Bookings Institution’s Peter W. Singer says, is the main motivation for taking that route, but he adds that “it rarely turns out that way.”

Although the government may go to the private sector to avoid a scandal if a military-mastered spy mission goes wrong, Singer says problems with the program usually end with either one or two outcomes.

“When things go bad, you can have two scenarios,” Singer tells the Post. “Either the contractors are left holding the bag, complaining about abandonment, or else some kind of abuse happens and they’re not held accountable because of a mix of unclear legal accountability and a lack of political will to do something about it.”

On the record, a representative for the US Africa Command tells the Post that, if one of their hires was apprehended by foreign forces, enemy or other, they “would be provided the same assistance that any U.S. citizen would be provided by the U.S. Government should they be in danger.” Bringing onboard Defense Department or Central Intelligence Agency personnel, however, would presumably mean a more rapid response, and one that might involve a good chunk of the country’s military.

Under Tusker Sands, the US hires private teams to take the helm of spy mission with little more than basic instructions. They often scour for applicants with military training and require that contractors are already equipped with their own supplies.

On GlobalSecurity.org, the project is explained as “a manned airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platform, along with an associated intelligence fusion cell designed to address emerging theater collection requirements and command strategy to build partner nation capacity.” In lay terms, though, it’s just another endeavor that lets the US engage unlawfully overseas without the blame being pointed at Uncle Sam.

Arrested US spy, Amir Hekmati.

A senior Iranian lawmaker says the US government demanding that Iran return the CIA spy, recently arrested by the country’s intelligence agents, is outrageous.

“The US spy is a criminal and must be tried in Iran for the crime he has committed,” Kazem Jalali said on Wednesday.

The lawmaker, who is also the spokesman for Iran’s Majlis (parliament) National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, added that US officials have shamelessly sent spies and spy drones into Iran and brazenly says they want their operative and spy drone back.

Noting that President Barack Obama is in dire conditions, Jalali said, “ The severe economic crisis in the United States and the difficult times ahead of the Democrats in the upcoming presidential election, have prompted them to launch such a immature political propaganda campaign.”

“How come that the Americans kidnap Iranian citizens and keep them in custody for [many] years, but…when our intelligence forces arrest an American spy, the US president [Barack Obama] says he must be freed?” he asked.

On Saturday, December 17, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry announced that it has arrested a CIA spy of Iranian descent, foiling an intricate American plot to carry out espionage activities in the Islamic Republic.

In a televised confession broadcast on the Iranian television on Sunday night, the US intelligence operative, Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, said he joined the US Army in 2001 and underwent decade-long intelligence training.

He added that he was sent to the US-run Bagram Airbase in eastern Afghanistan and given access to classified intelligence before flying to Tehran.

Hekmati served with the elite US Marines as an Arabic translator, and travelled to Iran some four months ago, said his father, adding that Amir was born in the State of Arizona in southwestern US and joined the Marines after he receiving his high school diploma.

On Monday, December 19, the United States demanded that Iran return its captured CIA spy “without delay.”

US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland added that the US had requested access to Hekmati through the embassy of Switzerland, which maintains a US interest section in Tehran in the absence of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

“We call on the Iranian government to grant the Swiss protecting power immediate access to him and release (him) without delay,” Nuland told reporters.

She claimed that the family of the detained US spy first reported his detention in September and that the State Department has offered the relatives consular assistance.

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