"Intelligence gathering" is understood to be "outsourced" as you put it, but this is not my real concern here.
My concern is foreign nationals on the payroll who do much more than simple intelligence gathering. Situations where we are forced to have foreigners having direct access to sensitive information.
You will find very few American citizens working as translators - it is not because we dont have citizens to do the work, we have but our government prefers to hire those outside the US.
You might find it surprising that we are recruiting translators in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan now among other countries and offering these people a fast track to citizenship.
Bzzt.
America is the most determinedly monolingual culture in the world--the vast majority of Americans refuse to learn any language besides English (and many refuse to learn anything beyond the bare minimum necessary to graduate high school).
Most of the folks who speak Arabic and who are American citizens are leftist-whackjob college professors who teach Arabic. One problem we're having in getting translators is that universities are refusing to cooperate with the Department of Defense--several schools have flatly refused to allow active-duty military personnel to enroll in classes in Arabic, Pashto, Urdu, or Dari. The leftists have decided that the War on Terror is an opportunity to reprise the glory days of protesting Vietnam.
You might find it surprising that we are recruiting translators in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan now among other countries and offering these people a fast track to citizenship.
Utterly unsurprising, given that a Saudi is more likely to speak English well enough to be a translator than an American is likely to speak Arabic well enough to be a translator.