In the decade since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, private intelligence firms and security consultants¹ have peeled away veterans from the top reaches of the CIA, hiring scores of longtime officers in large part to gain access to the burgeoning² world of intelligence contracting.

在2001年9·11恐怖袭击事件过去的十年间，美国中央情报局（CIA）高层中的一些资深工作人员流失严重，频频被私人情报公司和安全顾问团体挖走。这些公司还雇用了大批长期在CIA担任要职的官员，主要是为了进军发展迅猛的情报外包领域。

At least 91 of the agency’s upper-level managers have left for the private sector³ in the past 10 years, according to data compiled by The Washington Post.

In many quarters in Washington, government officials decamp（逃走） for the private sector as a matter of course（理所当然的） . Defense⁴ consultancies routinely hire generals retiring from the Pentagon; the city’s lobbying firms are stacked with former members of Congress and administration officials.

But the wave of departures from the CIA has marked an end to a decades-old culture of discretion⁵ and restraint（抑制，约束） in which retired⁶ officers, by and large, did not join contractors⁷ that perform intelligence work for the government.

It has also raised questions about the impact of the losses incurred⁸（招致，遭受） by the agency. Veteran officers leave with a wealth of institutional knowledge, extensive personal contacts and an understanding of world affairs afforded only to those working at the nation’s preeminent⁹（卓越的） repository（储藏室，仓库） of intelligence.

Among the CIA’s losses to the private sector have been top subject-matter experts including Stephen Kappes, who served as the agency’s top spy in Moscow and who helped negotiate Libya’s disarmament in 2003; Henry Crumpton, who was one of the CIA’s first officers in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks; and Cofer Black, the director of the agency’s counterterrorism center on Sept. 11.

The exodus¹⁰（大批的离去） into the private sector has been driven by an explosion in intelligence contracting. As part of its Top Secret America investigation¹¹, The Post estimated that of 854,000 people with top-secret clearances¹², 265,000 are contractors. Thirty percent of the workforce¹³ in the intelligence agencies is made up of contractors.

Those contractors perform a wide range of tasks, among them assessing security risks, analyzing¹⁴ intelligence and providing “risk mitigation（风险缓解） " services in foreign countries.

Some of the officials quoted for this report spoke¹⁵ on the condition of anonymity¹⁶ because of the sensitivities involved in discussing the agency’s inner workings.

Few of them cited problems at the agency as their reason for leaving. Rather, they said, the choice was often financially driven.