via the Washington Post (9/25/07)
CACI International, an Arlington government contractor, said yesterday it was buying Athena Innovative Solutions, an intelligence-analysis firm with a coveted supply of employees with security clearances but also a controversial past.
The acquisition, valued at $200 million, would give CACI, a developer of technology systems for the Defense Department, intelligence agencies and civilian agencies, a company in which 95 percent of the 600 employees hold top-secret security clearances.
The deal also represents a new phase for Athena, which was known as MZM and ran into
trouble after it was linked to the bribery scandal of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a former Republican congressman from California who is serving eight years and four months in prison...
...CACI, like other big contractors, has been on a buying binge, acquiring at least 20 companies since 2004 in the hunt for top-secret security clearances. "You can't duplicate the type of people that Athena has and the clearances it has," said Robert B. McKeon, president of Veritas. "It's a very tight market for these types of clearances. In one fell swoop to be able to buy a company with 600 of them is quite an achievement."
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the demand for such clearances has grown fast as the government outsourced more classified intelligence work. At the same time, the process for obtaining security clearance has grown arduous. A government report in February found that it took, on average, more than a year for top-secret clearance and six months for a lesser clearances. The report said it was "a totally unacceptable length of time" for the 1.9 million clearance requests each year...MORE.
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