Re: contracting
@disgruntled yank,
Cannot speak for three letter agencies, but have some DoD and other experience. No different than the rest of US Gov't.
My favorite comment concerns cluster computing on the NMCI net (choose one of 'Navy/Marine Corp Intranet' or 'No More Computer on Internet')...
I ask, "How's it goin'?"
Answer, "Um, sir... these f$ckers. Well, they put the cluster in clusterf$ck..."