Book Review. Bülent Sungur (2025) The Oversight of Outsourcing US Intelligence after 9/11: Private Intelligence Contractors. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 318 pp., ISBN: 978-3-031-82041-0

S ome private military companies (PMCs), such as Blackwater, became infamous following their extensive involvement in American military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan throughout the 2000s (Scahill, 2008).Although not raising as much controversy as PMCs with their presence on the battlefield, private sector contractors also increasingly expanded into the intelligence community.Bülent Sungur's recent book, The Oversight of Outsourcing US Intelligence After 9/11, contributes to security privatisation scholarship by providing an analysis of the involvement of private intelligence contractors (PICs) in intelligence activities after 9/11 and the associated oversight considerations arising from this participation.Sungur's book contributes to the existing scholarship on intelligence outsourcing, such as Daricili's (2019) and Voelz's (2009) examinations of the intelligence roles that have been played by private contractors.Previous literature has also addressed the legal frameworks and compliance responsibilities governing the public and private sectors in intelligence (Michaels, 2008) as well as the evolution of contracting relationships.Sungur, however, specifically contributes to theoretical engagement on the subject by employing the principal-agent theory to analyse the relationship between PICs (the primary agent) and the American people (the primary principal), the US intelligence community, the President, and the Congress throughout the war on terror.The main themes that emerge throughout the book pertain to the rationales and consequences