The secret to working in Tampa? Get clearance

The ads for these Tampa-based jobs read like source material for a Robert Ludlum spy novel.

"Are you looking for a rewarding and challenging career as an Intelligence Analyst with one of the nation's leading Defense Contractors?" the Northrop Grumman Corp. asks.

"The Intelligence Analyst should have experience in (counterterrorism, counterinsurgency), Southwest Asia regional issues, HUMINT, or political/military analyses, and Iraqi or Afghan cultural awareness and political/social environments," reads another, from a company called GTEC.

Calhoun International is looking for someone whose job responsibilities "may include but are not limited to counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, political and military leadership and decision-making of threat areas; nuclear strategy and regional ambitions of target countries; military capabilities, strategy, doctrine and operational concepts."

Every day, the military relies on contractors from the private sector to do everything from translating Urdu, Farsi and Pashto to installing computer networks and gathering intelligence in the field.

Because of the nature of the jobs, applicants usually are required to have at least a secret clearance or the ability to get one. Often - as in the case of the job ads from Northrop Grumman, GTEC and Calhoun International - the applicant is required to have a higher, or top secret, level of clearance.

The need for those with such clearance is particularly acute in Tampa.

With the war in Afghanistan and follow-up operations in Iraq being run by U.S. Central Command, and with special operations forces in play globally under U.S. Special Operations Command - both with their headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base - the Tampa Bay area is one of the nation's leading markets for jobs requiring secret or top secret clearance.

Overall, military contracting is big business. Companies in Tampa were awarded contracts valued at more than $6 billion from 2000 through 2009, according to GovernmentContractsWon.com, a website that tracks contracts using data compiled from the federal government.

Last year alone, the military awarded more than 1,000 contracts worth more than $1.3 billion to companies doing business in Tampa, according to the website.

The annual number and value of contracts increased nearly threefold since Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched in March 2003, according to the website.

To fulfill these contracts, companies have to hire people who have the security clearance to work on sensitive government programs. Many of the jobs from these contracts require at least a top secret clearance, according to officials at U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command.

As a result, for potential employees, having top secret clearance is a valuable commodity. Professionals with the highest level clearance jobs for Department of Defense contractors - top secret with access to sensitive compartmented information, or TS/SCI, averaged an annual salary of $94,282, according to a survey compiled by Clearancejobs.-

com.

The website, run by a former midlevel-cleared government contractor, advertises secret and top secret jobs across the country. By contrast, jobs with merely a secret clearance pay about 12 percent less, according to the survey.

At U.S. Central Command, about 600 of the 2,000 people who deal with intelligence matters are contractors, according to Centcom.

Most of those jobs require top secret clearance, and their numbers have remained steady over the years, according to Centcom.

At U.S. Special Operations Command, about 1,100 contractors "work alongside both military and DoD civilian employees in virtually every facet of the command's mission, including acquisitions, program management, information technology, IT support, administrative, intelligence operations and planning," said Maj. Wes Ticer, a Socom spokesman.

The level of security clearance for those jobs "depends on the access to do that job," he said.

The future of those jobs is getting hazier. Combat operations are over in Iraq, and the United States' agreement with the Iraqi government calls for the withdrawal of all remaining U.S. troops and contractors by the end of 2011.

The president continues to call for a drawdown of forces in Afghanistan beginning in July.

On top of that, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has called for a 10 percent spending cut in, among other areas, military contracts.

The Department of Defense said it is too early to say how Gates' call for efficiencies will play out at Centcom and Socom.

Socom is working to reduce the number of contractors performing functions "that are inherently governmental," Ticer said.

Clearancejobs.com founder and managing director Evan Lesser is among those who think Tampa will avoid the brunt of contractor cutbacks for a while.

"The drawdowns will not affect Tampa," Lesser said. "Definitely not in the next year. There are a fair number of jobs posted for Iraq even through the drawdown. There will still be 100,000 contractors over there."

Afghanistan will continue to be a source of employment for top secret contractors for the near future, he said.

"In Afghanistan, we are so far behind compared to what we are doing in Iraq. It seems like a much more difficult and long and drawn-out battle," he said. "It seems like our presence will be there for a while."