The Obama Administration taken some steps to "insource" some jobs back to the civil service. But despite outcries from the contracting community, the results so far have less than dramatic. We're still paying far too many guys like Edward Snowden far too many taxpayer dollars. And we probably will be for a long while.

*UPDATE June 11, 2013: Booz Allen has issued an updated press release stating that Snowden was paid "a salary at the rate of $122,000." That, of course, conflicts with the Guardian's account, which reported that Snowden: "had a 'very comfortable life' that included a salary of roughly $200,000. . ." I've placed a call to Booz Allen to try and find out if they believe Snowden was simply exaggerating his salary, if the Guardian was actually referring to a total pay package including bonuses rather than a salary rate, or if there is some other explanation of the discrepancy.

UPDATE 2 June 11, 2013: Booz Allen has yet to return my call for comment. However, The Washington Post's Erik Wemple has some additional reporting: There's a massive difference between $122,000 and $200,000 -- a 64 percent difference. Yet Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist at the forefront of these stories, says this: "That is a very strangely worded statement -- using 'rate,'" writes Greenwald. When asked whether he'd seen Snowden's pay stubs, Greenwald said he hadn't. "[H]is salary didn't really strike me as a central part of the story, to put that mildly. It's possible Booz Allen is using a pro-rated figure, or it's possible Snowden talked about his salary at his prior NSA job at Dell." A source told the Erik Wemple Blog that Snowden wasn't bonus-eligible. The word "rate" doesn't strike me as quite so strange. But there still appear to be open questions on this issue. Hopefully more answers will be forthcoming.

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