This is unusual, a government policy that makes sense!
The Director of the CIA has told NIMA (National Imagery and Mapping Agency) to buy commercial imagery to use for mapping missions. This makes both technical and financial sense. Those ultrahigh resolution "national technical means" satellites have too narrow a field of view for broad area mapping. In contrast, the 1m resolution Iconos and 0.62m resolution imagry from DigitalGlobe should be more than accurate enough for the job at a fraction of the cost.