[$tinkle]

A hidden world, growing beyond control

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation's other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

read it all.

is this the product of a culture of fear + capitalism disguised as socialism?

and while i am an advocate for a lean, mean gov't, this is very much at odds for a competing desire for big brother, which appears to be making a power grab for these agencies, which could be run just as effectively as pure commercial enterprises.

hmmm...

 

[jonKranked]

just think of how many jobs this has created!

 

[Westy]

****ing Obama and his big government!

 

[Secret Squirrel]

We're #1!!! We're #1!!! We're #1!!! We're #1!!! We're #1!!!


Oops...wrong thread.

 

[KavuRider]

Thanks for posting.
Interesting read.

 

[Pesqueeb]

Eisenhower must be rolling in his grave.

 

[$tinkle]

or rolling on his Luftwaffe-friendly interstate system

 

[ohio]

Good god, we need massive COORDINATED cost cutting effort so unbelievably badly. Asking each department to tighten it's belt is idiotic when the problem is too many departments doing the same thing.

But can you imagine the political nightmare of hiring an outside (private) consultancy to the tune of a couple of billion to do the work?

 

[$tinkle]

Good god, we need massive COORDINATED cost cutting effort so unbelievably badly. Asking each department to tighten it's belt is idiotic when the problem is too many departments doing the same thing.

But can you imagine the political nightmare of hiring an outside (private) consultancy to the tune of a couple of billion to do the work?

w3rd.

while working on a gray nsa project in '08, i could not find what the expense threshold for travel related expenses to be. trust me, i tried. when the source is approved, there seems to be no easily reached upper limit on dollar amount. but i guess that's just one of the perks of having a classified budget

 

[Secret Squirrel]

w3rd.

while working on a gray nsa project in '08, i could not find what the expense threshold for travel related expenses to be. trust me, i tried. when the source is approved, there seems to be no easily reached upper limit on dollar amount. but i guess that's just one of the perks of having a classified budget

"Johnnie Walker blue???!? Don't mind if I do!!"