WaPo offers up a massive two-year investigation into the hidden world of secret government security agencies and the private companies they employ:
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.
Few of them, presumably, contributing much of long-term value to our economic base — although security certainly is critical, and 9/11 has not been repeated, which is not insignificant. Meanwhile, our global competitors like China and the E.U. are spending their money building high speed rail networks, conducting research into alternative energy, building schools and universities, and so on. Maybe that is one reason unemployment remains so persistently high: the U.S. is steadily losing global competitiveness. In any event, interesting reading.
lasthorseman says
people diss me for being the tin foil hat expert for attempting to point out the most retarded evil and destructive policies and procedures ever concieved by the human race?
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p>Classified security levels above Barry Soetoro, visual puppet executive of the lamestream media of the former united states?
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p>The suppression of the existence of an energy solution since 1901.
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p>The elimination of the ideals of America is what is happening here, plain and simple.
stomv says
of what kind of employees have which clearances. Researchers? Those in uniform? Intelligence gathering? Administrators? Technicians and support staff?
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p>I worked for a few years at Lincoln Laboratory. To get “in the door” you need a background check, and you must gain clearance to be a full time employee — about 2500 of ’em. The guy who repairs the photocopier used for classified documents has a security clearance. Not all of these folks are working on classified items every day, but they have clearance just in case a situation arises where that person is the right one for the job, and the job requires clearance. I wonder: what percent of those 850,000 people work with something classified at least once a day? A week? A month? A year?
kirth says
All military personnel who operate any communications gear get at least a Secret clearance.
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p>Some secrecy in government is probably necessary, but the less, the better. Unchecked secrecy makes democracy impossible.
stomv says
but my point is that the number of people who have clearance may not be a particularly good metric for the number and kind of secrets.
howland-lew-natick says
— Bill Moyers
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p>I’m amazed that so many people have such high clearances. Anyone that has been in the security field will tell you that each cleared individual represents also a potential for a security leak. So the government will have to increase internal security personnel. And who watches them?
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p>The fallacy in a security clearance is that it checks the background of a person. It can’t check the foreground. And people change. Ask Robert Philip Hanssen or Earl Edwin Pitts.
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p>To keep the data flowing the agencies need more data. We’re already there with the amount of domestic spying by the
ChekaStasior whatever they call themselves now. (I wish they wouldn’t use “Homeland”. This is America. “Homeland sounds like “Fatherland” or “Motherland”. Maybe that’s the point – to get away from “America”?) When they run out of enemies though, they won’t dissolve. They just make up new enemies. Did anyone find it odd that the day after 9/11 a 2000 page Patriot Act was before Congress? Anyone think the government could put 2000 pages together in less a few years, never mind a day? Nice to know you’re part of a security plan.<
p>Don’t all tyrannies soon become paranoid states for both the tyrants and the subjects? Who’s on the other side of your monitor?
asnys says
On 9/11, one of the four planes was brought down by citizen action. The underwear bomber was stopped by citizen action. The Times Square bombing. The shoe bomber. They were stopped by ordinary citizens noticing that something was wrong and acting.
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p>Meanwhile, the FBI has been paying informants to go into poor black neighborhoods to instigate terrorism plots so they can arrest the plotters:
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p>”Another defendant actually called the Philadelphia police, mid-plot, and said he was being pressured to commit radical acts by what turned out to be an FBI informer. Prosecutors dismissed this as an obvious decoy maneuver. The key informer in that case — the FBI eventually paid two people to spy on the group — an Egyptian on probation, received $236,000 for his services.” (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/07/06/fbi_foiled_terrorism_plots/index.html)
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p>How many of the plots the FBI has stopped would have happened at all if the FBI hadn’t instigated them?
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p>I don’t know, I don’t want to overstate my case. And I don’t want to make it sound like I think all FBI terrorism arrests are fraudulent, because I don’t. But it seems to me that we might be better off taking a small slice of that $75 billion-say, one percent of it-and spending it on citizen training and awareness, so that people know what to do if they see someone on their plane trying to light their shoes on fire. Maybe that one’s too obvious-tackle the guy and take his shoes away from him-but you know what I mean.
howland-lew-natick says
All bureaucracies must justify their jobs. If law enforcement agencies don’t get within a statistical norm they stand to lose finding. Jobs. If they are already grossly over-funded then they tend to “stretch” for the arrests and DJ for the prosecutions. All agencies do it. If the oath to “protect and defend the Constitution” falls by the wayside, so be it.
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p>”Hmmm, let’s see. My job or the law???” -Which do you think wins?
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p>If people behaved like governments, you’d call the cops. –Kelvin Throop