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.

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/







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WaPo Will Commit Treason Monday/National Security Staff Warned

Our constitutional rights are being trampled sixteen different ways every day by the Obama administration, the government has made it a felony to cover the Gulf Oil spill too closely, the president may have perjured himself in the Blago investigation, but never mind trying to cover all those worthy news stories: the Washington Post thinks it has found some national security secrets, so it’s going to blabber them all over its newspaper starting Monday—reportedly, complete with an interactive website linking jobs, codenames and missions.

Quinn Hillyer at Washington Times found out Friday. He prints a warning letter which has gone out from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, telling them to do whatever necessary to protect staff in sensitive positions.

http://www.uncoverage.net/2010/07/wapo-will-commit-treason-mondaynational-security-staff-warned/