A hidden world, growing beyond control

[HiPointDem]

Last edited Sun Nov 25, 2012, 06:33 AM - Edit history (2)

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...

* 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/

Explore Top Secret America...check out the map to see what spook offices are in your neck of the woods....or where to move to get far away from them...(Montana, the dakotas...)

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/map/

[JDPriestly]

1. So that is what caused our deficit.

Look guys. I'm a senior citizen not a security threat. Don't cut my Social Security to pay for your paranoia and desire to control. Please.

Think. If we hired these people to do useful things, we could solve a lot of problems. For example, if we put some of these people to work insulating our homes or putting solar panels on our roofs in Southern California, we could make some progress on climate change.

It is ridiculous that California, with its sunny summer days and cool enough summer nights burns fossil fuels or uses nuclear energy to run air conditioners in the summer months. We should put some of the cash that goes into "homeland security" into "environmental security."

[Mothdust]

2. and are they preparing

The next Holocaust against the likes of us?

[99th_Monkey]

3. This is so ... well, so "Brazil"

I swear, Terry Gilliam is a genuine modern-day prophet, as evidenced by
his 1985 film entitled "Brazil", a dark tragicomedy, very futuristic, where
absolutely EVERYthing has to do with "TERRORISTS!!!" Terrorism, terror
this and terror that.

In the film, the Gov't's evil "Ministry of Information Retrieval" is an all-powerful,
all-knowing highly efficient CIA-like bureaucracy, except when it isn't and some
serious damage gets done, real human lives are destroyed, etc.

Brazil was among other things, a profoundly prophetic parody, darkly
revealing how utterly insane and ultimately evil the whole "intelligence" game
with it's terrorism meme, truly is, ... and now this has all become literally true
in the U.S.

[valerief]

4. Brazil and Idiocracy have become documentaries. nt

[99th_Monkey]

5. Yep. nt

[Zorra]

11. LOL! That's good.

But close enough to the truth to be scary.

[Victor_c3]

6. I wonder how many of those 854,000 people with top-secret clearances aren't in the military?

At least when I was in the military, many of the officers O-3 and above in rank had top-secret clearances and many senior NCOs did as well.

I also believe that if you are scientist or a technician working on certain programs that you also need to have a top-secret clearance.

Without even knowing for certain, I would assume that there probably is a large amount of civilian personnel working in our embassies that have top-secret clearances as well.

If you are an officer in the military you need to have at least a secret security clearance. The second a document has a social security number on it, it is considered a "secret" document in the Army and is controlled as such.

I wouldn't get too worked up over the top-secret number.

That being said, the rest of the numbers are alarming.

[HiPointDem]

7. well, one of the pages i linked has graphics of the size of various agencies; the intelligence

branches of each of the military services are (each) bigger than cia.

so i don't quite get the distinction or why top secret clearances in the military are inocuous while others are alarming.

[Victor_c3]

8. None of the secret and top secret stuff I saw when I was in the Army was anything alarming

most of it was labeled as such because of the timeliness of the data. For instance, a top secret document could be one outlining the position of a key enemy leader or situational updates for enemy positions and movements in sector. Had the documents and information that I had been privy too been a weak old, they probably wouldn't have been classified at all. This is stuff that you wouldn't want CNN (or fox news) to distribute while the military is currently conducting operations to act on it.

Another example of a secret document that I saw and dealt with was a memorandum for a Soldier that needed to store his personally operated vehicle on post with expired vehicle registration while he was deployed to Iraq. Because the document had his SSN on it, it was classified secret. Hell, even the official order issuing military awards has the Soldiers SSN on it. You don't want that sort of stuff out there to protect people from identity theft.

To me, this sort of stuff is innocuous.

Just saying, I'm not really trying to argue with you.

[PETRUS]

9. K&R

[jsr]

10. That was a good series

[felix_numinous]

12. Eisenhower's and JFKs speeches

about MIC and secret organizations haunt us still. There must be plenty of honest people working at these facilities, but it is insane to keep enabling these entities to operate with no oversight. Is there no way to put a check on these people?

Absolute power corrupts absolutely--we know this.

[snot]

13. K&R'd. I'd like to see these agencies go off the fiscal cliff.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

14. Thats alot of palms being greased,

and a lot of backs being scratched. If this was ever regularly scrutinized, and discussed in detail on the news, dispassionately without the element of fear; I think many fiscal hawks and even common folk would start demanding an end to this corrupt insanity.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

15. Not to worry. Politicians are "overseeing" it.

And, we all know how reliable politicians are to keep watch on the the like of the CIA and bunches of thugs, assassins, and torturers.

[L0oniX]

16. Homeland security is their job security and because of them my SS is in jeopardy?