Top Secret America

[goldmonkey]

A hidden world, growing beyond control (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/print/)

"Top Secret America" is a project nearly two years in the making that describes the huge national security buildup in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

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.

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

[gunDriller]

A hidden world, growing beyond control (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/print/)

"Top Secret America" is a project nearly two years in the making that describes the huge national security buildup in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

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.


it's basically a Jobs for Jews program.

also, i hear they'll consider you if you swear your loyalty to Israel, and have relevant job experience.

the way a lot of these programs work is, they pay the employee $X per hour, then bill the government about $3X for that time.

so the more warm bodies they have, the more money they make.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087231/

"Falcon & the Snowman" - a movie made about a TRW employee at their Redondo Beach facility who gave some satellite info to Russia. an older co-worker of mine at the TRW San Diego facility actually worked at the same facility that the movie is based on, and met the TRW employee depicted in the movie.

[Ponce]

Stupid to think that ths is only for "terrorists"...........

First post of the day...........good morning to one and all.

[Phoenix]

Stupid to think that ths is only for "terrorists"...........


Not at all...it IS just for the terrorists.

You and I are the "terrorists."

[Phoenix]

A man who knew told us all about it...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY

[gunDriller]

i can tell you what some of those Top Secret assholes had to say after 9-11.

i worked for a defense contractor in San Diego at the time.

also there was a group of about 25 of use that ate lunch from 1 to 1:30, after everybody else - the "gym rats". some guys played basketball, i went swimming at the gym across the street.

so on 9-12 ... at my table there's one pushy Jewish guy from New York, last name Tucker. he starts ranting that we should "just kill a million Palestinians, just kill 'em". meanwhile, i am eating lunch.

then he insists on an answer from me, "if you had to choose between the life of a loved one and a million Palestinians, what would you choose ?"

i think i told him that's a stupid question.

so then he says, "so what's your solution, smarty-pants".

i said, "conduct foreign policy in a way that doesn't make enemies".


That really got under Tucker's skin. later in the day i was waiting for a conference room & Tucker is in there sitting next to my boss. Tucker elbows my boss and motions toward me and says something about the "stupid pacifist", referring to me. (not that i am a pacifist, but Tucker's not my first choice to talk shop with.)

the next day, Tucker decides to resurrect the issue. we are now in the company of Vic. Vic is tall, obviously good for basketball. Tucker tells Vic, "hey, we ought to kill a million Palestinians".

Vic says, "A million ? How about a Billion ?"


Both Tucker and Vic had a high-level security clearance.

[Twisted Titan]

After you kill the billion

Who will be your strawman then???

T

[goldmonkey]

Next article in the series is available:


National Security Inc. (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/national-security-inc/print/)

In June, a stone carver from Manassas chiseled another perfect star into a marble wall at CIA headquarters, one of 22 for agency workers killed in the global war initiated by the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The intent of the memorial is to publicly honor the courage of those who died in the line of duty, but it also conceals a deeper story about government in the post-9/11 era: Eight of the 22 were not CIA officers at all. They were private contractors.

To ensure that the country's most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation's interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called "inherently government functions." But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post.

What started as a temporary fix in response to the terrorist attacks has turned into a dependency that calls into question whether the federal workforce includes too many people obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest -- and whether the government is still in control of its most sensitive activities. In interviews last week, both Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and CIA Director Leon Panetta said they agreed with such concerns.

The Post investigation uncovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America created since 9/11 that is hidden from public view, lacking in thorough oversight and so unwieldy that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

It is also a system in which contractors are playing an ever more important role. The Post estimates that out of 854,000 people with top-secret clearances, 265,000 are contractors. There is no better example of the government's dependency on them than at the CIA, the one place in government that exists to do things overseas that no other U.S. agency is allowed to do.

Continued ... (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/national-security-inc/print/)

[goldmonkey]

The secrets next door (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/secrets-next-door/print/)
In suburbs across the nation, the intelligence community goes about
its anonymous business. Its work isn’t seen, but its impact is surely felt.

[gunDriller]

definitely, in San Francisco, and in San Diego, God, it's door to door spooks.

since 9-11, that has been one of the primary growth industries - "Homeland (Jewland) Security".

same deal in Washington DC & nearby parts of North Carolina & Virginia.

etc. etc.

not many remember September 10, 2001, because of what happened the next day.

on September 10, Rumsfeld announced that the Pentagon had "misplaced" approx. $1.3 Trillion (you read that right, trillion with a "T").

sort of like when they announce important news on a Friday when everybody is drinking & trying to get laid.

i expect the $1.3 Trillion that the Pentagon misplaced went into secret bank accounts. in preparation for the "War on/of Terror".

i could guess which banks hosted those bank accounts - the banks that were bailed out.

anyway, 1 million Top Secret. that's about 1% of the working population - and it doesn't include military personnel that work in the dominion of those with TS clearances, even if they (as an Army Private, for example) don't have TS clearance.

so - in these countries we are taught to fear - Soviet Union, for example - how much of the population worked for the Secret Police ?

[MAGNES]

Don't forget the torture industry created by Israel.

Huge companies, CACI, TITAN, and another one SAC I think,
some acronym like that. Don't forget The Generals report
long ago, got canned by Rummy, etc, it is all Israel.
They are paying their people hundreds of thousands
every year and paying their companies billions.

They all got off free. That alone tells you something,
especially since info has come out by key people
that they are torturing innocent people and even
admitting they are fighting ordinary people and
the whole war is phantoms.

[Phoenix]

and another one SAC I think


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIC_%28company%29

[goldmonkey]

Top 10 blockbuster revelations from the Washington Post’s intelligence complex exposé (http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100721/pl_yblog_upshot/top-10-blockbuster-revelations-from-the-washington-posts-intellegence-complex-expose)

Even people who aren't allowed to tell their spouses what they do and undergo lie-detector tests as part of their job description go to work every day in what looks like a typical suburban office park.

In a cluster of ordinary-looking office buildings outside Washington, the nation's intelligence workers intercept and handle top-secret information in 681 locations, in between taking breaks for Quiznos sandwiches, write Dana Priest and William Arkin in the final installment of the Washington Post's three-part series on the nation's intelligence system.

Arkin and Priest say in the series that the nation's sprawling top-secret intelligence complex is so bloated and riddled with redundancies and inefficiencies — and cloaked in secrecy — that no one in the government actually knows if it's making Americans safer. It's become a "fourth branch" of government, they say, accountable to no one.

We've been flagging the most interesting revelations from the series here at the Upshot. (See our summary of Part 1 and of Part 2). Now that the full investigation has been published, here's your cheat sheet to the top 10 findings from the project. (You should also read all three articles!)

1. The U.S. intelligence system has exploded in size since the Sept. 11 attacks. Its budget was $75 billion last year, 2.5 times what it was before the attacks, and more than 850,000 people hold top-secret security clearances. More than 30 top-secret intelligence complexes have been built or are being built in the D.C. area since 2001, and at least 263 government intelligence organizations have been created or reorganized since 9/11.

2. Only a few officials in the Department of Defense have access to all of the top-secret activities and information. Two "super users" in the department told the Post that it's impossible for them to keep track of the mountains of top-secret info they're exposed to. "I'm not going to live long enough to be briefed on everything," one said.

3. Agencies are collecting so much data that they don't have enough translators or researchers to analyze it. Every day, the National Security Agency's systems "intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications."

4. Turf wars among agencies can prevent the sharing of information. Congress created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2004 so that someone would be in charge of the sprawling national intelligence apparatus. But Congress didn't give the director clear legal or budgetary control over all the agencies. As a result, the office, the Defense Department and the CIA have engaged in counterproductive power struggles.

5. This confusion has had real consequences. The reporters say secrecy and lack of coordination prevented intelligence workers from stopping an Army major's attack on Ft. Hood and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's alleged attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airplane last fall.

6. Contractors are not supposed to perform what federal rules define as "inherently government functions," but they do. In every single intelligence agency, contractors are performing the same functions as federal employees, and often for higher pay. Contractors for the CIA "have recruited spies in Iraq, paid bribes for information in Afghanistan and protected CIA directors visiting world capitals."

7. Out of the 854,000 people who have top-secret clearances, 265,000 are contractors. That's about a third of the total workforce in the nation's intelligence agencies. About 2,000 small to midsize private companies do top-secret work.

8. The booming corporate intelligence industry is siphoning off the most skilled workers from the government with better pay and shiny bonuses. Contractors can offer twice as much money to experienced federal employees as the government can, and at least one corporate executive was spotted recruiting in the CIA's cafeteria during working hours.

9. Hiring contractors is also really expensive for the government, despite the Bush administration's hopes it would be cheaper than hiring more federal employees. "Contractors made up 29 percent of the workforce in the intelligence agencies but cost the equivalent of 49 percent of their personnel budgets," the Post says. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that federal workers are 25 percent cheaper than contractors.

10. Employees with top-secret clearance who work in a cluster of ordinary-looking office building outside of Washington must submit to strict rules. They take multiple lie-detector tests, are coached to avoid questions from neighbors and friends, and can lose their jobs for borrowing too much money or having friends from certain countries. Some assume false identities.



...but nothing was brought to light about the illegal and uncontrolled black-side operations that are shielded by the veil of national security…which I think is primarily to prepare prioritized lists of dissidents for future incarceration or elimination. (http://gold-silver.us/forum/general-discussion/in-interview-joel-skousen-bring-up-a-point-that-most-even-in-the-truth-movemen/msg84342/#msg84342)

[horseshoe3]

Stupid to think that ths is only for "terrorists"...........


These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other.

Patrick Henry

[gunDriller]

and another one SAC I think


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIC_%28company%29


+ they're hiring !

http://www.saic.com/career/

women & heavyset black men, apparently.
http://www.saic.com/career/images/promo_worktogether2.jpg