The Wash Post's Top Secret America: from your very own former insider

[NightWatcher]

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

First, today I am thankfully so far from the industry's web, but for several years I was smack dab in the middle of it. Former intel and company men began grooming me while still in college.... To flash forward, its a couple years after 9/11 and I quit while holding several security clearances, being right in the middle of this con, and making good money after coming to several conclusions. Some listed below.

Secondly, I have only spent the last hour or so devouring the piece, and while I've seen things I knew were true, I've read things that I suspected and others I had no idea of. I've also seen things they've missed.

If this project interests you, allow me to suggest a book by Tim Shorrock, Spies For Hire. I read his book one day at a Barnes and Noble and contacted him to add to his piece. He had, as I assume do the Post, more info, but cannot produce it because of classified status and people still working under it's protection.

What this piece is missing, or I've yet to find is that 9/11 didn't trigger a growth of such intel as much as it allowed intel outfits to go private and submit a bill to the government. Just as how 9/11 didn't illustrate the need for the Patriot Act, but provided the excuse for it's implementation, as pieces had been written long before the first plane hit a building. 9/11 shut up the detractors to such power grabs as did the targets of the anthrax attacks target those who would speak or vote against it. The billions or trillions earned from this growth of intel were the ends and the events leading up to the Patriot Act provided the means to these said ends. Look at those who have made the most since then. An example is James A Baker III. Go look at his connections to this new world of private intel money and lay that along with his former life in the government, very cozy and convenient indeed.

None of this is about intel, security, or freedom. It's about money. The Cold War was over. The Soviets took their ball and went home to crumble under the weight of failed economic policies and imperial expansion that left them in a similar place as we find ourselves today. The same people who made trillions during the Cold War wanted more money, so they started a Terror War and it's played out nicely for them.

Oh wait, you thought this was about a guy in a cave or some men with boxcutters....


I'm out in the Gulf, working off of my iPhone, but I will have a lot more on this project in the coming weeks.

[tsuki]

1. I got up this morning to read the piece. It is disgusting. Feather Thy Nest

should be the name of the article. You can't move up the government food chain unless you have a corner office with lots of underlings.

And there are those that wonder what happened to our Social Security/Medicare money.

[NightWatcher]

2. Intel reports went from motivated by safety to "can we upsell it?"

LBI's and MBI's were made to look extravagant and were upsold as SSBI's to every agency we could.

(LBI= limited background investigations became extensive SSBI's ~ single scope background investigations) A two hour job became a week long job based on here say or rumors. Several good people lost their clearances and jobs because of third hand rumors all in the name of the Upsell.

[Poboy]

3. k&r

[MountainLaurel]

4. Looking forward to reading this today

I think the Post may have another Pulitzer in hand come next year.

[pscot]

5. Bush Crime Family rules

The new world order.