What's In The Washington Post Story Terrifying the Intelligence Community?

[1776Forever]

What's In The Washington Post Story Terrifying the Intelligence Community?
More By Max Fisher on July 18, 2010 1:28 pm

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Whats-In-The-Washington-Post-Story-Terrifying-the-Intelligence-Community-4360

The U.S. intelligence community is bracing for a Washington Post story scheduled to be published on Monday. The story, largely reported by Pulitzer Prize-winner Dana Priest, will reportedly detail the billions of dollars of intelligence contracts fielded out to private companies. Both the State Department and the the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which oversees all intelligence agencies, have sent out internal memos regarding the story.

•Likely Conclusions of the Story The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder explains the intelligence contractor problem: "contractors do a lot of work that the government used to do by itself; oversight has become next to impossible; the intelligence-policy complex has created a revolving door of sorts where the line between private companies and intelligence agencies blurs; and of course waste, mismanagement, and more. Since 9/11, the intelligence community has welcomed a surge in contractors while building a larger civilian counterterrorism workforce -- a larger national security state." Ambinder reports that, in an internal memo, " House discloses that the series has been in the works for two years, includes an online database of contractors and their projects, and a television partnership with PBS's Frontline." House lists the three likely conclusions of the story:

• The intelligence enterprise has undergone exponential growth and has become unmanageable with overlapping authorities and a heavily outsourced contractor workforce.

• The IC and the DoD have wasted significant time and resources, especially in the areas of counterterrorism and counterintelligence.

• The intelligence enterprise has taken its eyes off its post-9/11 mission and is spending its energy on competitive and redundant programs.....

•Intel Agencies Wasting Billions Wired's Spencer Ackerman writes, "Looks like Priest — who discovered the CIA’s off-the-books torture facilities — is going document billions of dollars of intel-sector contracts with questionable benefit to national security. The intel folks’ hair may be on fire, but it’s our money that’s burning."

•Want to Trim The Deficit? Start Here Liberal blogger Digby writes, "I don't know if it includes Homeland Security, but if it doesn't I suspect another investigation should be done there. This gravy train has taken on sacred status as the right has managed to morph the "support the troops" mantra into a 'support the Military Industrial Complex,' which is just another way of maintaining the police welfare state for connected white guys. If there's belt tightening to be done, this is the place to start."

(more at link)

.................

Billions in Private Contracts - Where have we heard that before?

[malaise]

1. Dana should have had a subtitle

The Looting of government by Bushco!!

[liberal N proud]

2. Or the story could have read:

How the bu$h administration turned the US in to a Police State

[malaise]

13. for personal profit

:evilgrin:

[BrklynLiberal]

3. One more Billion $$ legacy of loss from pres shit-for-brains.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-FUCKED-YOU-ALL-but-thanks-for-blaming-it-on-the-black-guy/128990393786049

[pnorman]

7. I really liked that graphic!

[BrklynLiberal]

10. Says it all, doesn't it?

[w8liftinglady]

11. I laughed in spite of myself-it is so true,though

[Enrique]

4. the deficit hawks will be outraged at the waste!

right? ;-)

[msongs]

5. ok, it's Monday, so where's the dreaded WaPo story? hmmm nt

[1776Forever]

6. Here's a link to the story and another great article on it:

A hidden world, growing beyond control
Monday, July 19, 2010; 1:53 AM

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

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.

(More at link)

................

And this great article too:


Intelligence community heightens security measures following Washington Post ‘Top Secret America’ story
By Jon Ward - The Daily Caller | Published: 9:47 AM 07/19/2010 | Updated: 9:59 AM 07/19/2010

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/19/intelligence-community-heightens-security-measures-following-washington-post-top-secret-america-story/

[w8liftinglady]

8. wow..thanks!

these are things we all suspected...but it's good to have the facts to go with it.You don't know how f*cking mad this all makes me.

[1776Forever]

14. This really got me -

A hidden world, growing beyond control
Monday, July 19, 2010; 1:53 AM
Dana Priest & Wm Arkin

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

......More is often the solution proposed by the leaders of the 9/11 enterprise. After the Christmas Day bombing attempt, Leiter also pleaded for more - more analysts to join the 300 or so he already had.

The Department of Homeland Security asked for more air marshals, more body scanners and more analysts, too, even though it can't find nearly enough qualified people to fill its intelligence unit now. Obama has said he will not freeze spending on national security, making it likely that those requests will be funded.

More building, more expansion of offices continues across the country. A $1.7 billion NSA data-processing center will be under construction soon near Salt Lake City. In Tampa, the U.S. Central Command’s new 270,000-square-foot intelligence office will be matched next year by an equally large headquarters building, and then, the year after that, by a 51,000-square-foot office just for its special operations section.

Just north of Charlottesville, the new Joint-Use Intelligence Analysis Facility will consolidate 1,000 defense intelligence analysts on a secure campus.

Meanwhile, five miles southeast of the White House, the DHS has broken ground for its new headquarters, to be shared with the Coast Guard. DHS, in existence for only seven years, already has its own Special Access Programs, its own research arm, its own command center, its own fleet of armored cars and its own 230,000-person workforce, the third-largest after the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.

Soon, on the grounds of the former St. Elizabeths mental hospital in Anacostia, a $3.4 billion showcase of security will rise from the crumbling brick wards. The new headquarters will be the largest government complex built since the Pentagon, a major landmark in the alternative geography of Top Secret America and four times as big as Liberty Crossing.

.............

OMG can you even fathom this?

[pretzel4gore]

12. what is it, since WW2? 70 cents of every tax dollar collected

has been spent on the national security state (military)....so you end up with a Natsecstapo who have to grind up citizens just to justify their useless existence. Death camps are in our future (though CNN etc will never admit mass executions of regular folk are going on- wouldn't be prudent)

[KharmaTrain]

9. Time To Scrap "Homeland Security"

We've seen how well the "consolidation" of all these agencies into a bigger more nebulous one has done. It opened the door to more outsourcing...the bottomless pit and booosh era legacy that is prolonging wars that mean juicy contracts...the ultimate corporate welfare system paid for in treasure and blood.

The lessons of empire appear not to be understood by this government as the US continues to bankrupt itself at the benefit of huge corporations that grew that way almost solely off the public dime.

[The Backlash Cometh]

15. If they're that big they probably have people out in the field helping

to stir up the shit. What if we find that they're the ones who are destabilizing our country?

[1776Forever]

16. Exactly - How can this many be managed and by "whom"? Same thing I wondered when Blackwater

came around. Great question!

[Recursion]

17. PSYOPS. They're making a fuss so we'll fawn all over this

rather than ask what else is out there

[populistdriven]

19. yep and reporters are pissed it is being held back

oh well wikileaks is back up!

[EFerrari]

21. The day the WaHo publishes anything damaging to the MIC

I'll start eating canned spinach again.

[loudsue]

18. And THIS is why Jeb Bush is going to steal the 2012 election.

The bush family empire is NOT through embezzeling every last penny from this country that they hate so much. Ever since we whipped their buddy, Adolph Hitler, they've been out to wreck this place.

[populistdriven]

20. sounds like you have a problem with the bushes

[wuvuj]

22. Who doesn't?

....