http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/a-look-at-the-washington-posts-top-secret-america/
A Look at The Washington Post’s ‘Top Secret America’
By THE NEW YORK TIMESThe Washington Post published the opening installment of its Top Secret America project, a two-year investigation into the national security buildup in the United States that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In a series of articles by the Post reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, a host of interactive graphics and a searchable database, the series details the unintended downside of ballooning governmental financing for agencies and departments that have been unable to spend the massive influx of money responsibly, the inevitable turf battles that emerged as spending and responsibilities shifted and overlapped, and the near-impossible task of determining the effectiveness of a system that has grown so massive so quickly and with so little transparency.
Here are just a few of the investigation’s findings included in the online report:
* 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.
Bloggers and the intelligence community have been quick to react to the series and we encourage you to take a look at it.
