is that so many of the most wealthy counties in the US seem to correspond to dense intelligence clusters, in Gramscian terms this is the most interesting aspect. It is not a question of whether or not secrecy is needed, but what is done with the largess created by the veil. Priest and Arkin effectively point to the sheer volume of money changing hands behind these doors that mere citizens are prevented form scrutinizing. Any democratically minded citizen should remember the lessons of other bloated security aparati, and their effects on civil rights, as well as how inefficient they were in fulfilling their missions, yet how effective they were in consuming tax dollars (rubles or shekels, or marks), and what else could have been done with those resources, financial and human, rather than guard against some phantom menace. Conflict is inevitable in human interaction, even more so when sovereignty issues are involved, but is spying really the only way or the best way to guarantee security?

Two relevant points:

1. How many dollars are used to save one life? Could said dollars be spent otherwise to save more lifes?

2. Redundancy in intelligence operations can be good. However, said intelligence must be coordinated to be useful.
I.E. waste does not equal redundancy.

For example, the authors point to the fact that large numbers of Americans hold top-secret security clearances, but fail to distinguish between those who are genuinely involved in intelligence work and those who require the clearances for other reasons -- such as maintaining classified computer equipment or, for that matter, serving as janitors or food service workers in organizations that do classified work.

That's where Dana Priest wins and you lose--food service workers usually have a simple background check done on them, and are accorded "red badge" status whereby they work in areas where people go and eat their lunch. These non-secured areas are where discussing classified information can get you in a heap of trouble.

The database they have assembled details not only organizations involved in counterterrorism work, but also those working in unrelated fields such as Air Force technical intelligence. In so doing, they have made it easier for America's enemies to defeat U.S. efforts to ferret out their secrets and have thereby made it more rather than less likely that the United States will be surprised by a future adversary.

Air Force technical intelligence FEEDS the counterintelligence apparatus, as do other sources of information. They are hardly "unrelated" feeds. Information of a vital counterterrorism nature can by corroborated or enhanced by a piece of technical information collected by another agency.

The database was assembled, I suspect, by simply collating the contracts awarded to companies by the government. If a government contract is released into the public record, as part of government transparency in contracting procedures, then the contract information--the money spent, the location where the contractors will work, for how long, and in what capacity--becomes part of the public record. To be certain, classified information is redacted, but the contracts themselves are simply open to the public (otherwise, how could anyone bid on the work and how could anyone have discovered all of the contractor malfeasance that has come to light in recent years?).

You get a D minus, sir. Next time you come to my class, bring your A game.

What the WaPo articles and this articles miss is that the CIA and the American intelligence apparatus does nothing to make us safer. It exists purely to sell terror and panic to make sure their budgets are increased yearly and they get the money for their projects.

I don't see why we still trust an apparatus that at it's base missed things like the Iranian revolution, the fall of the Soviet Union, Nukes in North Korea, the 9/11 attacks and so on and so forth. We could spend the money better on a giant dart board to predict where the next security threat would come from.

I also was less impressed overall with the Wash Post's three part series on Top Secret America but also saw some real value in the effort. My own concerns with the series were for somewhat different reasons, however, than those noted by Mr. Mahnken.

First off...I hardly think the Post's series on Top Secret America places the U.S. at even the slightest additional risk and I would not expect one of my graduate students to make such a claim so blithely. Simply giving street addresses, for instance, likely already known to all in the respective neighborhoods and any bad guy worth his salt, hardly constitutes a threat. In fact, the knowledge that so many are collecting so much in so many ways might even discourage more than encourage. And knowing that climbing the wrong fence could lead one to be surrounded by armored vehicles carrying many heavily armed men with an attitude would not at all be a draw. If there is strength in redundancy, it would be focused exactly on the competing sources of information so that even if one, or ten, of these agencies were 'figured out' by bad guys, others should seamlessly fill in the void.

While the Wapo series definitely did wander around more than it should have and committed a number of its own redundancies, it also presented clear themes and points. Principally, the themes articulated centered on the mammoth and apparently unmanageable nature of this apparatus, the incredible redundancy and ways how that redundancy has become markedly counterproductive along with the lack of any identifiable coordination within this massive and massively expensive system. The widespread use of contractors is another important theme which needs still more attention.

In fact, James Clapper, just appointed to be the new Director of National Intelligence, has apparently already dismissed the Wapo series' and reporting of these redundant and minimally coordinated programs calling the series 'sensationalism.' While Clapper apparently comes in with strong references, his response here already leaves me with concerns and questions were I to be on the Congressional committees who will speak with him further. The New York Times editorialized their concern in today's edition with regards to these positions by Mr. Clapper. I strongly agree with the NYT on this one.

The series definitely did reference the different security offices and systems without providing much context or attempting to provide reader's with a sense of the relationships (whether functional or anticipated) between them. But to simply say that the reporters "assert(ed) that the growth of the U.S. intelligence community led to the Fort Hood shootings and the so-called underwear bomber" does not give credit to what it was the reporters actually were communicating in this regard and the potential value and relevance of their assertions.

Instead, Priest and Arkin's explicitly talked here not so much about the size of the intelligence community as being an issue at Foot Hood (though the size didn't help much, either) but that based on the lack of coordination or central accountability, differently tasked organizations in Top Secret America may have moved away from their stated missions in order to follow other interests and/or to compete for attention and funding by impinging on the 'turf' of other components and offices of our intelligence apparatus.

For instance, while there apparently are groups who should have been focused on in-house threats and development, so to speak, they found other interests. As these are accurate conclusions by Priest/Arkin, more systemic attention is clearly required. To have such a massive intelligence system miss the myriad warning signs and red flags waved over a period of time by the Ft Hood shooter was inexcusable. Here was an obvious example of the country not getting its money worth! Unfortunately, there was so much 'noise' in the Wapo series, that these very important observations were insufficiently emphasized.

There is also another dynamic at work here. It has been widely discussed that a single person who does not care whether he lives through such an attack or not, is the most dangerous and hard to detect intelligence threat. Such persons are also likely to slip through even the most detailed oriented and efficient intelligence systems now and again to perform their own deadly missions.

So, here, simply isolating out Ft Hood or the so called 'underwear' bomber cannot make a larger statement about either the efficiency of inefficiency of our intelligence systems. No doubt, there have been many more discovered and/or discouraged real time threats by that same system. While single data points are informative, they are also not singularly indictable. An aware, informed and unintimidated citizenry is important, too, and the reason the 'underwear' bomber was actually stopped. In this way, the information generated by the Wapo series might quite actively help to strengthen the larger system.

Mr. Mahnken's contention that Priest/Arkin should have offered a bit more detail and context into their reporting on the huge numbers of contractors working in Top Secret America is sound. And I will accept the point that many of these more recent hires may represent the vamping back up of U.S. intelligence functions which were de-emphasized during the 1990s. At the same time, the increasingly massive use of contractors everywhere from the front lines of Iraq to Top Secret America has been reported on and, in my estimation, is a significant issue which cannot simply be dismissed. In military settings, these contractors have interfered with the American military mission and representation and, further, risk demoralizing troops as soldiers et al. recognize the salaries paid to less accountable contractors working in their theaters.

While I am sure many of these contractors are deeply invested in and devoted to their respective missions, many others have been not only irresponsible but dangerous and antithetical to the mission and purpose. Blackwater (Xe) committed murder with minimal accountability and, along with others like Halliburton, have sucked up huge sums of tax payer monies based on no-bid contracts and, again, with no accountability. Priest/Arkin really needed to spend more time on this issue and give it more detail and context so readers really could fully understand the impact. The degree of 'privatization' of the American military and intelligence missions which moved to extreme levels under Bush/Cheney is a very real issue which needs real and serious attention.

Even though the Wapo series did need a bit more work and tightening and though it shorted a few rather important topics and themes, the real threat is to allow such a massive intelligence and data collection system to go continually unchecked while it continues to burn through inestimable sums of money and risks overt violations of our constitutional rights; the source of America's true strength. And I would want to reassure Mr. Mahnken and readers of his commentary that I, for one, absolutely do not at all believe that the Priest/Arkin series has, in any way, "made it easier for America's enemies to defeat U.S. efforts to ferret out their secrets..." or that it is now "...more rather than less likely that the United States will be surprised by a future adversary."

If one of my own graduate students had ended his or her review of the Wapo series with such a melodramatic and uni-dimensional assertion, I would have likely asked them to reconsider and resubmit their conclusions.

I doubt the Washington Post (or anyone in journalism) would be talking about the bloated national security bureaucracy if the U.S. economy were still in relatively healthy shape. Arkin and Priest are not only making the point that the intelligence community is redundant and overweight (which is not necessarily a bad thing, as Dan Drezner pointed out yesterday), but that this redundancy is costing American taxpayers billions upon billions of dollars every year. It's a classic argument if you think about it; drill home the point that money is being wasted, thereby exposing the government's weaknesses. I don't know if Arkin and Priest have a partisan agenda here, but there Point A to Point B argument certainly smells of one.

http://www.depetris.wordpress.com

I mostly agree with this post. Priest and Arkin don't really have a thesis in their three-part series. The third installment, in particular, seems merely to be an effort to write a couple thousand words.

However, the description of the American intelligence community, its continuous growth and, often, its incompetence should be alarming. Obviously the more intelligence gathered, the better. But when the NSA collects 1.7 billion communications daily, an amount that is clearly much more than can be made sense of, at the same time violating the privacy of many citizens, surely there are some problems with American intelligence.

Having overlap between organizations can be valuable if, as you wrote, they offer different perspectives and analyses. However, Top Secret America specifically notes the vast amount of "analysis" that is produced, about 50,000 reports anually, that for the most part offer similar information without added benefit.

I have some problems with the Washington Post project as a whole, but certain specifics are quite eye-opening and, indeed, alarming. Even if you aren't alarmed by the enormous national security apparatus, you should at least acknowledge that Americans should be aware of it.

To say that in bringing attention to this vast an important part of national security, Priest and Arkin "have made it easier for America's enemies to defeat U.S. efforts to ferret out their secrets and have thereby made it more rather than less likely that the United States will be surprised by a future adversary" is to me an unfair attack.

The articles illuminate a self-generating system that has the potential to iterate to infinity.

Consider, increased military presence in Afghanistan means greater use of the roads; the enemy multiplies its mining activities; the military responds by calling in more helicopters; the enemy raises attacks on helicopters; scrutinising that calls for a whole new department.

Moreover, what on earth do you do with all that should there ever be Peace?

I note with sour amusement that this blog, which affects a tone of outraged propriety when addressing fairly mild statements by Obama administration officials that reference the manifold shortcomings of George W. Bush's stewardship of national security affairs, has no hesitation at all in blaming the explosion of intelligence community contractors in the last ten years on...Bill Clinton.

I happen to agree with the point in question, mostly, but wonder if it is made in this post because it has some truth or because it reflects less unfavorably on the administration for which this post's author worked. Dana Priest, who wrote a whole book on the progressive atrophy of civilian foreign policy agencies during Clinton's administration, has more credibility on this subject than former Bush staffers with a track record of defending the lamentable record of the administration they worked in.

"Islamist extremist terrorists have killed thousands of Americans and would like nothing better than to kill thousands more..."

whenever i read an article about terrorism, counterinsurgency, Middle-east, so on and so forth... It never seizes to amaze me how some people still and will no matter what associate religion (be it Islam, Christianity, Judaism...) with what one would call plane criminality... I think that was the biggest mistake the US officials have made - i.e. creating the association between Islam and terrorism - as if the two are meant to go hand in hand... and exacerbating the negative credentials the US has managed to amass during all this decade overseas... History has had similar instances when other zealot from other religions have committed atrocities, but did we ever hear them called Christian Extremist Terrorists, or Judaist Extremist Terrorists, or name it... For example, take the "Oklahoma City bombing" which occured as a reaction to the disastrous ending of the "Waco Siege",.. have you ever heard the perpetrator being called a "christian" extremist terrorist... I think that these people have nothing to do with religion what so ever... these people who kill innocents for no reason but to satisfy their twisted minds and hunger for violence and blood... are just plainly and simply criminals...