Article

2010-07-19 Home Front: WoT

The Washington Post Reveals 'Top Secret America'

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Posted by Sherry 2010-07-19 11:54|| || Front Page|| [11130 views ] Top

#1 So they lead with an ~~excuse~~ explanation since the average American is too dull to figure out why they need to reveal secrets like this.

Wh()res.

Posted by gorb 2010-07-19 12:12|| 2010-07-19 12:12|| Front Page Top

#2 Surprise! Surprise! Bureaucracy equals duplication and waste! Might be interesting if WaPo would expend this much energy investigating how $800 billion in stimulus money was spent. Do we spend that much money on "Top Secret America"? At least if we did we might get something useful out of it.

Posted by Ebbang Uluque6305 2010-07-19 12:35|| 2010-07-19 12:35|| Front Page Top

#3 Waah, waah, waah. WAPO is complaining about it because they can't get inside it, the people working in these facilities refuse to "leak", and they don't understand even one tenth of WHY these people work there and won't talk.

In truth, though, this is a back-door attack against those agencies that have been successful in keeping us from being attacked by the Democrap "leadership" in Washington. This "secret America" is not under their control, doesn't do their bidding, and costs money that can be used to buy votes. Screw the American people and their safety, they don't count. Only what's good for the Dummycritters is worth pursuing.

I rate quite a number of Repuglycons in the same boat. It doesn't matter what political party they belong to, as long as they can siphon off, steal, or misdirect every nickel they can for their own benefit.

Posted by Old Patriot 2010-07-19 12:45|| 2010-07-19 12:45|| Front Page Top

#4 Full disclosure: I worked in that "Top Secret America" for most of my Air Force career. There's a reason for those secrets, something the Democrats don't (can't?) understand.

Posted by Old Patriot 2010-07-19 12:47|| 2010-07-19 12:47|| Front Page Top

#5 This article should result in a ton of ad views for WaPo and generate much needed revenue for their third quarter finances.

Don't visit the link.

Posted by crosspatch 2010-07-19 13:02|| 2010-07-19 13:02|| Front Page Top

#6 An alternative view:

We should understand that there are secrets worth keeping. We need intelligence agencies that can keep our secrets, find out the secrets our adversaries are holding, and, on occasion, make things happen nice and quiet in nasty parts of the world.

We don't necessarily need a huge intelligence organization to do all that.

We certainly don't need a conglomeration of agencies, each of which is fully engaged in empire building. We don't need more office towers, federal employees, and papers shuffled about that no one ever reads.

Why DO we need 1,271 government organizations to be engaged in counterterrorism, homeland security and intel gathering in the first place? What, the first 1,270 of them weren't getting the job done?

I'm a big fan of national security. Let's just remember that the same government that engages in featherbedding and stupidity elsewhere can do the same when it comes to keeping secrets.

I'd personally rip it all out and start over.

Posted by Steve White 2010-07-19 13:06|| 2010-07-19 13:06|| Front Page Top

#7 WAPO is complaining about it because they can't get inside it, the people working in these facilities refuse to "leak", and they don't understand even one tenth of WHY these people work there and won't talk

Bingo. Perusing the headline, I thought the WaPo "revelation" was going to expose how it worked, where the money went and did not go, and why or why not particular programs were working or not working-- y'know, all those newspaperman-style who-what-why etc basic q's.

Instead, WaPo has nothing but some data points and an all-but-outright admission of journalistic failure to answer any basic q's: "no one knows" the answer to these questions! So why should you, dear reader, expect us to deliver the goods? NOBODY knows! And hey, we're just bloggers with a salary (for now), so what do we know, huh? Jus' sayin... Noam Sayin', homie?

Posted by lex 2010-07-19 13:11|| 2010-07-19 13:11|| Front Page Top

#8 I'm with Steve White. I very much want to know where teh $$$$$$$$$$$ is going, and would very much like to see defense pork cut as well as non-defense pork. But this requires our media betters to actually investigate ALL 11-figure and above gov't programs with the same degree of zeal. Beginning with the crap pseudo-stimulus program.

Case in point: I'd like some journalist to follow up on my experience last summer with the $6.7B California portion of the Education stimulus package, in which I learned that only one of more than 20 elected public officials and staff members contacted-- state assemblymen, congressmen, senators, governor's office, city officials, school board business managers-- one ONE person had even the faintest idea of how, at a high level, the $6.7B had been spent. And she couldn't account for about $400 million!

Andrew Breitbart would have enjoyed capturing my conversations with the others, which were a carnival of ignorance, incompetence, rudeness and outright hostility, buck-passing and low comedy.

Oh, and one more nugget that none of our intrepid media betters has bothered to unearth: Acc to Schwarzenegger's chief of staff for ARRA (the Stimulus bill), of the $6.7B for education, fully $1.9B was diverted, quietly, with no announcement to-- get this-- the PRISONS.

(When I revealed this to a punk staffer in Sen. Feinstein's office, he tried to be cute and said "then it must have gone to educational programs in the prisons." Tee hee!)

No joke. 30% of the billions in stimulus money for CA schools was divereted to purposes having nothing to do with education-- let alone purposes of actual stimulus, ie creating sustainable growth and employment. And another 6% simply disappeared-- not a single person of the >20 I spoke with, including mid-level bureaucrats in the CA Dept of Education and school officials around the Bay Area, could even guess where the remaining, unaccounted-for $400m went. Poof!

And not a peep-- not a single story on this-- from the media.

So yeah, I want to know about homeland security's thousands of organizations and contractors and hundreds of billions of dollars. Because as pitchman Bill Cosby used to recite, "it's MY MONEY." And my children's money, going down the rathole of god-knows-what political pet project. Or crony's offshore bank account.

Posted by lex 2010-07-19 13:27|| 2010-07-19 13:27|| Front Page Top

#9 If any of these facilities are target and Americans die......

Posted by Besoeker 2010-07-19 14:14|| 2010-07-19 14:14|| Front Page Top

#10 The 16 intelligence agencies, and to a lesser extent, the 40+ federal police agencies are out of control, and have been out of control since at least the 1960s. About the last even minor controls put on them were done just post-Watergate. They were less than effective, and have been neutralized.

By the 1980s, for example the NRO built a major satellite tracking center, with black budget funding, that was fully operational before congress even found out about it. Especially the senate intelligence committee, on both sides of the aisle, were livid, but the NRO just told them to "go fish".

With the death of J. Edgar Hoover, there was a frantic scramble to get and destroy the secret files he regularly used to blackmail congressmen, senators, and other officials and citizens.

W. Bush tried to get a handle on the chaos by trying to consolidate agencies under a single command and control, but CIA successfully thwarted his efforts, and forced his appointee out. And remember, H.W. Bush had been in charge of CIA not too long before.

The bottom line is much like a diesel semi-truck that has blown its governor, and its engine is running wild. Just because it is running fast does not mean that all is well, and sooner, rather than later, something very bad is going to happen.

Even running out of fuel won't help, because at a particular point, the air inside the engine is under such heat and pressure that it only needs a tiny amount of fuel to continue to run wild.

So the analogy holds. Even trying to slash the budget of some of these agencies may not work, because they have developed their own funding, and heaven only knows from where.

And any foreign or enemy entry point uses this situation to their advantage. Lack of oversight gives them full reign over America's most important secrets, with an excellent example being the two Cuban spies, the husband having access to all 16 agencies.

Posted by Anonymoose 2010-07-19 14:45|| 2010-07-19 14:45|| Front Page Top

#11 I was cleared for weird when I served in the Air force, so here is my two cents. They were far too many agencies/organizations doing the same work. There were also far too many layers between the collector of intelligence and the end user. I doubt things had changed since I left a decade ago and if they did it was probably to add ANOTHER bureaucratic layer to the intelligence community. It needs to be cleaned or better yet start over and do it right with fewer agencies.

Posted by Cyber Sarge 2010-07-19 14:48|| 2010-07-19 14:48|| Front Page Top

#12 Money is important -- but what upsets me and worries me for the safely of some we may know -- is why I posted the article, it's not all about the money -- This is a series -- an hour-long documentary film will run in October on PBS Frontline

Outside a gated subdivision of mansions in McLean, a line of cars idles every weekday morning as a new day in Top Secret America gets underway. The drivers wait patiently to turn left, then crawl up a hill and around a bend to a destination that is not on any public map and not announced by any street sign.

Liberty Crossing tries hard to hide from view. But in the winter, leafless trees can't conceal a mountain of cement and windows the size of five Wal-Mart stores stacked on top of one another rising behind a grassy berm. One step too close without the right badge, and men in black jump out of nowhere, guns at the ready.

Past the armed guards and the hydraulic steel barriers, at least 1,700 federal employees and 1,200 private contractors work at Liberty Crossing, the nickname for the two headquarters of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and its National Counterterrorism Center. The two share a police force, a canine unit and thousands of parking spaces.

Liberty Crossing is at the center of the collection of U.S. government agencies and corporate contractors that mushroomed after the 2001 attacks. But it is not nearly the biggest, the most costly or even the most secretive part of the 9/11 enterprise.

In an Arlington County office building, the lobby directory doesn't include the Air Force's mysteriously named XOIWS unit, but there's a big "Welcome!" sign in the hallway greeting visitors who know to step off the elevator on the third floor.
That's more info than I want to know
In Elkridge, Md., a clandestine program hides in a tall concrete structure fitted with false windows to look like a normal office building.

In Arnold, Mo., the location is across the street from a Target and a Home Depot. In St. Petersburg, Fla., it's in a modest brick bungalow in a run-down business park.

And even more that this is revealed, and more like this is still to come -- this is not a one-article job.

An hour-long documentary film will run in October on PBS Frontline. Trailer is available at site and includes pictures of buildings, how many stories down one is buried, how stopped by "commandos," driving around with real estate agent, pointing out certain buildings... it gets worse.

Any terrorist now knows of locations, what floors, how many employees, security involved, etc. This is just from the trailer.

In one section they list the kinds of intelligence, click on IED research, you are given a list of:
Government Organization
HQ Location
Number of Locations
Number of Contracting Companies

Each Government Organization is linked -- click, you get maps of locations, types of work done, charts, and more links, that go deeper and deeper, giving all but where employees live!

This info puts out country in grave danger. It's not about the money. The money is just to grab attention.

These kind of details bothers me -- far more than the money part of the story.

Posted by Sherry 2010-07-19 15:20|| 2010-07-19 15:20|| Front Page Top

#13 It's a very long article (16 pages).

However, the meat of the article is complaints about the Contractors who supposedly aren't supervised and are responsible for the duplication and waste in these programs.

This makes me believe that WaPo got its info from career civil servants who are madder than Hades at the contractors who make more money, follow their own dress code, and deal with less chickens**t than the perms. The fact that the contractors have 10 - 20 years experience and can do their job with their eyes closed is beside the point. That some management couldn't find a valid lead if it bit them on the a** is also irrelevent.

Posted by Frozen Al 2010-07-19 15:48|| 2010-07-19 15:48|| Front Page Top

#14 WaPo got its info from career civil servants who are madder than Hades at the contractors who make more money....

Gov't ~~workers~~, DoD Civilians, why do they hate us?

Posted by Besoeker 2010-07-19 16:20|| 2010-07-19 16:20|| Front Page Top

#15 Liberty Crossing tries hard to hide from view. But in the winter, leafless trees can't conceal a mountain of cement and windows the size of five Wal-Mart stores stacked on top of one another rising behind a grassy berm. One step too close without the right badge, and men in black jump out of nowhere, guns at the ready.

I stopped writing like this in Junior High-School.

Posted by Free Radical 2010-07-19 17:53|| 2010-07-19 17:53|| Front Page Top

#16

Redacted by moderator. Comments may be redacted for trolling, violation of standards of good manners, or plain stupidity. Please correct the condition that applies and try again. Contents may be viewed in the sinktrap. Further violations may result in banning.

Posted by cut the budget 2010-07-19 19:26|| 2010-07-19 19:26|| Front Page Top

#17 Carinogenic clean up in isle 3, rack 16 please.

Posted by Besoeker 2010-07-19 19:48|| 2010-07-19 19:48|| Front Page Top

#18 By the 1980s, for example the NRO built a major satellite tracking center, with black budget funding, that was fully operational before congress even found out about it. Especially the senate intelligence committee, on both sides of the aisle, were livid, but the NRO just told them to "go fish".

Um, not quite. Those people, in Congress and elsewhere, who had a need to know and clearance for the NRO's space based collection systems knew perfectly well what was being built, and why.

Lots of partial info got published re: NRO when the agency's existence was publicized by the WaPo.

I remember how the WaPo ran story after story about how NRO had 'wasted taxpayer dollars' with an 'expensive stone lobby' in their new building.

Most WaPo writers know less than zero about EMI. People who do know, know that that building was designed for TEMPEST, i.e. to keep electronic emissions inside and listeners outside, and that the stone was a very efficient way to do that.

Posted by lotp 2010-07-19 19:49|| 2010-07-19 19:49|| Front Page Top

#19 "WaPo got its info from career civil servants "

Oh, you mean SEIU members?

Posted by crosspatch 2010-07-19 19:54|| 2010-07-19 19:54|| Front Page Top

#20

Posted by cut the budget 2010-07-19 20:06|| 2010-07-19 20:06|| Front Page Top

#21 Old fagott am I? Well thank you Budget. Speaking of budgets, how about laying off the Mad Dog and getting back to sorting those food stamps. The first of the month is a ways off you know.

Posted by Besoeker 2010-07-19 20:17|| 2010-07-19 20:17|| Front Page Top

#22 "Cut the budget", I've flushed bigger turds than you. Shut up and listen to your betters, or you'll find your way into the bin. Head First.

Posted by OldSpook 2010-07-19 21:44|| 2010-07-19 21:44|| Front Page Top

#23 cut the budget: Tone it down or I will start deleting your comments outright.

Posted by badanov 2010-07-19 22:04|| 2010-07-19 22:04|| Front Page Top

#24

Posted by Hugh Jass 2010-07-19 22:04|| 2010-07-19 22:04|| Front Page Top

#25

Posted by Hugh Jass 2010-07-19 22:12|| 2010-07-19 22:12|| Front Page Top

#26

Posted by gorb 2010-07-19 22:17|| 2010-07-19 22:17|| Front Page Top

#27 There is a reason (but not necessarily a justification) for all this. We neglected out Intel agencies for a decade, and let it rot via political influence. SO now that we need on, the system we had was sclerotic, defective and ineffective (so we got 9/11, Tora Bora, etc). The growth is in reaction to that - tryign to grow capabilities that had withered due to bureaucratic bumbling on the part of politically connected civil service GS-OhMyGawd rates more concerned with protecting their job and empire than with the accomplishment of the mission of protecting the nation.

So you get this wild growth as the guys at the pointy end of the stick try to get the intel they need in a timely manner and in a format they can use - a demand which the big agencies have notably failed to respond to adequately. The one means they have for this is the speed and flexibility of experienced contractors, who can move more quickly and accurately than hide-bound ass-covering bureaucrats, to produce a system capable of accomplishing the mission goals for that organization (and through that, protecting the nation).

Is it wasteful and duplicative? Yes.

But ask yourself: would you rather have that, or the nice efficient, top-down controlled Intelligence appratus we had on 9/10/2001?

Posted by OldSpook 2010-07-19 22:30|| 2010-07-19 22:30|| Front Page Top

#28 Folks -- try this -- your family is at an identified Home Depot in the article (go to the site, the map shows the location)

A bomb explores and kills your family. Was unthinkable per 9-11. But now real.

The bombers are found. They admit -- we got the beginning of the intelligence for this operation from pics and maps from this Washington Post article.

Our terrorists don't care about the amount of money being spent... the number of agencies... how many contractors, how much bureaucracy.

Our enemy is getting closer everyday -- and now, they have a road map.

Visit the site or not --- doesn't matter. Our enemies are visiting the site. Would like to see the site-meter report from where the clicks come. I'm betting they come from other countries other than the USA.

So feel good about your boycott.

From this article, the documentary to be shown on PBS Frontline in October --- shows the Home Depot in which your family is spending time -- a Saturday, a Sunday, planning and shopping for some wanted changes to your home.

Unknown to you and your family, across the street is one of these "unnecessary," "money grabbing" agencies.

Go back in time, to the Washington snipers, picking off folks. Remember the fright? Even not living in DC, I remember that fear --- magnify that 10 times... and this is what we are now facing.

Now, we have folks boycotting WaPo ( no problem with that ) but folks may now begin to boycott that Home Depot -- just as the public began boycotting gas stations during the times of the Washington snipers.

Who's to blame for the boycott of that Home Depot? Three months from now, I would be hesitate to stake my family's live there. I now know, the terrorist know of this location.

As a terrorist, here's what I now know:

1)I know my location 'cause I got my map
2)I know how many Americans work there
3)I know when they come to work
4)I know when they leave
5)I know the security of my location.

And you want to talk "Bureaucracy?"

I pray that you or some one close to you, is not responsible for the security of me or my family that might happen to work in one of these exposed location, complete with which floor is the most vulnerable, where the security guards are located, etc.

We will ask -- where was the security? They resigned their jobs, always really to risk their lives -- but not with these odds.

Posted by Sherry 2010-07-19 22:42|| 2010-07-19 22:42|| Front Page Top

#29 Want some real irony? I have a permit, but cannot carry onto the property, not even locked in the trunk of my car in the parking lot. The government disarms me not only at the SCIF, but on my way to and from.

So the Terrs know its a completely unarmed target excepting a few FPS guards.

I liked the good old days when we had armed Marines or MPs (in plainclothes) to guard certain facilities.

Posted by OldSpook 2010-07-19 23:19|| 2010-07-19 23:19|| Front Page Top

#30 Well, let's try to find some shred of a silver lining in the morass of chaos and redundancy in the US Security infrastructure: it makes it nearly impossible for the bad guys to figure out who and what to target.

The infrastructure is so big, that opposing spooks would have a tough time identifying where to "plug in" to obtain any significantly useful information.

Of course - the Wash Post is basically writing the intelligence summary overview reports FOR the foreign spooks. The best intelligence collector that the foreign agencies could ever hope to field could NEVER get an entire newspaper investigative staff to work almost full time for years, capturing and documenting the nature, scope, and locations of the US intelligence infrastructure. Some intelligence chief somewhere must be muttering into his vodka glass "it beggars belief....."

How can a seasoned and superb intelligence officer ever hope to compete with American left-wing journalists, for collecting valuable intelligence information?

So - the whole embroglio should demoralize some opposing intelligence professionals. Unless - they can figure out how to take credit for it.....

Posted by Lone Ranger 2010-07-19 23:35|| 2010-07-19 23:35|| Front Page Top

#31 RELATED > WORLD NEWS/TOPIX > TOP SECRET AMERICA: GROWING + BEYOND CONTROL, + [post-9-11] EFECTIVENESS OF US SPY AGENCIES IMPOSSIBLE TO DETERMINE?

* Too BIG.
* Too UNWELDY.
* Too COSTLY = EXPENSIVE.
* DON'T EVEN KNOW OR HAVE RELIABLE DATAS [Backgrounds, Wages-Salaries]ON HOW MANY EMPLOYEES = CASES, FIELD AGENTS-OPERATIVES THEY HAVE OR CONTROL???

* ION CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > {YouTube] THE US WILL COLLAPSE SOON | WELCOME TO THE "BALKANIZATION" OF AMERICA. Looming specter of Anarchy, Violent Sectarianism, + ultimately Regional-National DISINTEGRATION? NEW CIVIL WAR?

* BHARAT RAKSHAK [old] > EURASIA REVIEW: DEFEATING THE "ASSASSIN'S MACE": PENTAGON'S NEW AIR-SEA BATTLE CONCEPT [Land-Sea]+ THE STRATEGIC RELEVANCE OF INDIA.

Posted by JosephMendiola 2010-07-19 23:35|| 2010-07-19 23:35|| Front Page Top

00:06 JosephMendiola
23:57 newc
23:53 JosephMendiola
23:46 tipover
23:43 JosephMendiola
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23:35 Lone Ranger
23:20 bigjim-CA
23:19 OldSpook
23:19 JosephMendiola
23:16 bigjim-CA
22:42 Sherry
22:36 Deacon Blues
22:35 OldSpook
22:30 OldSpook
22:23 trailing wife
22:22 gorb
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22:15 Grunter in Flatland
22:12 Hugh Jass
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