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<\/p>\nFiguring out exactly who\u2019s cashing in on the post-9\/11 boom in secret programs just got a whole lot easier.<\/p>\n
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U.S. spy agencies, the State Department and the White House had a collective panic attack Friday<\/a> over a new Washington Post<\/em> expos\u00e9 on the intelligence-industrial complex. Reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin let it drop Monday morning<\/a>.<\/p>\n It includes a searchable database cataloging what an estimated 854,000 employees and legions of contractors are apparently up to. Users can now to see just how much money these government agencies are spending and where those top secret contractors are located.<\/p>\n Check out the Post<\/em>\u2019s nine-page list<\/a> of agencies and contractors involved in air and satellite observations, for instance. No wonder it scares the crap out of official Washington: It\u2019s bound to provoke all sorts of questions \u2014 both from taxpayers wondering where their money goes and from U.S. adversaries looking to penetrate America\u2019s spy complex.<\/p>\n But this piece is about much more than dollars. It\u2019s about what used to be called the Garrison State<\/a> \u2014 the impact on society of a praetorian class of war-focused elites. Priest and Arkin call it \u201cTop Secret America,\u201d and it\u2019s so big and grown so fast, that it\u2019s replicated the problem of disconnection within the intelligence agencies that facilitated America\u2019s vulnerability to a terrorist attack.<\/p>\n With too many analysts and too many capabilities documenting too much, with too few filters in place to sort out the useful stuff or discover hidden connections, the information overload has become its own information blackout. \u201cWe consequently can\u2019t effectively assess whether it is making us more safe,\u201d a retired Army three-star general who recently assessed the system tells the reporters.<\/p>\n The Post<\/em> \u2014 whose editorial page has been notably receptive to the growth of the security state over the years \u2014 explains in an editorial comment<\/a> that it ran its constellation of websites by security officials to ensure that it wasn\u2019t jeopardizing national security. In one instance, the editors deleted certain unspecified specific \u201cdata points\u201d the project initially disclosed.<\/p>\n The editors further explain that most of what the project documents, like the locations of contractor and agency facilities, is already public information, distributed on company and agency websites. So it\u2019s not as if the paper has put anyone in harm\u2019s way. (Some of those overlapping contracts issued by the \u201c263 organizations [that] have been created or reorganized as a response to 9\/11\u2033 might now be in danger, however.)<\/p>\n Still, in compiling all this information, there\u2019s a risk that the Post<\/em> provides a hostile foreign agent looking to infiltrate the U.S. security apparatus<\/a> with an online yellow pages for sending out his resume.<\/p>\n Ironically, the very nature of the phenomenon Priest and Arkin document might be enough to foil an infiltrator. Security agencies and their companies produce more information than anyone can consume, adding uncertain value to the amount of information already public.<\/p>\n And the spigot \u2014 contained in congressional budgets that are either politically sacrosanct or entirely secret \u2014 doesn\u2019t seem to be able to close. One impressed observer told the paper about a useless intel program scheduled for closure:\u00a0\u201dLike a zombie, it keeps on living.\u201d<\/p>\n That rise in what might be called the counterterrorism-industrial complex is\u00a0a story we\u2019ve covered since this blog set up shop in 2007, as have many<\/a> of<\/a> our<\/a> friends<\/a>, because privatized intelligence is one of the major security developments of the last decade-plus.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also been enshrouded by near-baroque secrecy. The intelligence community would not even disclose just how many contractors it employs<\/a>, for instance, until the Post<\/em> did so.<\/p>\n That secrecy has concealed \u2014 barely \u2014 how inextricable the contractors are from the intelligence community. Take Bill Black, who ended his nearly 40-year career with the National Security Agency in 1997, when he became a vice president of intel contractor SAIC. That lasted for barely two years before Black returned as the agency\u2019s deputy director \u2014 with some ideas about which company could revamp NSA\u2019s software<\/a>. Long story short: Several years and a billion dollars later, the only thing the program yielded was an indictment of a whistleblower<\/a> accused of leaking info to reporter Siobhan Gorman.<\/p>\n That\u2019s been par for the course in the post-9\/11 cash-in. Similarly to their military counterparts, intelligence companies (sometimes they\u2019re the same companies) often \u201cbid back<\/a>\u201d the nation\u2019s spies, enticing veteran intel professionals to the contracting sector with greater salaries \u2014 raising the overall price of the U.S. security infrastructure when the spy agencies basically contract out for their old workforce.<\/p>\n Want data-mining, or a logic layer<\/a> for your surveillance architecture? Contractors are often able to take a piece of the job<\/a> with less red tape getting in the way.<\/p>\n Except that the information produced in \u201cTop Secret America\u201d has questionable ability to thwart, capture or kill terrorists. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab made his way onto Northwest Airlines Flight 253, and only alert passengers prevented him from detonating a bomb in his underwear.<\/p>\n In fairness, the law enforcement and intelligence communities have racked up notable successes in recent years, like arresting Najibullah Zazi<\/a> before, an indictment alleges, he could place suicide bombers in the New York City subway. And the fact remains that the closest thing the nation has experienced to a second 9\/11 came from a deranged Army major who shot up Fort Hood in November, a horrific act that killed over a dozen people, but not thousands.<\/p>\n Still, this is a critique that resonates:<\/p>\n When Maj. Gen. John M. Custer was the director of intelligence at U.S. Central Command, he grew angry at how little helpful information came out of the NCTC. In 2007, he visited its director at the time, retired Vice Adm. John Scott Redd, to tell him so. \u201cI told him that after 4\u00bd years, this organization had never produced one shred of information that helped me prosecute three wars!\u201d he said loudly, leaning over the table during an interview.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Um, three<\/em> wars? Only in Top Secret America \u2026<\/p>\n