Our Secret Leviathan

A Commentary By Joe Conason

Back in the bad old days of the Cold War -- when mutual nuclear annihilation was a policy option -- a culture of secrecy arose in Washington. What wise observers understood even then was that while governments tried to keep secrets from each other, their chief concern was to keep secrets from their own people.


Considering what had been done in the name of the United States, from Mafia assassination plots against foreign leaders to murder, corruption and coups d'etat, that concern was quite sensible. And there was hell to pay when the hidden history began to emerge.

During the nine years since Sept. 11, the national security state has doubled or tripled in size, with huge annexes in the private sector -- and the culture of secrecy has metastasized simultaneously. As The Washington Post reports in a landmark series titled "Top Secret America," by Dana Priest and William Arkin, the dimensions of the security colossus are stunning. It is nothing less than a fourth branch of government, so large, so powerful and so wealthy that no other branch can even grasp it, let alone control it.

How big? Nobody knows exactly, not even the Post investigative team, after two years of research that gathered many thousands of public records, including government contracts, intelligence reports and corporate documents, and included interviews with exceptionally knowledgeable sources.

But Priest and Arkin, whose work ought to be read by everyone, say that there are as many as 1,271 government entities and 1,931 private companies "working on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States," with an estimated 854,000 people -- far more than live in the city of Washington, D.C. -- holding top-secret security clearances."

More than 30 building complexes for top-secret intelligence outfits are either under construction now or have been built since September 2001; altogether, these buildings occupy 17 million square feet of space.
Nobody in the White House, the Congress or any of the intelligence agencies, including the new Office of the Director of National Intelligence, seems to have the capacity to manage the complex tangle of agencies, companies and off-the-books entities that are supposed to protect us from violent extremism.

After reviewing the way that the Defense Department oversees its most sensitive intelligence and operational programs last year, retired Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines told the Post reporters that he found the morass almost incomprehensible: "I'm not aware of any agency with the authority, responsibility or a process in place to coordinate all these interagency and commercial activities. The complexity of this system defies description."

Calling this thing a "system" is a bit misleading. But does the leviathan offspring of government and corporation make us safer? That, too, is difficult to determine -- in fact, it is impossible to determine, as the writers explain, because with "so many employees, units and organizations, the lines of responsibility began to blur."

We have no way of knowing precisely what the national security complex does with the hundreds of billions of dollars in its shrouded budgets. What we do know is that billions of dollars are wasted through redundancy, corruption and sheer overgrowth. Too many agencies are performing the same tasks, such as shutting down terrorist money transfers and generating too many reports for anyone to read.

Most disturbing is that so many critical functions are outsourced to private corporations, primarily loyal to shareholders and management. The role of these corporations and their lobbyists, who controlled the creation of the Department of Homeland Security during the George W. Bush administration, is a challenge to democracy of unprecedented proportions.

But despite presidential promises of transparency, the Barack Obama administration is fostering more secrecy, not less -- which is exactly the wrong way to cope with this problem. Our democracy and our security both depend on bringing this monstrous bureaucracy to heel -- and that can only be done in the sunlight.

Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_joe_conason/our_secret_leviathan

I understand the need for secrecy for reasons of national security, however, in a democracy there needs to be a good amount of openness by the government. Reading this cannot help but make me think that this is how police states are born.

Most people will just brush this off as a bunch of conspiracy nonsense. There's no doubt in my mind that, just like everyone else, governments keep secrets. And being that it's the government, they probably have some very significant secrets.

The cynical side of me thinks that the gov't probably wants most people to either brush this off as conspiracy nonsense, or do pretty much the same with those who are concerned about loss of civil liberties.

alland wrote:I understand the need for secrecy for reasons of national security, however, in a democracy there needs to be a good amount of openness by the government. Reading this cannot help but make me think that this is how police states are born.

Exactly. This is why everyone should opposed (or should have opposed) the Patriot Act years ago. The fact that this has been uncovered will do more damage to the gov't in general. This thing crosses party lines, btw.

BubbleBliss wrote:Most people will just brush this off as a bunch of conspiracy nonsense. There's no doubt in my mind that, just like everyone else, governments keep secrets. And being that it's the government, they probably have some very significant secrets.

That's just an assumption.... since it's been reported already on evening news. Of course, there will always be the kooks who think that the gov't installs cameras in their bathrooms.

alland wrote:The cynical side of me thinks that the gov't probably wants most people to either brush this off as conspiracy nonsense, or do pretty much the same with those who are concerned about loss of civil liberties.

Is there even a word about this by the ACLU? They always go after "liberty" issues.

TexasBlue wrote:Is there even a word about this by the ACLU? They always go after "liberty" issues.

I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if they weighed-in on this already when The Patriot Act was signed.

The ACLU were against the PA and they should be questioning this. What pisses me off almost as much is how our Democrats railed on and on about the PA but nary a peep since this was reported. I guess it does make a difference in who's in control. This is a bi-partisan issue, imo.

TexasBlue wrote:The ACLU were against the PA and they should be questioning this. What pisses me off almost as much is how our Democrats railed on and on about the PA but nary a peep since this was reported. I guess it does make a difference in who's in control. This is a bi-partisan issue, imo.

I found several artilces online, but this is the type of thing that they're on about regarding this:

http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/nsa-spying-americans-illegal

alland wrote:I found several artilces online, but this is the type of thing that they're on about regarding this:

http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/nsa-spying-americans-illegal

Kind of an old article. If you find anything current, post it.

Regarding this old article, i will have to say that not only was Bush complicit in this but so were congress-people from both parties. Both parties sit on the intelligence committees. Nothing like this happens without them knowing about it. That's not an opinion. It's fact.

TexasBlue wrote:Regarding this old article, i will have to say that not only was Bush complicit in this but so were congress-people from both parties. Both parties sit on the intelligence committees. Nothing like this happens without them knowing about it. That's not an opinion. It's fact.

Yeah, well... my point in posting the article wasn't to play the blame game -- just to point out how massive and unweildy the Three-Letter Agencies have become.

TexasBlue wrote:That's just an assumption.... since it's been reported already on evening news. Of course, there will always be the kooks who think that the gov't installs cameras in their bathrooms.

Like dblboggie?