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June 20, 2013
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 Our Secret LeviathanPosted on Jul 21, 2010By 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’état, that concern was quite sensible. And there was hell to pay when the hidden history began to emerge. During the nine years since 9/11 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.” Advertisement 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. © 2010 Creators.com  TAGS:
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By coopinde, July 26, 2010 at 4:35 am Link to this comment
Oh good Obama will straigten it all out. Don’t tell him about what happened to the last president that tried that back in “63”
Report thisBy MarthaA, July 26, 2010 at 1:12 am Link to this comment
President Obama has only been in office only 18 months, he will get it figured out where the money is being lost, but it takes time.
Report thisBy Old Man Turtle, July 23, 2010 at 6:48 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Like the song says, “These ARE the good ol’ days!”
Report thisBy diman, July 23, 2010 at 5:58 am Link to this comment
I’d say back in the good old days of cold war, at least we had some sort of balance of power.
Report thisBy Coopinde, July 23, 2010 at 4:51 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
I doesn’t swwm that that we are getting our moneys worth when they can’t locate one man or know for sure if he is alive or dead. Considering what the US was spending before 9/11 on intel we should have been able to read about the WTC in that weeks TV Guide. Someone should have Cleaned house right after 9/11 anyway.
Report thisBy JDmysticDJ, July 22, 2010 at 4:40 pm Link to this comment
“You shall ‘know’ the Conason {sic} and the Conason {sic} shall set you free”
Report thisBy JDmysticDJ, July 22, 2010 at 4:24 pm Link to this comment
Anarcissie
FiftyGigs
You’re correct in saying that there is no “Impeccable Party,” but I find your logic to be impeccable.
Anarcissie
Your negativity is very tiresome. Joe Conason’s list of liberal and investigative journalist credentials are impeccable. I’ll agree that the New York Observer has an upper class demographic, but Neocon? Where did you get that? Conason also writes for Salon.com, and he began his career working for an underground newspaper.
Is there something you like about a humongous, multi-billion dollar, ineffectual, national security system?
To paraphrase the CIA motto, “You shall no the Conason {sic} and the Conason {sic} shall set you free.”
Report thisBy LarryG, July 22, 2010 at 9:37 am Link to this comment
Stop writing the checks to pay for all of this.
Report thisBy Anarcissie, July 22, 2010 at 9:14 am Link to this comment
That doesn’t take too much paranoia or dope to imagine. In fact, one scenario that’s been discussed quite a bit is a decision to cut off the funny-money phase of the U.S.‘s failing economy, allow the deferred collapse to take place, and then use the resulting public disturbances as an excuse to impose martial law. The really paranoid types think the Chinese have already taken over. Well, he who pays the paper calls the tune.
In the above case the function of the WaPo article would be to see who sticks his head up so that the police can plan appropriate whackings.
Report thisBy Peetawonkus, July 22, 2010 at 8:04 am Link to this comment
Truly. Both Democrats and Republicans are comfortable with the expansion of a maximum security state. Obama hasn’t dismantled any of the structures that Bush put into place and seems oblivious to any demands that he do so. There may be some tiny squabblings between the Parties over the details but that’s it. Wars go undeclared and Executive power expands without challenge.
When me and my commie, dope smoking friends get together for a paranoia session, we speculate that the military/corporate/power elites are preparing for lockdown.
Report thisBy Jim Yell, July 22, 2010 at 7:14 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
When people were prosecuted for revealing “state secrets” that were already well known by the countries supposed enemies, it should have been obvious even to a Sarah Palin supporter that they were being fiddled. The true word of this article is “keeping secrets from the public”.
It is mostly a screen to protect the criminals in our government, both elected and appointed from punishment for their crimes.
I will once again say no secret should be allowed for more than 6 months. All supposed secrets should be revealed in detail and that includes the ones that have already been classified for decades. It is time for the open government that Obama, pledged and like so much has avoided providing. As to the Republicans they are so disgusting there isn’t even a word to describe them.
Report thisBy Old Man Turtle, July 22, 2010 at 7:01 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
So here we have rather vaguely described the latest fast-metasticizing “tumor” not only growing ‘til now almost unnoticed within the corpus of “democracy,” but also hungrily displacing once relatively “healthy” organs in its “process.” Yet this article’s author and the first commenter below both seem to believe the same political system serving so well to both feed and hide the thing can somehow be induced to expose and excise it.
Maybe they should take a hint from the “success” had so far in “managing” the effects of Eisenhower’s M-I-C. Imagine a wheat farmer who’d been persuaded to replace his (or her) combine with a “surplus” M-1 Abrahms tank, because it was a “steal” at twice the price, and because you never know when ravening hordes of “colored” people might swarm across the border to pillage and rape. Harvest-time arrives before the hordes, though, and the silly so-and-so has to try to bring-in his crop with cannon and machine gun, with the obvious unsatisfactory results.
“Americans” are that farmer today. They put all their “marbles” into the “biggest-and-best” killing-machine seen around these parts in quite some time. It has already “eaten their lunch,” (and supper, too) and is deep into devouring their very “selfs.” Cutting-off the flow of “money” that energizes the “leviathan” is impossible without cutting-off their own half-life “support system” in-the-bargain.
So the local (i.e.; “american”) “patient” dies, but the disease is already fastening onto the “global” masses, and anticipates locating and reaching yet another “host-ess” when the life is sucked out of this one whom some of its self-styled temporary (on their own way to bigger, better, more “heavenly” things) residents call Earth. Meantime, don’t forget to “vote!”
Report thisBy Anarcissie, July 22, 2010 at 6:48 am Link to this comment
I don’t see any reason to believe the Democrats will disassemble the state security apparatus. There is simply no evidence for this whatever.
It is more interesting to speculate as to why a neo-con newspaper and a Democratic Party shill like Conason have decided to get excited about the secret police all of a sudden. Is it the waves on the surface caused by some deep struggle within the ruling class? Or is everything under control, and the game a magician’s trick to distract our attention while some really nasty business is done with the other hand?
Report thisBy balkas, July 22, 2010 at 6:23 am Link to this comment
Obviously, gorbachev did not think thet there ever was a case of mutually assured destruction.
This was media invention. And, then, what have it ever said, but lies?
Even hrushchev new that, for if he knew he could destroy US, he did not need cuba to that.
But soviets always knew they cldn’t do what fascists cld do and did; emplacing NW on SU borders.
And gorbachev knew [and who cldn’t?] what fascsists are capable of; thus, wisely or not caved in. He just loved russia enough to disband SU and stop developing socialism.
And the guy also had ‘Jews’ around his neck, too boot! And america did not. tnx
Report thisBy FiftyGigs, July 22, 2010 at 4:45 am Link to this comment
“the dimensions of the security colossus are stunning”
And Republicans are content with this.
It proves that conservatism isn’t at all about “less government”. It is in fact about “huge government” but government by a select, conservative few.
Those progressives who think their best tactic is to abandon the Democratic Party and start over or wait until some other party of complete perfection and impeccable unanimity with their ideas comes along had better wake up. That day will never come.
The colossus is conservatism, and the tide, while slowing, is still flowing in their direction. Our best strategy against it is to take over the Democratic Party. It’s already seeded with majorities who agree with you or are sympathetic toward you.
Vote for them. Vote for more of them this November, and within a few years, maybe as few as two, we could be in position to dissemble this behemoth forever.
That’s change you can believe in.
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