On the recordJuly 22, 2010
I imagine many of my colleagues have read The Washington Post report on 'Top Secret America,' and I hope they are reacting as I am, with horror and outrage at the sprawling national security and intelligence bureaucracy that has grown like a weed in recent years. This series of articles should shock us into action, at the very least leading us to question the conventional wisdom about how best to keep America safe. According to the Post, the counterterrorism and homeland security apparatus has ballooned to some 1,271 government organizations working in roughly 10,000 locations around the country. There are now so many agencies analyzing so much information and issuing so many reports that the whole thing has become redundant, unmanageable, and ineffective. Actually, we can't measure its precise effectiveness because so much of it is shrouded in secrecy. Much of the information about these agencies is classified and therefore not subject to the scrutiny it so badly needs. If this system, which is so big that the Post refers to it as a fourth branch of government, were a domestic social program, my friends on the other side of the aisle would call it out-of-control spending.
