I’ve been wondering why the Washington Post spent two years putting together the story that it rolled out this week — “Top Secret America.” The report essentially covers the world of classified contracting, and it was delivered with the fanfare that the Post usually reserves for a Woodward exclusive or a big, deep scandal.
But the stories themselves don’t actually say much. If Slate still ran its invaluable “Series Skipper” feature, which summarized bloated investigative journalism series, it could boil this one down to a few sentences: We’re spending a lot of classified programs. Contractors supply a large part of the workforce in these programs. More oversight and better budget control are needed. Oh, and Jeani Burns’s husband won’t talk to her about his job.
These are stories and themes that a good reporter should have been able to pull together in a few weeks, not two years, or so it seems to me. In fact, the stories are so bland that they seem mostly to be after-the-fact justifications for the big databases about the classified contract sector that are displayed on the Post’s website.
Clearly, a lot more effort went into assembling a detailed, comprehensive listing of classified programs and contractors than went into the stories. There’s clearly a risk to national security in making such a listing readily available; it could lead to the companies being targeted by intelligence services or even terrorists. Still, some of that information is readily available. Once you have a company name, basic data like the company’s location, employees, and revenue is widely available from business sources. What’s new and what required real work was the detailed listing of companies and agencies tied to classified contracts, plus the appealing graphical interfaces.
That said, a quick look left me with doubts about the quality of both the graphics and the research. After playing with them for a while, the visualizations seemed more like eye-candy than useful tools. And the database is less impressive when you focus on agencies you know something about. Is the Transportation Security Agency really doing a bunch of Top Secret border control research, as the database reports? I’m skeptical; I had policy responsibility for TSA when I was at DHS, and TSA doesn’t really do border controls; it’s got its hands full just doing transportation security.
But if I think the Post is hyping the scope of all the Top Secret work it covers, how do I check the story? Journalists have long complained that classified programs avoid public scrutiny. But in this case, the Post reporters get the same benefit from government secrecy as the contractors and agencies.
So, at the end of the day, what value does that big database have for Post readers? As the stories make clear, the database didn’t actually turn up any scandal or issue that couldn’t have been reported without the database. And reading the database is uninformative, pretty as some of the tools are. I’m more motivated than most, and I couldn’t bring myself to spend more than an hour browsing through it. Other than their connection to classified research, the data actually supplied about companies and agencies is strikingly thin.
If there’s no big story to write, and the database puts readers to sleep, why did the Post spend scarce resources on these things at a time when newspapers are in desperate shape?
Here’s a theory: if the Post is looking for new sources of ad revenue, it may think that maintaining the best web resource on the classified sector of government spending will allow it to target classified-contracting companies for advertising. It can aim advertising at them (“We can clean your SCIF cheaper than anyone else – outsource that job to our cleared maintenance workers!”). And it can seek ads from them (“Tell Congress to preserve TSA’s crucial Classified Border Control Research Program!”). Plus, while there aren’t a lot of business sectors that the Post can cover better than the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, this government-driven sector could be one.
For purposes of both coverage and advertising, then, the series may be an Washington Post exercise in market segmentation. Which would make this series the journalistic equivalent of a dog marking its territory.
Of course, that’s not especially pleasant for the companies and agencies in the database, since they’re playing the role of hydrant. With one difference: ordinarily a dog doesn’t expect the hydrant to buy him more water.
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July 24, 2010, 9:42 amnone says:
Um, that’s sort of news man. Especially because we don’t know HOW MUCH, and because the number is likely in the TRILLIONS. You don’t think We The People should be concerned about this? The geographic concentration of all that $$$ is also a newsworthy angle. In case you haven’t noticed, the country is broke, and war is a racket. Nothing to see here? Gimme a break.
July 24, 2010, 9:58 amnone says:
Actually, maybe you’re right: Lets get back to important navel-gazing bullshit that passes for news in the cesspool of corruption that is DC (like Ezra Klein’s inbox screeds or the work of the noted public intellectual Andrew Breitbart).
EDIT: also, perhaps you’d have been more satisfied with these reporters’ work if civil liberties issues figured more prominently in the series, rather than just the outrageous graft and waste. Somehow I don’t think the people on this blog would be much interested in such disclosures, notwithstanding the fact that some of you call yourselves “libertarians” (PSA: you’re not)
July 24, 2010, 10:00 amGopher Law says:
This. How can we ever start to reign in Big Brother if we don’t even know how Big he is?
July 24, 2010, 10:05 amnone says:
Exactly right. A lot of the stuff in the series has been reported previously, if never as comprehensively. But when this story started being hyped over the weekend, I thought the Post would put a dollar figure on this nonsense, and the fact that they couldn’t make an educated guess is pretty significant.
July 24, 2010, 10:17 amDG says:
Nothing in the series was a surprise to people who live in DC – we see this stuff every day.
{There’s clearly a risk to national security in making such a listing readily available;}
I’ve seen this belief before. It is predicated on the idea that our opponents – state and non-state actors – are dumb or incompetent. The Post assembled this data with (likely) a team of interns. This is not rocket science and anyone can do it. I’m not surprised to see this from Baker – its a common meme in the government, and, especially, the DHS, which has the sad tendency to utilize secrecy as a sort of poor man’s substitute for competence.
Also, not a shock to anyone who lives in the DC area.
July 24, 2010, 10:22 amKenneth Anderson says:
Stewart: Funny, we had this discussion at my house one morning as the series was rolling in. Consensus in family:
1. Post violated cardinal rule of underpromise, overdeliver. The series has some interesting and valuable nuggets, but nothing to justify the surrounding buildup. If it had been marketed for the information it contained with less hoopla and windup, it would be much less a target for the eyerolling.
2. Why the big windup? It’s sad, in a way, that the Post is still rolling out this kind of investigative journalism to send gigantic signals … Pulitzer material, Pulitzer material. It’s sad because it is a little bit like an over the hill Broadway producer who doesn’t realize that the culture has moved on, for better or worse, and how you send signals just isn’t the same anymore – gigantic acreage above the fold for pictures, etc., etc.; what we’re reacting to is that it is culturally all so 70s, bombast and bloat. That might be quite unfair to the content – there is some important stuff there, buried beneath the lede, which is give me a big award and treat me like it’s Watergate – but well it asked for it. But it is the weird disconnect, of seeming to have no one at the paper able to step back and say, what’s the signal being conveyed here?
3. Attempted rehabilitation of Bill Arkin.
July 24, 2010, 10:25 amRelieved says:
Although the massive cost of our information agencies is certainly newsworthy, I agree with the author that this story felt more like a two week story than a two year story.
July 24, 2010, 10:29 amSuperSkeptic says:
It’s hands are full of something, just like it’s policies.
I’m curious: what policy were you responsible for, exactly? We know you were advocating for full body scanners. Were you responsible for the pat-down of grandma policy? The ‘everybody take your shoes off’ policy (not to mention the everybody take your belt off policy)? How about the confiscate your toenail clippers policy? The throw away your food and water policy (what I like to call the ‘make you buy it where it’s more expensive inside the gate’ policy)? The no deodorant and shaving cream policy (recently relaxed)? The ‘TSA employee gets to keep my lighter’ policy? How about the ‘no more than 4 ounces of shampoo and it must be in its own ziplocked bag’ policy?
July 24, 2010, 10:30 ampessimist says:
Journalism shouldnt do boring stuff anyway. Its focus shouldnt be on things like “what the government does”, unless there’s a racial angle that can be blamed on Obama.
July 24, 2010, 11:00 amThomasD says:
Maybe I’ve read too much Ludlum, but I doubt any of this information isn’t already know to the people who make it their business to ferret out such things. I mean, if this stuff can be found out by a reporter, well doesn’t that pretty much mean it is discoverable by anyone with a BA, or possibly even a GED?
No, my concern is that now the information is readily available to a more problematic sector – the mentally unstable. Those who might otherwise lack the high-functioning and focus necessary to find this information on their own now have easy acces thanks to the compilation efforts of the Post.
Which certainly will bring out at least a few, if not many of the honest-to-DSM IV tinfoil hat crowd, thereby raising the burden on the people charged with keeping all of this apparatus (including the actual important bits) secure.
Which might be an unfortunate byproduct of the exercise if there were some other tangible benefit from the effort, but as it is today I cannot see where this reporting has accomplished anything useful.
July 24, 2010, 11:02 amArthur Kirkland says:
Libertarians and liberals will, in general, understand the value of information relevant (if not essential) to sensible examination of huge, secret, costly, intrusive, bloated and dubious government programs whose beneficiaries and sponsors crave lack of accountability.
Conservatives, apparently, will not.
Different strokes, some seemingly destined to be stroking a Pulitzer.
July 24, 2010, 11:05 amReader says:
The value in this article, I think, is precisely that it didn’t arise out of any particular scandal, and isn’t laden with paranoid fantasies about what the government is doing. It is more descriptive, and lets the world of “Top Secret America” speak for itself.
And for me, that’s the really troubling part. It’s not about evil or malicious people consciously trying to destroy our civil liberties about whom we should be most concerned. It’s the insularity, the way in which that universe really is that: a world unto itself. It warps its inhabitants. Secrecy breeds secrecy, whether truly warranted or not – when all you’ve got is a hammer… Add to it the profit motive angle, and you’re into some serious trouble.
July 24, 2010, 11:10 amJoe says:
This post and some of the comments (‘people in DC area’ … well, that’s everyone, I guess) has the flavor of the “oh sure, we know that already,” when actually many don’t, or if they do, they don’t really pay much attention to it, unless reminded of the fact, particularly with catchy graphics and interesting tidbits that focuses their mind on the subject matter.
A certain amount of cynicism is warranted, probably, since as a guest at Democracy Now! noted, the basics were reported already (including the breadth of control by private contractors) long before now. But, it matters when a major “paper of record” focuses on the story and if something of this magnitude is not repeated, in force, repeatedly, again, it will not truly sink in.
But, ho hum, right?
July 24, 2010, 11:22 amStewart Baker says:
The problem with this sentiment, and with this theme of the article, is that it’s a familiar game of Washington accounting gotcha. In fact, we know quite well what DHS costs, what DOD costs, etc. The Post is doing what GAO often does, picking out a new category — in this case classified contractor spending — that cuts across traditional budgetary lines and then expressing shock that we don’t know how much we spend in that category. It always sounds outrageous to people who aren’t paying daily attention. But the implication, that the spending gets no scrutiny at all, is quite wrong. It simply doesn’t get scrutiny as a single item, cutting across agency lines. Maybe it should; it’s always true that organizational boundaries result in suboptimized spending as well as execution. But you can’t do cross-cutting budget analysis on a different basis every year, using whatever categories a reporter may think are important.
To make this a little more personal, imagine Arkin and Priest writing about your household budget. Even if you are scrupulous about adhering to one, I guarantee that Arkin and Priest could find a relevant question about your budget that you can’t answer. How much did you waste last year — on credit card late fees, books that you never got around to reading, lost deposits, and library overdue fines? How much do you spend on each of your children and what does that say about who you love the most? How much do you spend on high-sodium foods and how does it correlate to your rising blood pressure?
Those aren’t dumb questions, but neither is it shocking that you don’t have answers at your fingertips. We shouldn’t ignore waste and redundancy in classified contracts, but the claim that government is stupid and scandalous because it can’t produce a single number for all such contracts doesn’t hold water.
July 24, 2010, 11:25 amStewart Baker says:
Ah.
July 24, 2010, 11:29 amtherut says:
Do not worry they will get a Pultizer for their reporting. That is what it is really all about “Look at ME” and how I can win a cracker jack toy from my “esteemed” peers.
July 24, 2010, 11:40 amOrenWithAnE says:
Indeed, the revelation that there are only a handful of people that are even qualified to know about all these programs is telling. It is insularity without even the possibility of oversight.
For the vast majority of these programs, it is likely that no one has the time and clearance to undertake a serious review of their goals and results.
July 24, 2010, 11:45 amOrenWithAnE says:
We know the raw numbers, we don’t have a clue what they are spending it on and what results they are getting.
Breaking such astronomical numbers down into individual chunks that we can assess and review is a fundamental part of accounting. “We spent $50 million on 35 programs to study and disrupt terrorist financing programs, as a result we have made 10 arrests and stopped the transfer of $10 million” is a lot easier to evaluate than “We spent $10 billion ‘securing the homeland’”.
July 24, 2010, 11:54 amKen Arromdee says:
Well, the patdown of Grandma policy probably owes more to the left, specifically the idea that paying more attention to single adult men who are from the Middle East or have Muslim names is racial profiling and must be prevented at any cost.
July 24, 2010, 11:59 amyankee says:
As a liberal who was shocked and disappointed to learn that so many intelligence reports are generated that nobody has time to read them, that nobody actually understands what the system does, and that a third of the intelligence community consists of contractors who cost vastly more than government workers, this sounds an awful lot like a desperate attempt at damage control. Nothing to see here, move along.
July 24, 2010, 12:04 pmPraetorius says:
Two things come to mind. First of all, this isn’t news, it’s very well known to anyone who cared to find out. That many here seem surprised reflects poorly on their awareness, nothing else.
secondly, proof (sigh…again) that the WaPo cares not a whit for national security, as long as they can whore out a story (or a fantasy). Yes, our enemies know this, but perhaps the story gives them one more lead to exploit. To what end? And aside from the WaPo, who really benefits?
July 24, 2010, 12:12 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Fair enough; I’ll let Baker off the hook for that one. As for the inanity and idiocy of the rest of it, absolutely not. The actions on the ground speak for themselves, AFAIC. The fact that we pay through the nose for it just adds insult to injury.
July 24, 2010, 12:19 pmMark Field says:
Sure, because there’s absolutely no middle ground between racial profiling and strip-searching Granny.
July 24, 2010, 12:20 pmnone says:
The best part of this post is the author’s apparent befuddlement at the fact that The Post ran a story that painted some of its biggest advertisers (the full-page ads are typically from some military-industrial player) in a bad light. They’re journalists, not hacks; it’s the Post, not AEI.
July 24, 2010, 12:22 pmGopher Law says:
What a disingenuous (or just plain dumb) analogy. A private household’s budget isn’t financed by tax payer dollars. A better analogy would have been a company answering questions from its shareholders; and it better be damn able to answer any relevant questions from them.
July 24, 2010, 12:27 pmnone says:
Do not worry they will get a Pultizer for their reporting. That is what it is really all about “Look at ME” and how I can win a cracker jack toy from my “esteemed peers”
——–
They’ll get a Pulitizer because this kind of work is what journalists are supposed to do – piss off authoritarian wingnuts who would have no problem with our very own Stasi.
July 24, 2010, 12:32 pmAllan Walstad says:
For another view, I suggest Bob Higgs’ column over at Liberty & Power:
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/129364.html
July 24, 2010, 12:33 pmGopher Law says:
Umm, how about the now-better-informed public?
July 24, 2010, 12:33 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Knowledge is good.
July 24, 2010, 12:42 pm— Emil Faber, founder
PolyisTCOandbanned says:
It’s something that is not exactly a scoop. Not as interesting as the WSJ series on Floyd Landis or the BP oil rig blowout. (For both of these stories, I got WAY more detail and insight from reading those long stories full of technical detail, than in following the tagalong stories by the rest of the media).
That said…I do think it’s worthy of final documentation and discussion, even if the change has been going on for a while. Just like I wish someone would do a story on the direct advertising to the goverment. When I drive up the coast on 95 and listen to WTOP and WMAL, it blows me away. I remembmer 30 years ago what kind of ads would be on there (Joon Ree Karate, Riggs bank, etc.). Now it is back to back beltway bandits touting their “interoperability” IT solutions.
I just want to take them all and make them do workouts until they break…grr…
July 24, 2010, 12:50 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Where are the small-government Tea Partiers? I can understand conservative enthusiasm for a bloated, secretive, profit-generating nanny-state bureaucracy, but I thought the Tea Partiers would be applauding the Washington Post and excoriating the classified contractors.
Looks like it is left to the libertarian-liberal alliance to defend American values on this one.
July 24, 2010, 12:52 pmSusan says:
Dear Arthur,
I would hazard a guess that Tea Party supporters care as much about small government as they do national security and want all areas to work well. But, I would guess that they are not particularly thrilled with the idea of offering any possible enemies keys to the security of our nation anymore than they want to make the keys to their personal homes available to the public.
July 24, 2010, 1:03 pmyankee says:
Doesn’t surprise me; the Tea Partiers are ordinary conservatives. Like other conservatives, their support for “small government” is limited to (a) opposition to social welfare programs that don’t directly benefit them and (b) support for tax cuts for the rich.
July 24, 2010, 1:24 pmnone says:
meh. it’s pennies compared to mediCAID … oh, wait, no it’s not … must be that the “hands off are medicare” teabaggers are dishonest, hypocritical, authoritarian dumbs
July 24, 2010, 1:24 pmnone says:
Agreed. Beautiful in its simplicity:
July 24, 2010, 1:30 pmPraetorius says:
How do they benefit? The information has been available since at least the 1970′s, if they didn’t know it then why does it matter now? What exactly is the benefit? Compare it to the risk to national security.
July 24, 2010, 1:36 pmPraetorius says:
Those who were paying attention already knew. Those who aren’t paying attention don’t matter.
July 24, 2010, 1:38 pmBaker is a dumbass says:
You’re an ignorant fuckwit.
Are you seriously arguing that their disclosures harmed national security?
More damage has been done to our national security by torture fanboys and privacy invading goons like yourself than could have ever be done by the Post.
July 24, 2010, 1:39 pmnone says:
“This information has been available since at least the 1970′s” – wtf are you talking about? The bloat grew exponentially after 9-11 and during the Cheney adminstration (coincidentally, so did Cheney’s stock options – by some 3000 percent). And then there’s the fact that today’s technology increases the potential for much greater civil liberties violations than Nixon or Hoover could dream of.
July 24, 2010, 1:44 pmGopher Law says:
Just because it’s been “available” doesn’t mean most people were well-informed or even informed at the most cursory level. The benefit is that by one of the most popular newspapers in the country making a big deal about this, it increases the chances of something actually being done to correct the bloated waste and lack of transparency and accountability–something of much greater benefit than any speculative cost to so-called “national security”.
July 24, 2010, 1:45 pmGopher Law says:
Says you.
July 24, 2010, 1:49 pmJoe says:
Those who aren’t paying attention don’t matter.
To some people.
July 24, 2010, 2:05 pmPolyisTCOandbanned says:
Arthur:
The core of the Tea Party is a libertarian, Ron Paulish revolt against the government growth. I’ve never been to a rally, but I fit right into their ethic. (Polling has actually showed large concerns even on the center and LEFT, with the massive government increase in bussiness, btw…there is a populist discontent.)
Certainly, I’m disgusted with the whole ethic of the thing…everytime I drive through DC and see how the whole place is growing at the expense of the rest of the country…and the contractors are a big part of it. REad my comment about the advertisements on the radio. It disgusts and defeats me.
BTW, both people like you (left) and regular rightists (party hacks) don’t understand “the Tea Party” in wanting to have it take monolithic positions or respond to things the way an advocacy group or party would. It’s an amorphous reaction of disgust. It has no lasting strength and will be swamped by the institutionalized factions.
So…the answer is that we are disgusted by the securituy contracting game just plenty (along with the 8A and all the other shenanigans). But if you look for some organized response and go to Rove or even Palin or some neocon editorialist, you’re just not getting it.
I’m seriously disgusted. Hence my comment about wanting to make the maggots do workouts and burn the p**** out of them. Just break them down…and it’s a futile fantasy…I know.
July 24, 2010, 2:05 pmyankee says:
Those of us who are paying the taxes to support this bloated, bureaucratic, inefficient, ineffective mess have every right to care about it. Good for the Post for publicizing it.
July 24, 2010, 2:10 pmJoe says:
The core of the Tea Party is a libertarian, Ron Paulish revolt against the government growth.
Like Ron Paul, why they are associating with the Republican Party is therefore a tad unclear.
I never heard of this party back when the Republicans controlled Congress. Must have been small government back in 2005 or something.
July 24, 2010, 2:12 pmOrenWithAnE says:
The American Public benefits from knowing what their tax dollars are spent on and perhaps electing politicians that want to funnel those dollars into projects that are thoroughly reviewed for their positive effects.
Why don’t we assess the risk to national security from having unadited, unreviewed and effectively unaccountable projects soaking up the DHS/DOD budgets? The legions of inefficient, duplicitous or outright pointless security projects compete for spending with the effective, well-targeted and well-conceived ones. Attempts to improve the review process are absolutely essential for our national security.
For instance, national security would likely be served if we combined some of the 35 programs for tracking terrorist financing. Assigning resources that are currently duplicating each others’ efforts to cooperating is an instant win for all involved (except perhaps the turf warriors that care more about their departments’ clout and budget than the security of these US).
July 24, 2010, 2:14 pmPraetorius says:
Leftists were complaining about ‘the bloat’ at least since the Church committee hearings. Always in hyperbole. Nothing new here, except the willful ignorance of those who continue to bleat about it as if it’s something new.
July 24, 2010, 2:16 pmcboldt says:
– The legions of inefficient, duplicitous or outright pointless security projects compete for spending with the effective, well-targeted and well-conceived ones. –
July 24, 2010, 2:20 pm“Duplicative” is the word you should use there, rater than “duplicitous” which is roughly synonymous with “deceitful.”
none says:
Meh. If all Tea Party types were like you, I’d be a Tea Partier myself. But a good many of them are hypocrites who are hostile or at best indifferent to civil liberties concerns, and whose concerns for economic liberties and free markets are awfully selective. I would’ve preferred Paul to every other candidate other than Obama, but his son is full of shit.
July 24, 2010, 2:28 pmnone says:
“Hyperbole,” huh? Let’s pull some excerpts from the Church Report and test your characterization.
July 24, 2010, 2:44 pmArthur Kirkland says:
“Nothing new here” is probably apt, although not in the manner intended. There is nothing (or perhaps little) new about the threats, so the increase in spending, secrecy, surveillance and the like to combat a largely illusory enemy is unnecessary and perhaps even counterproductive (although, for a favored few, intensely profitable, and for certain politicians, extremely useful, which explains why it occurs).
The issue is useful for distinguishing those concerned about the size of government from those not concerned, and those support civil liberties and freedom from those who have other priorities. For the most part, liberals and libertarians on one side, conservatives on the other.
July 24, 2010, 2:52 pmP. Caputo says:
Why is this a Right/ Left issue? Some of the shrillest Obamian partisans here aren’t getting it. Their Party’s been in charge for a while now, and they’re still trash talking about hypocritical, jack-booted, and corrupt conservatives and small government independents, when their Obama-Pelosi adminstration has not only maintained what’s been put in place, but sought more intelligence gathering both foreign and domestic, (to what ends is anybody’s guess.)
Why don’t Democrats and Progressives (and putative Libertarians here, although I suspect most of the offensively strident on VC threads are Party faithful) quit whining about the Republicans and Tea Party and stop this kind of contracting which so offends. Or don’t. You might wish to ensure there be no degradation to national security and Rahm might ask there be no interruption of contribution monies into Democratic coffers.
I think this big story is being put out to lay the groundwork for a Democratic campaign issue, but it will backfire because the Dems have been in charge and are sounding beyond pathetic continuing to blame Bush and the Tea Party movement for what’s going on at the Federal level. Voters are readying to hold this WH and Congress not only accountable for inefficiencies and corruption under their watch but the bleating about how nothing’s ever their fault…
They are either incompetents and/or realize, now that they’re responsible and can’t just jeer from the sidelines, that maintaining security and prosecuting war are messy, non-linear activities which engender a lot of redundancy, unnecessary expenditure and corruption, but they don’t wanna take the heat for trying to fix a near intractable problem and disaffecting their politicians and generous corporate allies.
Anyway, good luck to you politically motivated carpers in getting your guys to meet their Federal responsibilities as you see them. At least the complaining Tea Partiers haven’t been in charge with nothing but the same old same old, plus additional government intrusion, mandates and taxes, topped with skyrocketing debt and pathetic excuses to show for it all.
July 24, 2010, 4:01 pmAlessandra says:
I’ve always found that one of the most profound contradictions many Americans display is that they would rather revolt and die than to let the “government” know about or intrude their private sphere, alleging just how much damage incompetent and dishonest bureaucrats would inflict on the general population, but completely “trust” the same “government” to do anything it wants, secretly, in the name of national security.
July 24, 2010, 4:16 pmnone says:
P. Caputo – good arguments you stupid fuck, you must take your talking points from Michael Steele. OBAMA’S CHOOSING AMIRITE? Iraq/Afghanistan/Unchecked-Police-Powers – Obama’s choosing! God you are a fucking idiot. The highest ranking members of Obama’s cabinet went ON THE RECORD about this shit, and have already signaled that the gravy train is over. And guess what happened to the one cabinet officer who was unapologetic about this stuff when asked for comment? (Hint: he’s no longer working for Uncle Sam you simple fuck). You think the Cheney administration cabinet members would’ve reacted that way? His stock portfolio would’ve taken a severe hit.
These programs were instituted under Bush you moron, and the money was appropriated before Obama took office.
At least 20 percent of the government organizations that exist to fend off terrorist threats were established or refashioned in the wake of 9/11. Many that existed before the attacks grew to historic proportions as the Bush administration and Congress gave agencies more money than they were capable of responsibly spending.
Through the federal budget process, the George W. Bush administration and Congress made it much easier for the CIA and other agencies involved in counterterrorism to hire more contractors than civil servants.
But nice try teabagger
July 24, 2010, 4:26 pmRick H. says:
On the one hand, neocon shills claim that the information in the Post series is old news, easily accessible, *yawn*, wake me when it’s over. Yet, simultaneously, it is valuable data which should be hidden from “our enemies,” and its public release is a potential security threat.
Also, a single family household’s finances are the perfect analogy to the byzantine, multi-trillion-dollar budgets of the world’s biggest superpower.
July 24, 2010, 4:32 pmPraetorius says:
Its a matter of degree of trust. I don’t trust Congress (at all), most of the Executive, or most journolists (sic) to act in the best interest of anything but their own petty interests. The so-called ‘Intelligence Community’? Somewhat more. Not total trust, but much more than the rest of the crowd, who would sell their own 6-year old daughter to a sex slaver if they thought they could get short-term gain from it.
July 24, 2010, 4:33 pmNone Should Be Banned says:
Go away. You are an uncivil POS. Go somewhere. Anywhere. But take your bile and rudeness and leave.
And some of you wonder why certain Conspirators refuse to open comments. Well here’s why: It’s people like None who seem to think they are particularly clever by calling people names and being discourteous.
They don’t advance their arguments in the least by doing so. In fact, they are truly pathetic.
July 24, 2010, 4:35 pmnone says:
wow, quite an admission – not every day that a rightwinger *admits* that they prefer authoritarianism to democracy. i commend you. might i suggest you move to, say, burma? you’d like it there you goddamn idiot
July 24, 2010, 4:37 pmPraetorius says:
And what has the current administration or Congress done in the last 18 months, to fix it? With a majority of both houses and the Presidency, all the ills in American society should have been fixed: Gitmo, DADT (which is Congress’s to fix, and I wish they would), this ‘bloat’ in intel collection, and everything else.
Yet, things continue on…..because power (no matter what letter is after some poltroons name) corrupts, and reinforces itself.
In the mean time, America’s enemies continue to exist. Look what the ‘relatively benign’ 8 years of the Clinton regime did for America. Four terrorist attacks, which culminated in 9/11 because of the degradation of intelligence gathering started by the dems following the Church hearings, and accelerated by Clinton. Death, destruction, and a couple trillion in expenditures, not to mention the debt that Obama and the dems have created de novo.
July 24, 2010, 4:39 pmPraetorius says:
Not a right winger… a big-L Libertarian with his eyes open. As long as the rest of the world wants to screw with me and mine, I’ll screw back harder. After all, it’s the ‘Chicago Way’.
So, why don’t you get on your rainbow unicorn and ride off to the fantasy land you think you occupy where nobody is trying to kill us?
July 24, 2010, 4:41 pmP. Caputo says:
none,
You said “Stasi” Republicans or something upthread and now it’s “teabagger” and the “Cheney administration” 4 evah. I cannot rise to your level of argument, clearly.
Even though the Obama-Pelosi team got revolutionary healthcare reform enacted in the face of mounting to majority disapproval, they can’t do anything about defense and security expenditures because of Bush, Cheney, a previous Congress with a Democratic House since ’06, the 911 Commission and the “Teabaggers.”
OK.
July 24, 2010, 4:42 pmPubliusFL says:
Just as there’s apparently no middle ground between a pat-down and a strip-search.
July 24, 2010, 4:43 pmPraetorius says:
Why do the leftists continue on blaming the previous administration? Because they lack any original ideas of their own. Their paid media lackeys in Journolist (plus the ones who haven’t been exposed yet), their corrupt congressmen (despite the claims of ‘the most ethical congress EVER), the President and his staff that are incompetents at best, all are bereft of ideas that will actually improve the situation…..History isn’t their strong suite either: Demanding the same tried and failed policies of leftists and other ‘progressives’….Clinton, Carter, FDR (notice I skipped a famous D-President, who today would be considered Conservative), all the way back to Wilson…..
Talk about statists.
July 24, 2010, 4:49 pmSarcastro's Little Brother says:
Don’t you know? It will be Republicans’ fault FOREVER. Obama can serve two full terms and it will still be Bush’s fault when he leaves office. Or maybe Cheney’s. Or maybe John Yoo’s, particularly on economic issues.
Why Yoo? Why not?
July 24, 2010, 4:51 pmAguirre says:
Two thoughts:
1) The story can’t be both a boring non-story and a dangerous breach of vital national security secrets. You have to pick one criticism or the other.
2) If, as you correctly suggest, it is absurd to the point of unbelievability that the TSA would be spending tons of money on top secret boarder control research when that is obviously not even within their mandate and is effort being duplicated elsewhere by more appropriate agencies, than that is an important and newsworthy disclose. It is also newsworthy from the angle that we don’t have an oversight regime capable of deconflicting this type of waste and agency overreach.
July 24, 2010, 4:58 pmnone says:
These recent headlines might be of interest to you and your Hannity-culled arguments, teabagger:
“Senate returns $60B stripped out war bill to House”
“House pressured to pass stripped-down war measure”
July 24, 2010, 4:59 pmnone says:
God you are freaking hilarious man! Keep your eye on the ball – this Journolist scandal is EXPLOSIVE. Unlike the Washington Post’s frivolous story.
Hmmm…you’re the one arguing that trillions of dollars should be handed over to our faceless ‘watchers’ in the government (and to their corporate partners, at a much higher rate), who should do what they want with it without having to explain where it’s going or what they’re doing. Who’s the statist?
July 24, 2010, 5:05 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
The risk to national security is zero. Zilch. None.
To the left: there’s no massive conspiracy being exposed here. It’s just routine government waste. You’re just piling on because it’s the only “safe” type of government waste for a liberal to attack without feeling that you’re providing aid and comfort to anti-government libertarians and conservatives.
To the right: there’s no national security being exposed here. Hint: our enemies already know our government spends lots of money on counterterrorism. So what? For the same reason taxpayers don’t benefit from this information, neither do terrorists.
July 24, 2010, 5:19 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Let’s see: a bunch of trolling posts, culminating with a completely random non sequitur about Halliburton which is completely false in its implications. There are, in essence, no “Cheney’s stock options.” He gave the money away before he became vice president.
July 24, 2010, 5:22 pmBob White says:
Aguirre:
There are three stories, which were exceptionally overhyped and delivered very, very little new or interesting information to anybody who’s bothered to pay at least casual attention to the intelligence sectors and national security in the post 9/11 era. I saw the praise from people, then read them and wondered where those people had been for the past decade.
The second part is the accompanying database, which collects information that had theretofore only been available to people willing to spend a lot of time digging. The Washington Post did other people’s work for them. Does that prevent a risk? Stewart seems to think so, but he seems to be at the high end of his sensitivity to perceiving risk. Is the database valuable? I don’t really think so-the information seems thin and unenlightening. I really didn’t find it very interesting.
July 24, 2010, 5:28 pmP. Caputo says:
“None,” it might be of interest to you that I wasn’t actually commenting on whether the Obama-Reid-Pelosi administration is starting to address some funding issues (I do keep up and know it’s panic time over budget and deficits all of a sudden.)
No, I was only addressing the stream of invective and condemnation on this thread laying everything wrong in this gov at the feet of Republicans and even Tea Baggers, somehow.
You know I don’t watch FOX or any other TV news, but, if I did, I’d be sure to wear a flag pin on my lapel to let sophisticated Americans such as yourself who get Olbermann know I be a dum-dum
RovianSteeley pawn.And you forgot to call me a racist. But you did call me a queer, cuz no straight guy’s gonna teabag, yes? I support gay rights but not because some twisted hate-spewing jerk who thinks himself a good Progressive calls me a teabagger.
July 24, 2010, 5:40 pmMark Field says:
Nor, I guess, between racial profiling and pat downs of Granny.
July 24, 2010, 5:43 pmGopher Law says:
So you don’t trust those in power who are at least held accountable every few years when an election rolls around, but you do (marginally) trust those completely lacking in oversight and accountability? (Not that I trust anyone of them very much, mind you.)
July 24, 2010, 5:54 pmKevin R.C. O'Brien says:
Ah yes, the self-proclaimed “anti-military analyst.” But then again, who’s really being rehabilitated here? Dana Priest is the one who fabricated the tale of “Jessica Lynch, Warrior Princess,” staking the claim on a probably nonexistent anonymous source.
(Priest says she merely reported what the source told her, and the source was the actual fabricator or passing on a fabrication, to the pure-thinking Priest. First, that tells us what level of fact-checking happens on a Washington Post story: zero. Layers of supine editors, I reckon. Second, if the source burned her, why didn’t she burn the source? Two possibilities: [1] she plans to use the source again, even though the source is a proven fabricator, or [2] the source never existed at all. Occam’s Razor says it’s #2, and since the day that story ran I’ve assumed anything with Priest’s byline is, indeed, Number Two).
Anyway, Arkin apparently did all the work, whatever work there was in this; Priest wordsmithed the blurbs, added a few of her patented stealth no-see-um source quotes, and now has her fingers crossed for another Pulitzer, which would put her well ahead of her inspiration, Walter Duranty.
July 24, 2010, 6:30 pmjuris imprudent says:
none sez: notwithstanding the fact that some of you call yourselves “libertarians” (PSA: you’re not)
Gee, so glad you dropped in to clarify that for us all.
none also sez: And then there’s the fact that today’s technology increases the potential for much greater civil liberties violations than Nixon or Hoover could dream of.
And what exactly has Team Blue done to cut this back and insure civil liberties?
joe sez: I never heard of this party back when the Republicans controlled Congress. Must have been small government back in 2005 or something.
You don’t suppose the elections of 2006 and 2008 were some kind of repudiation of what the Republicans were actually DOING as opposed to what they were saying? No, those elections represented the country finally coming to it’s collective leftist senses, right?
July 24, 2010, 7:13 pmSeattle Law Student says:
None – I’m pretty much a liberal. I assure you, you’re not doing us any favors with your tone and lack of civility. Go elsewhere or spend 5 minutes thinking before you click the submit comment button. Don’t become the strawman.
July 24, 2010, 7:13 pmnone says:
You’re right; I stand corrected on the stock options. Apparently he did assign the future profits to charitable organizations.
July 24, 2010, 7:46 pmDG says:
{The best part of this post is the author’s apparent befuddlement at the fact that The Post ran a story that painted some of its biggest advertisers (the full-page ads are typically from some military-industrial player) in a bad light. They’re journalists, not hacks; it’s the Post, not AEI.}
There is a strong element of pay-for-play at the Post. Its been well documented.
{This post and some of the comments (‘people in DC area’ … well, that’s everyone, I guess) has the flavor of the “oh sure, we know that already,” when actually many don’t, or if they do, they don’t really pay much attention to it, unless reminded of the fact, particularly with catchy graphics and interesting tidbits that focuses their mind on the subject matter. }
Its a DC area newspaper, and yes, everyone in DC knows this. All the spending isn’t part of some malevolent conspiracy. Its just massive waste and beltway bandits going nuts, stuffing pockets.
July 24, 2010, 8:03 pmTGGP says:
I suggest that Stewart Baker debate Glenn Greenwald on the story.
July 24, 2010, 8:17 pmMark Field says:
Matter and anti-matter in the same location? Better hold the debate inside a TOKAMAK.
July 24, 2010, 8:39 pmJames Gibson says:
Praetorius hit on the point but didn’t have the background to see the whole truth. Back in the 1990s I used to tell people that the NRDC (which Arkin used to work for) had a policy of regularly having a press release telling how they had used FIA to force the release of documents on a nuclear weapons accident. They would make a big thing of it to the press as another example of how the government was not being transparent on nuclear weapon safety. The truth however was that the accident had been reported years earlier (usually three times before: when it occurred, then in a report by McNamarra in 1968 and then by another group in the late 1970s). There would never be anything new in the NRDC release though they would add things to the story that to make the incident sound worse then it was. In recent years they have stopped this regular attempt to gain headlines and remind people of their existence.
As for the statement that someones wife doesn’t know what he is doing, my mother lived without a clue as to what my father was doing in the 1950s. He was on a black program that required him to go off on trips where he would come back several weeks later with a sun tan and no word as to where he was. The only time my mother knew where he was, was when he took the entire family to Cape Canaveral for three months. Then one day when he came home she met him and asked “did he work on the Navaho program.” He was shocked and asked her how she knew the name of the program since even that was classified secret. Her response was that they just announced it had been cancelled over the radio and she wanted to know if he still had a job. Thus, sometimes secret items get officially released to the public even before the people working on the project know they are no longer secret.
July 25, 2010, 1:09 amnone says:
Yeah man, you’re right, nothing to see here. Two black 16 year olds stick up a 7-11 in SouthEast DC and grab some twinkies, it’s called a conspiracy, lareceny by felony, etc. But a couple of blocks away a bunch of 55-year-old white guys run around stealing trillions and it’s called … what, a “cost overrun”? Yeah, I like that phrase.
July 25, 2010, 2:29 am1040 says:
You mean, people like Richard Reid?
July 25, 2010, 2:59 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
Hey, I’m open to the whole taxation = theft thing, but I infer from your string of posts that you’re a liberal, so I didn’t think you would be.
And yes, armed robbery is a felony; getting money handed to you is not.
July 25, 2010, 4:08 amThe Most Dangerous Man in America (Video) | Left Flank says:
[...] Srewart Baker has another theory for WaPo‘s motives. [...]
July 25, 2010, 6:42 amReader says:
That’s not right at all. Take a look at “larceny by trick” or “false pretenses.”
July 25, 2010, 9:09 amTexEd says:
I have a theory, too. This WaPo project was launched two years ago and was a hedge against a democrat win in 2008. If there were a Republican in the White House, today, this expose would have sufficient detail to rank it with the Pentagon Papers. Since the WaPo doesn’t want to make this administration appear any more inept than it is, the article was published in a much weakened form.
July 25, 2010, 12:01 pmRemember, we know now that the WaPo is not about objective reporting but is simply a part of the ultra left wing propaganda complex!
Duracomm says:
Stewart Baker likes to talk about the privacy-industrial complex. I wonder what their budget is?
The post article puts some perspective on that bit of rhetoric.
July 25, 2010, 1:02 pmDuracomm says:
That money has purchased lots of failure and maybe not much else.
The security industrial complex has failed, and failed, and failed again. It would be nice to see some reform.
Unfortunately members of the security industrial complex and their supporters seem to think the only possible response to government failure is to give government more money and more authority.
Re: The Post’s National Security ‘Bombshell’
July 25, 2010, 1:12 pmNickM says:
On Baker’s original point, sometimes you have invested a lot of time and effort into a story and find out there’s not really that much news there. You don’t really have any better options than hyping the story when you do release it. That looks like what happened here.
Oh, and Mark Field’s TOKAMAK comment wins the thread.
Nick
July 25, 2010, 2:45 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
By definition, the things we know about are almost always the failures. If Al Qaeda was going to blow up the Hoover Dam but gave up because security was too good, we’d never know about it. If a missile strike kills people who were going to hijack a plane, we’d never know about it. (We might know about the missile strike; we wouldn’t know about the prospective hijacking.) Etc. Moreover, you seem to be counting our successes (the Christmas bombing attempt, the Times Square attempt) as failures. If our security measures force terrorists to hire incompetent people to try low-percentage attacks, that’s a success.
July 25, 2010, 2:51 pmOwen says:
Articles about the Intel Community bring out the weirdest comments. The Post story has little merit (as has been pointed out), but the comments has even less. Perhaps sensible people are not drawn to comment on such matters. But I worked in this business as a contractor for 20 years, so just for the record:
The amount of Intel contracting let by the USG has shrunk a lot in the last 10 years. Layoffs are common and continue. Of the companies I formerly worked for, one no longer exists and it’s remnants are now a tiny part of Northrop Grumman; the other has shrunk to about 25% of its size in 1998 (its peak year) and it is not expected to survive 2011.
The profit margin on Intel contracts is legally mandated and at the time I left, it was around 7%. As a result, we were radically underpaid by the standard of commercial business. In the late 90′s for example, anyone working in my industry who made over $75K/yr was considered “highly compensated” and subject to special rules when employed on Intel contracts.
Wages have not grown significantly for Intel contractors in the last 10 years: annual raises have been small ( < 4%) when they happen at all; just holding on to your job is a considerable accomplishment.
Anyone who thinks that "trillions" are spent on Intel contracting or that the budgets are bloated and wasteful is invited to submit their resume so as to participate in this gravy train. I will be happy to supply any contact info desired.
BTW: May I assume that the Ad theory is satiric?
July 25, 2010, 3:56 pmKen Arromdee says:
He had a Muslim name, although he didn’t use it at the time, and had also recently travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
July 25, 2010, 5:08 pmOrenWithAnE says:
This is plainly impossible. If the incident was fully reported, there would be nothing to FOIA. If there was FOIA, that means there were documents relating to the incident that were not reported.
[ Not that I support the NRDC or any other anti-nuclear nimbyciles. That they pursue boneheaded policies is of course no justification for withholding information from them. ]
July 26, 2010, 11:30 amohwilleke says:
“There’s clearly a risk to national security in making such a listing readily available; it could lead to the companies being targeted by intelligence services or even terrorists.”
If you’re saying this, you are missing the point.
One of the deep themes of “Top Secret America” was that the whole culture of “Top Secret” programs is out of control silliness by paranoid bureaucrats that has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with people who are entirely to full of themselves. Moreover, this obsession with secrecy when it isn’t called for actually undermines our national security because nobody knows what anyone else is doing.
It is every bit as silly as Free Masonry secret handshakes or KKK passwords, but a lot more expensive. Somebody has watched way too many Hollywood spy movies and incorrectly inferred that real life is like that.
We may very well need an NRO (spy satellite agency) and NSA (electronic spying and decoding agency). But, it isn’t as if the world doesn’t know what we have spy satellites and wire taps and code breakers. The WaPo isn’t disclosing anything that actually threatens our national security. It is merely exposing the immense effort, surely designed by someone with serious OCD, that goes into hiding things like the street address of government agencies that aren’t even sending covert ops out into the world, that do nothing but make civil servants and government contractors feel special.
Another key implication of the story (and the larger arc of WaPo reporting on intelligence matters) is that anyone whose life is interesting enough to provide useful insights of the kind that we actually need will probably never be able to get a top secret security clearance. This is the kind of systemic risk spotting that the WaPo does well and the federal government does very poorly.
July 26, 2010, 5:05 pmohwilleke says:
Absolutely.
July 26, 2010, 5:11 pmJoe says:
You don’t suppose the elections of 2006 and 2008 were some kind of repudiation of what the Republicans were actually DOING as opposed to what they were saying? No, those elections represented the country finally coming to it’s collective leftist senses, right?
I don’t see some “collective leftist” power controlling the country. The elections of 2006 and ’08 was more a matter of the center coming to its senses, including many (such as someone who was in Reagan’s Cabinet) who were pretty conservative on some issues. The use of such a fictional term — given the reality of the situation — is not really convincing.
The elections were a repudiation of what the Republicans were doing and saying, which btw has not really changed. They still support things that tea party sorts claim they oppose such as policies that will lead to the average person being harmed in the pocketbook and elsewhere while invading their freedoms, often to promote corporate interests. But, darn, if Tea Party types generally vote Republican.
July 26, 2010, 9:02 pmjuris imprudent says:
Joe sez I don’t see some “collective leftist” power controlling the country.
I give you Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the House majority leadership. That is clearly left of center of the House, let alone the country at large.
The Democrats bought their majority by running a big gang of centrist/conservative candidates in competitive districts. Most if not all “progressives” seemed to believe this represented a giant shift to the left, as opposed to a repudiation of what the Republicans had been doing in running/ruining the country. The Tea Party is a populist expression, incoherent as populism usually is, of continued discontent with the majority party – even though that party label isn’t Republican these days. I see 2010 shaping up as a continuation of the discontent first expressed in 2006 – it is just that neither party (particularly their leadership which comes from the outer edges) is getting the message.
Unlike virtually all leftists, not everyone is terrified of corporations. Not to mention that the worst corporate abuses are aided and abetted by the power of govt.
July 27, 2010, 11:21 pm