The Washington Post rolls out its significant “Top Secret America” project today, a public records-based investigation of America’s post-9/11 national security apparatus, focusing on its size, cost and, as co-author Dana Priest notes in the video intro, “lack of transparency.” The project is the work of a dozen reporters— including Priest and co-byliner William M. Arkin — over two years and is available on the Post’s Web site as
an immersive online reading experience that combines all of the elements of our two-year investigation together into a single frame. You can page horizontally through our stories and view photos, video and graphics without leaving the package. Browse all of our offerings using the top nav bar above the viewing pane or the archive section beneath it.
I’m still immersing myself in this vast experience, but for anyone who has not, yet, begun immersion, here’s a tiny taste:
Outside a gated subdivision of mansions in McLean, a line of cars idles every weekday morning as a new day in Top Secret America gets underway. The drivers wait patiently to turn left, then crawl up a hill and around a bend to a destination that is not on any public map and not announced by any street sign…
…to the two headquarters of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and its National Counterterrorism Center, a “mountain of cement and windows the size of five Wal-Mart stores stacked on top of one another,” complete with armed guards and “at least 1,700 federal employees and 1,200 private contractors,” and nicknamed “Liberty Crossing.”
“Top Secret America” includes, among many other things, a database of the 1,931 private-sector companies the Post identified as “engaged in top-secret work for the government.” Companies with spook-y names like Anonymizer, Inc. and Espy Corp, and robust names like ManTech International Corporation. (How is it that our national security system is “redundan[t] and waste[ful],” per the Post, when it employs companies with names like Proven Inc, Trenchant Analytics LLC, and, um, Get-U-Started W/NT Solutions, Inc.?)
One more taste from today’s text:
Every day across the United States, 854,000 civil servants, military personnel and private contractors with top-secret security clearances are scanned into offices protected by electromagnetic locks, retinal cameras and fortified walls that eavesdropping equipment cannot penetrate…
… in order to, judging by the accompanying photo (below)….watch cable news.
Following 9/11 Bush II set into motion counter-surveillance networks, that allowed NSA illegal wiretaps and surveillance of Americans private emails—allegedly to prevent terrorists attacking America. Subsequently U.S. Government counter-surveillance networks have become huge, supported by thousands of government employees and private contractors, many duplicating work. There are now tens of thousands of U.S. Government counter-surveillance agents, employees and private contractors monitoring U.S. Citizens private records and communications with no Congress or U.S. Citizens’ oversight. It is probable spies have already infiltrated private contractor industries stealing or buying vast amounts of intelligence information.
What this report does not mention, in the U.S., government-private contractors and their operatives work so close with police exchanging information to arrest Americans and or share in the forfeiture of their assets, they appear to have merged with police. Similarly in 1933 after the German Parliament building was set afire, Hitler used the fire as vehicle to use taxpayer money to expand his private police, the Gestapo and increasing merged it with German national security. Even before the Gestapo was consolidated with the German Government, the Gestapo arrested Citizens and confiscated private property with no legal authority." However U.S. Government has already granted that power to private contractors. In 1939 all German Police agencies including the Gestapo were put under the control of the "Reich Main Security Office” the equivalent of U.S. Homeland Security.
Can History repeat itself? It is foreseeable that should there be a radical change in U.S. Government, many of the current government private contractors would continue working for e.g. a fascist U.S. Government; communist or other despot government against the interests of Americans. Consider the German police first work for a democracy; then under Hitler worked for the Nazi Fascists; then worked for the Soviet Union running the East German Police (Stasi) believed to be the world most oppressive police force until the German Wall came down.
Now consider the power Congress, perhaps negligently has given police and Black Box counter-surveillance entities; including private contractors to spy on U.S. Citizens. Under Bush II NSA illegally wiretapped your phone, fax and private email communications: Now NSA will monitor your Internet. In 2008 Telecoms were granted government immunity after they helped U.S. Government spy on millions of Americans’ electronic communications. Since, Government has not disclosed what happened to NSA’s millions of collected emails, faxes and phone call information that belong to U.S. Citizens? Could those wiretaps perhaps illegal, become a problem for some Americans? Neither Congress nor the courts—determined what NSA electronic surveillance could be used by police or introduced into court by the government to prosecute Citizens.
In 2004, former Attorney General John Ashcroft asked government prosecutors to review thousands of old intelligence files including wiretaps to retrieve information prosecutors could use in “ordinary” criminal prosecutions. That was shortly after a court case lowered a barrier that prior, blocked prosecutors from using illegal-wire tap evidence in Justice Dept. “Intelligence Files” to prosecute ordinary crimes. It would appear this information, may also be used by government to prosecute civil asset forfeitures.
See: http://www.securityfocus.com/news/5452
Considering that court case, it appears NSA can share its electronic-domestic-spying with government contractors and private individuals that have security clearances to facilitate the arrest and forfeiture of Americans’ property—-to keep part of the bounty. Police too easily can take an innocent person’s hastily written email, fax, phone call
#1 Posted by Ross Wolf, CJR on Wed 21 Jul 2010 at 12:35 AM