Among the highlights:
-- Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on Top Secret programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence at over 10,000 locations across the country. Over 850,000 Americans have Top Secret clearances.
-- Redundancy and overlap are major problems and a symptom of the ongoing lack of coordination between agencies.
-- In the Washington area alone, 33 building complexes for Top Secret work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. |
This is the first and most comprehensive examination of the complex system. It was reported by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Dana Priest and author, researcher, and military expert William M. Arkin. The findings are based on hundreds of interviews with current and former military and intelligence officials and public records. Nearly two dozen journalists worked on the investigation, including investigative reporters, cartography experts, database reporters, video journalists, researchers, interactive graphic designers, digital designers, graphic designers, and graphics editors at The Washington Post.
"This country's top-secret national-security enterprise is both enormous and opaque," Marcus Brauchli, The Post's executive editor said. "We have sought through this long-term investigative project to describe it and enable our readers-- including citizens, taxpayers, policymakers and legislators--to understand the scale and effectiveness of what has been created. The Post remains firmly committed to this kind of accountability journalism."
In addition to the stories in the series, a blog will anchor the Top Secret America site providing updates on Top Secret America coverage, original journalism and insight around related national security matters. The Top Secret America blog will serve as an online destination for further reporting, discussion, analysis, and interaction. Priest and Arkin will host this continuing conversation throughout the rest of the year, working alongside readers to lead inquiries about dimensions of Top Secret America that remain unexplored.
Other multimedia features include:
-- A searchable database illustrates information about government organizations that contract out Top Secret work, companies they contract to, the types of work they do, and the places where they do it.
-- A map displays locations of all the clusters of Top Secret activity and some basic information about those areas.
-- Each of nearly 2,000 companies and 45 government organizations has a profile page with basic information about its role in Top Secret America, and readers can filter searches by companies doing a specific kind of work, all companies mentioned in the story, or all companies with more than $750 million in revenue.
-- A video guide to Top Secret America provides a concise, 90-second visual overview of the project's major findings and implications.
-- A video produced by PBS Frontline previews the series and illuminates the process of reporting. From the high-tech barn where Arkin worked to Priest's guided-tour outside the NSA campus to a photographer's experience shooting, the video captures how the information was gathered and evolved into the final series. |
A second story to be published Tuesday takes an in-depth look at the government's dependence on private contractors and how it may be degrading the quality of the federal workforce. Managers of the intelligence agencies do not necessarily know how many contractors work for them. The Post estimates the number of contractors who work on Top Secret programs to be 265,000.
A third story to be published Wednesday focuses on the economic and cultural impact of a high concentration of Top Secret work within a community located around the National Security Agency. While the rest of the country struggles with an economic recession, in the clusters of Top Secret America, expansion continues and the unemployment rate is low. The NSA plans to expand by two-thirds its current size over the next 15 years.
The first installment of the series is available now online at www.TopSecretAmerica.com, as well as at www.washingtonpost.com/TopSecretAmerica.
Dana Priest is an investigative reporter for The Washington Post. She was the Post's intelligence reporter for three years and its Pentagon correspondent for seven years before that. She has traveled widely with Army Special Forces, Army infantry troops on peacekeeping missions and the Pentagon's four-star regional commanders. Priest received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for "The Other Walter Reed" and the 2006 Pulitzer for Beat Reporting for her work on CIA secret prisons and counterterrorism operations overseas. She authored the 2003 book, "THE MISSION: Waging War and Keeping Peace With America's Military" about the military's expanding influence over U.S. foreign affairs.
William Arkin is a reporter for The Washington Post and has been a columnist since 1998. He has been working on the subject of government secrecy and national security affairs for over 30 years and has visited war zones in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia. He has authored or co-authored more than a dozen books about the U.S. military and national security including seven basic reference works. He has been a consultant for Natural Resources Defense Council, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, and the U.S. Air Force.
Types of top-secret work
The Post has divided top-secret work into 23 different categories. This company's work for the government falls under the types below.
Air and satellite operations
Warfare- and combat-related air and space activities and operations of the military services, intelligence agencies and federal government. The Air Force is the primary organization here, but the Navy and Marine Corps also fly large air wings, as do Customs and Border Patrol and the FBI. The NRO is the national organization responsible for the development and operation of reconnaissance satellites.
Border control
Homeland security functions associated with maintaining U.S. borders, including customs and immigration; port security; and surveillance of American airspace. The Department of Homeland Security and its sub-agencies (e.g., Coast Guard and Custom and Border Protection) is the dominant border control organization, but many military and law enforcement organizations also are deeply involved in the mission of border control.
Building and personal security
Personnel and physical security, including the security clearance system; the "special access program" (SAP) system; operations security (OPSEC); critical infrastructure protection (CIP); and physical security measures (not including construction) including guard forces and various surveillance and authentication methods, including biometrics.
Counter-drug operations
All aspects of the "war on drugs" worldwide, including intelligence, law enforcement, and operations; sometimes also called counternarcoterrorism since 9/11. Though the DEA is the lead counter-drug organization, the Department of Defense, particularly in Afghanistan and Latin America, is also deeply involved in both intelligence and interdiction of narcotics.
Counter-IED explosives operations
Programs, including research and development, associated with efforts to counter terrorist and adversary use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), including intelligence and operations efforts associated with identifying and attacking individual IEDs and the networks of fighters who employ them; as well as the forensics associated with gathering information after explosive incidents.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/functions/ |
EDITOR'S NOTE: Here was the early reaction from Washington:
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Washington reacts to 'Top Secret America' revelations
July 20, 1020
Acting Director of National Intelligence David C. Gompert issued a statement Monday morning (PDF) reacting to The Washington Post series " Top Secret America," by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin.
"The reporting does not reflect the Intelligence Community we know," he said.
"We accept that we operate in an environment that limits the amount of information we can share," he said. "However, the fact is, the men and women of the Intelligence Community have improved our operations, thwarted attacks, and are achieving untold successes every day.
"In recent years, we have reformed the IC in ways that have improved the quality, quantity, regularity, and speed of our support to policymakers, warfighters, and homeland defenders, and we will continue our reform efforts. We provide oversight, while also encouraging initiative. We work constantly to reduce inefficiencies and redundancies, while preserving a degree of intentional overlap among agencies to strengthen analysis, challenge conventional thinking, and eliminate single points of failure. We are mindful of the size of our contractor ranks, but greatly value the critical flexibility and specialized skills they contribute to our mission.
"The challenges that lie ahead are difficult and complex. We will continue to scrutinize our own operations, seek ways to improve and adapt, and work with Congress on its crucial oversight and reform efforts. We can always do better, and we will. And the importance of our mission and our commitment to keeping America safe will remain steadfast, whether they are reflected in the day's news or not."
His statement followed a message last week from the ODNI to its contractors (PDF), warning them that "Early next week, the Washington Post is expected to publish articles and an interactive website that will likely contain a compendium of government agencies and contractors allegedly conducting Top Secret work. ...We request that all ODNI contractors remind all cleared employees of their responsibility to protect classified information and relationships, and to abide by contractual agreements regarding non-publicity."
The State Department's Diplomatic Security Bureau on Thursday also warned all employees in the Washington area -- 14, 574 people -- to "remain aware of their responsibility to protect classified and other sensitive information, such as the Department's relationships with contract firms, other U.S. Government agencies, and foreign governments" in light of the upcoming Post report, according to a report in Foreign Policy's The Cable.
Foreign policy and national security bloggers have begun chewing over "Top Secret America."
The series is "bound to provoke all sorts of questions -- both from taxpayers wondering where their money goes, and from U.S. adversaries looking to penetrate America's spy complex," write Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman on Wired's Danger Room blog.
"But this piece is about much more than dollars," they continue. "It's about what used to be called the Garrison State -- the impact on society of a Praetorian class of war-focused elites....With too many analysts and too many capabilities documenting too much, with too few filters in place to sort out the useful stuff or discover hidden connections, the information overload is its own information blackout."
In Racine, Wis., the Racine Post notes that named local outfit Perceptral "isn't much of a secret." Its owner, Jonathon Pearl -- "a trained opera singer who moved with his family from California to Racine to start a business" -- won RAMAC's 2010 Apollo Award for new and innovative businesses and has become well-known within the area business community for his work on sound technologies.
Conservative and liberal bloggers alike are pointing to the Priest-Arkin story as providing an example of government spending run amok. "If the Washington Post's investigative report 'Top Secret America' by Dana Priest doesn't exemplify how the federal government is an out of control leviathan, I don't know what does," writes The Lonely Conservative.
Meanwhile, liberal Robert Dreyfuss notes in The Nation: "The core problem... is that Al Qaeda and its affiliates, its sympathizers, and even self-starting terrorist actors who aren't part of Al Qaeda itself, are a tiny and manageable problem. Yet the apparatus that has been created is designed to meet nothing less than an existential threat. Even at the height of the Cold War ... there was nothing like the post-9/11 behemoth in existence. A thousand smart intelligence analysts, a thousand smart FBI and law enforcement officers, and a few hundred Special Operations military folk are all that's needed to deal with the terrorism threat."
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EDITOR'S NOTE: Here are even more updates:
Update: ODNI issues two memos outlining the contracting and intelligence world after Sept. 11
See also:
PBS's Frontline: Sneak Peek: Inside "Top Secret America" (Video)
NYT: A Look at The Washington Post's 'Top Secret America'
Posted at 12:24 AM, 7/20/2010
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/2010/07/washington_reacts_to_top_secre.html |
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