Fear, Greed, Egotism, Image

They're all there in the excellent series by Dana Priest and William Arkin in the Washington Post. The series tells the amazing tale of how foolish and disorganized are our efforts to gather top-secret information. In summary, we're spending too much money on we know not what and have no idea whether any of it is worthwhile.

Would you believe that the government has 1,271 organizations working in this one area - protecting us from the bad guys who hate us? Or, that these organizations need a few private companies, like 1,931, to help them do their job? And we're talking only about those involved in top-secret efforts, not simply vanilla secret efforts. Who knows how many of these groups there are feeding from the government trough that you and I fund?

You think the Pentagon is a huge building? Heck, these organizations need three Pentagons - 17,000,000 square feet - to do their job.

Efficiency is not a hallmark of this effort. 51 organizations are needed to focus on one issue, the financing of terrorist networks. 18 organizations do PR overseas. Do you suppose there may be a slight possibility of duplications of effort and results?

The Defense Department asked a senior, very experienced officer to review how the department was tracking its efforts in this area. His comment - "Because it lacks a synchronizing process, it inevitably results in message dissonance, reduced effectiveness and waste. We consequently can't effectively assess whether it is making us more safe."

The intelligence budget has more than doubled since 2001. But, you know and I know that a fair amount of money is spent on these efforts off the books.

Bush saw the need for control of such an effort and developed the position of Director of National Intelligence. The problem is the director has no power. Like so much else in today's world, the position is just a sop to the idea that maybe there should be some management control.

With so many organizations in an increasingly politicized field you're bound to have turf battles and finger pointing. And we do.

Many of the staff are young with little life experience, let alone intelligence experience. Few understand Arabic languages. Many of the reports - and there are over 1,000 produced every week - are like this and most other blogs - a rehash of what someone else has said.

Sometimes things have to go beyond the level of top-secret, they become ultra-secret. In these cases a Special Access Program is created. The Pentagon alone has so many of these programs that it takes 300 pages to list the names of these programs. (These programs are referred to as SAPs by insiders. This short form of the name is an apt description of us for tolerating this crap.)

Many of these organizations are based in the Greater DC area. Is it a coincidence that six of the 10 richest counties in the U.S. are also located in this area? Is this why the schools 'teach students as young as 10 what kind of lifestyle it takes to get a security clearance and what kind of behavior would disqualify them'. 1984, anyone?

You owe it to yourself as a citizen to read the articles.