“Our nation is at a critical point; we are six years into this experiment of Intelligence Reform and we have a long way to go.” — Senator Bond (R-MO)
The Washington Post and PBS Frontline have produced Top Secret America, a groundbreaking series which profiles the fourth arm of the U.S. government (Articles, Blog, Map and Connections).
The Post investigation uncovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America created since 9/11 that is hidden from public view, lacking in thorough oversight and so unwieldy that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.Revenue from General Dynamics’ intelligence- and information-related divisions, where the majority of its top-secret work is done, climbed to $10 billion in the second quarter of 2009, up from $2.4 billion in 2000, accounting for 34 percent of its overall revenue last year.
To understand how these firms have come to dominate the post-9/11 era, there’s no better place to start than the Herndon office of General Dynamics. One recent afternoon there, Ken Pohill was watching a series of unclassified images, the first of which showed a white truck moving across his computer monitor.
The truck was in Afghanistan, and a video camera bolted to the belly of a U.S. surveillance plane was following it. Pohill could access a dozen images that might help an intelligence analyst figure out whether the truck driver was just a truck driver or part of a network making roadside bombs to kill American soldiers.
To do this, he clicked his computer mouse. Up popped a picture of the truck driver’s house, with notes about visitors. Another click. Up popped infrared video of the vehicle. Click: Analysis of an object thrown from the driver’s side. Click: U-2 imagery. Click: A history of the truck’s movement. Click. A Google Earth map of friendly forces. Click: A chat box with everyone else following the truck, too.
Ten years ago, if Pohill had worked for General Dynamics, he probably would have had a job bending steel. Then, the company’s center of gravity was the industrial port city of Groton, Conn., where men and women in wet galoshes churned out submarines, the thoroughbreds of naval warfare. Today, the firm’s commercial core is made up of data tools such as the digital imagery library in Herndon and the secure BlackBerry-like device used by President Obama, both developed at a carpeted suburban office by employees in loafers and heels.
The evolution of General Dynamics was based on one simple strategy: Follow the money.
Gen. James Clapper, the nominee to become the nation’s fourth director of national intelligence, faced a grilling by lawmakers Tuesday. Clapper had some tart words about the “Top Secret America” series in an appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee today (video).
“I think there’s some breathlessness and shrillness [in the Post series] that I don’t subscribe to,” he said. “That’s not to say … that there aren’t things that can be improved. We have the largest, most capable intelligence enterprise on the planet,” Clapper said. “Intelligence … now drives everything, so it’s not surprising in my view that we have so many contractors.”
Congress appropriates the intelligence community’s $75-billion budget. The intelligence budget has tripled since 9/11, says Richard Clarke.
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Left by pasco444 on January 17th, 2011