Today the Washington Post (obviously still trying to duplicate its "Watergate" success) released an investigative report entitled "Top Secret America". It should come as no surprise that the liberals in charge over at the Washington Post are not a fan of the CIA or any other agency that requires secrets to do its job. Liberals are not a fan of secrets (unless you serve a liberal a subpoena. Then their Civil Rights are being violated.)
There are problems with their so called journalism from the very first sub heading: "A hidden world, growing beyond control". This sub heading insinuates that it is wrong for our country to have people willing to hide their lives from everyone to protect our country and that its growth should be controlled. The reality is that we need to be able to grow these organizations when and how they need to be grown: Away from the political dealings of congress.
To paraphrase Mitch Rapp from Vince Flynn's novels: I don't want someone sitting in an air conditioned office in Washington, D.C. telling me how to do my job when I am the one in the desert trying to keep our country free.
The "journalists" make broad sweeping statements that are simply ludicrous when paired with any type of common sense. Take this quote for example: "After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that they system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine."
What about the fact that no one has died in the United States due to a terrorist attack since all of these organizations were started? Doesn't that speak directly to the effectiveness of the organizations whose purpose was to prevent more attacks like 9/11?
Or: "An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret clearances." Well, I certainly hope so! I hope we have people all over the world entrusted with out secrets that are using them for good. (Special note: Not even all congressmen and senators are given Top-Secret clearance.) If it takes 854,000 people to keep us safe...so be it.
The requirements for top-secret clearance include background checks; personal interviews with relatives, friends, co-workers, etc.; fingerprints; polygraph test; credit check; education; affiliations; local agencies; where an individual has worked and lived; and spouse and any immediate family members who are US citizens other than by birth or who are not US citizens.
So, I am okay with that many people having security clearance.
(Special note: This is all from just the first page of their report...now let's continue)
Another gem: "Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste."
Okay, let's stop right there. Why can't they go into the Social Security Administration or Medicare/Medicaid to highlight redundancy and waste? What about welfare or the Department of Energy? (By the way, the Department of Energy was created to reduce our dependency on foreign oil back in the 1970's. Last time I checked our dependence on foreign oil was still increasing. Talk about an organization that isn't effective.)
The reason they aren't investigating these organizations is because these are Liberal creations. These organizations are full of waste and redundancy, but the Washington Post chooses to go after the organizations that don't fit with their political leanings.
Okay, back to the article...where were we? Oh yeah: "Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks."
So? How does that prove redundancy? Plain and simple it doesn't. All it says is that we have "51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities" that "track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks." They didn't tell us that 2 of them do the same thing or that any of them duplicated anything! They just told us how many organizations there are and how many cities they operate in.
What if we have 3 offices concentrating on Indonesian groups, 10 on Middle Eastern Groups, 5 on South American Groups, and on and on. What a bunch of hacks.
I'll spare you the rest. Suffice it to say that the rest of the article is full of anti-military and anti-CIA rhetoric disguised as journalism. When the Washington Post decides that it will use its influence to investigate waste and abuse at government agencies that aren't trying to save our lives...I might start paying attention.
Just last week the Ombudsman at the Washington Post spoke out about the Post's non-reporting on the Black Panther Voter Intimidation scandal in the Obama Justice Department. (I just choked as I tried to say Obama and Justice in the same sentence.)
I am proud that the United States of America has spies, military men and women, the FBI, CIA, and counter-terrorism agencies. I sleep better at night knowing that congress doesn't know what many of the agencies are doing to protect our country, and knowing that they are free to operate without political interference.
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You say it’s ludicrous to declare "After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine." I think that’s a perfectly rational statement. The size of the national security state could be just right, but we have no way of knowing.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that no one has died from a terrorist attack since all these organizations were started proves nothing, necessarily, beyond the possibility that terrorist organizations haven’t tried anything big since 9/11. That’s like saying “there haven’t been any reports of vampires in the attic since I hung up that sprig of garlic, so it must be keeping them away!”
What if these are in fact the same sort of clowns who told us Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons at his disposal? From what I’ve been able to tell, most of the “terrorists” the system has detained in the last 9 years haven’t been much of a viable threat at all, but bozos and wanna-bes.
I don’t care how carefully our secret operatives are vetted; if they don’t do anything useful to justify their tremendous cost, then they’re just another government boondoggle in a tough economy. (Aren’t you one of those conservative types who worries about big government? Your own example of the Department of Energy proves my point.)
The fact of the matter is, the FBI and CIA have a history of competing with one another, just as the different branches of the military service have tried to outdo each other and even sometimes make each other look bad. It’s in the nature of government bureaucracies who compete for funding awarded by political institutions. If they are not held to some sort of performance standards -- the way private sector operations are -- then they simply keep growing and making work for themselves, whether or not the labor accomplishes anything substantial.
These are our employees, paid with our tax dollars. We ought to demand to know what they’re up to.
The problem with a government-funded bureau that operates in secrecy is that it ceases to be accountable for its actions. And, inevitably, given enough time under those conditions, it's almost guaranteed that the bureau will A) get into bed with unsavory types, even criminals, and B) become involved in criminal behavior itself.
ReplyDeleteI'm reading right now about Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, whose minions raped hundreds, and slaughtered thousands in Haiti after he led a coup against the Aristide government. But because he was a CIA informant, and threatened to expose his connections to the agency, he was paid and protected, and never prosecuted for his crimes. It was only in 2006 that he was sentenced to prison for a real estate scam in New York, where he had been living comfortably for years among relatives of the people his army had killed.
Personally, I'd like to hear ONE good thing the CIA has accomplished. Not a "negative" accomplishment -- nothing bad happened, so they must have been doing their job -- but an actual positive achievement. I've heard almost nothing but bad about this essentially non-democratic, and I daresay, un-American operation.