Dana Priest and William M. Arkin have a new book, Top Secret America based on their series of stories that appeared in the Washington Post in July 2010. The book describes “the new American security state.”
Steven Aftergood has a brief overview of the book:
- A Spotlight on “Top Secret America”, Secrecy News (September 1, 2011).
Since 9/11 … some 33 large office complexes for top secret intelligence work have been completed in the Washington DC area, the equivalent in size of nearly three Pentagons. More than 250,000 contractors are working on top secret programs. A bewildering number of agencies — more than a thousand — have been created to execute security policy, including at least 24 new organizations last year alone….
But the vast scale of this activity says nothing about its quality or utility. The authors, who are scrupulous in their presentation of the facts, are critical in their evaluation:
“One of the greatest secrets of Top Secret America is its disturbing dysfunction.”
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