A hidden world, growing beyond control — projects.washingtonpost. Monday, July 19, 2010; 4:50 PM The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.
These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. 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.
The investigation's other findings include: * An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances. An alternative geography This is not exactly President Dwight D. Inside Osama Bin Laden’s Final Hours—and How the White House Chose Their Assassination Plot. “He’s not going to be directing anything,” Rhodes said.
“It’s just a feed.” Clinton followed the president. Sitting at the head of the small conference table, Webb stood up to surrender the spot when he noticed Obama enter. The president waved him back down. “I’ll just take this chair here,” he said, sliding into the corner. In Jalalabad, the president’s entry was duly noted by Webb on the chat line. “Sir, the president just walked into the room,” a sergeant major told McRaven. The admiral didn’t have time to explain things to Washington. The White House was still in the dark.
The second Black Hawk had diverted from its planned course and landed outside the compound walls in a newly planted field. Then, without further explanation of what had happened, SEALs could be seen streaming out of both choppers. The team from the crashed chopper moved quickly along the inside wall, pausing only to blow open a metal door that led to the house. The CIA Burglar Who Went Rogue. The six CIA officers were sweating.
It was almost noon on a June day in the Middle Eastern capital, already in the 90s outside and even hotter inside the black sedan where the five men and one woman sat jammed in together. Sat and waited. They had flown in two days earlier for this mission: to break into the embassy of a South Asian country, steal that country’s secret codes and get out without leaving a trace. During months of planning, they had been assured by the local CIA station that the building would be empty at this hour except for one person—a member of the embassy’s diplomatic staff working secretly for the agency.
But suddenly the driver’s hand-held radio crackled with a voice-encrypted warning: “Maintain position. From the back seat Douglas Groat swore under his breath. Groat and the others were out of the car within seconds. After dropping the break-in specialists off at their hotel, the driver took the photographs to the U.S.