By Stephanie Miceli -
July 19, 2010
A
brick bungalow in St. Petersburg, Florida. A tall concrete structure in
Elkridge, Maryland, under the guise of a standard office building. An
unassuming building across the street from a Target and a Home Depot in Arnold,
Missouri. And 12 government organizations based in the Boston area.
What
do these locations have in common? Intermingled with neighborhoods, schools and
shopping centers, they remain unnoticed and unquestioned by most people who
live nearby. And they house operations of the "top-secret" world the government
created in response to the September 11 attacks.
Led
by reporters Dana Priest and William M. Larkin, the Washington Post identified some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private
companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and
intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States. Among them, 12 of
the government organizations and four of the companies are based in the Boston
area, including Beacon Hill Staffing Group and Sapient Corp.
Liberty
Crossing, based in McLean,Virgina, is at the center of the collection of the
post 9/11 enterprise. However, according to the Post, it is neither the biggest
nor the costliest part of the intelligence gathering movement.
Last year, the
U.S. intelligence budget was publicly announced as $75 billion -- 2.5 times its
size on September 10, 2001. However, the figure doesn't include many
military activities or domestic counterterrorism programs. The Washington Post reported
that the government's top-secret response has grown so secretive that its
expenditures, number of employees, and number of programs are indeterminable.
Some agencies may even perform the same work, yet no exchange of information
occurs--which leaves their productiveness in question. For example, 51 federal
organizations and military commands track the flow of money to and from
terrorist networks.
At
least 263 organizations have been created in response to 9/11. However, many
pre-existing agencies were expanded, and thus given more money than they could
responsibly spend in the wake of the attacks.
The
investigation cites last fall's Fort Hood incident as a prime example of
counter-productiveness. In the days after U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan
opened fire at the base, killing 13 people, information emerged regarding his
increasingly strange behavior and e-mail exchanges with a radical cleric in
Yemen. While these emails were monitored by U.S. intelligence, none of it
reached the Army's designated organization for handling counterintelligence.
Rather than assessing the immediate ranks for potential threats, the Military
Intelligence Group only 25 miles away turned their efforts to terrorist
affiliations as a whole -- a task the Department of Homeland Security already
performs.
In an interview
with the Post, Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines said it is
difficult to track whether government spending has resulted in increased
safety.
"Because it lacks a synchronizing process, it
inevitably results in message dissonance, reduced effectiveness and
waste," Vines said. "We consequently can't effectively assess whether
it is making us more safe."
