Intel world

Draining the Swamp, Mr Trump? Try a Toxic Ocean of Privatized Intelligence!

According to a 2010 Washington Post investigative report, “the top-secret world the (US) 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.”

A sampling of figures cited by a series of Washington Post reports was truly staggering:

•    By 2010, there were already 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies working on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence across 10,000 locations in the United States.

•    An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances with nearly 500,000 of them being private security contractors.

•    By 2013, about 5.1 million people — or more than 1.5 percent of the US population — were holding security clearances, spurring an industry in background checks worth $5.9 billion alone.

US national security is now a commodity sold on the borderless bazaar. Even the king troll, replete with bogus credentials, now fancies himself as a player in international affairs and wouldn’t hesitate to confect cockamamie intelligence via the most ludicrous plots.