Top Secret America 502
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the i-have-a-secret dept.
from the i-have-a-secret dept.
mahiskali writes "The Washington Post published an immense interactive website today, detailing the companies and government agencies currently doing top secret work in the United States. Everything from counter-IED operations to human intelligence is touched upon. Citing various interviews with 'super users' and through exhaustive analysis of public records for over two years, this interactive site allows users to peer into the guarded world of top secret intelligence. With more than 854,000 people currently holding a TS clearance, has the defense and intelligence world grown too big, too fast? Or has this large growth served us well, exemplified by no successful terrorist acts on US soil since 9/11? How can we judge the success of these programs, when much of it will never be known by the general public?"
Re:"No terrorist attacks since 9/11"? (Score:3, Informative)
Geez, it must be too early in the morning for me, because I also forgot the Washington D.C. snipers. So make that four successful attacks.
Re:9/11 ? (Score:4, Informative)
exemplified by no successful terrorist acts on US soil since 9/11?
So we're the anthrax attacks no terrorist acts?
Re:Top Secret Clearance != Access to Top Secret In (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The day after 9/11 you found a rock? (Score:5, Informative)
For most Americans, the day after 9/11 they found Iraq.
Which is sad revisionist history since that the US immediately invaded Afghanistan over 9/11 and only a long time later did they get around to invading Iraq.
Re:Hmm! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No successful terrorist attacks since 9/11? (Score:2, Informative)
Dick Cheney's response to Obama's civil liberties speech in May 2009 was notable for putting forth the same claim, that the Bush administration prevented any terrorist attacks after 9/11, also failing to mention the anthrax attacks, which probably did more to frighten people than the 9/11 attacks.
Some people would like the fact that a number of people were killed and congressional mail service disrupted for months by someone who has yet to be unidentified and who the FBI concluded used biological weapons from a US government research facility to disappear down the memory hole. The house judiciary committee, which oversees the justice dept. and thus the FBI, was highly skeptical of the FBI's claim that Bruce Ivins was the sole individual responsible. Check Grassley, a Republican, was openly skeptical that Ivins was even involved. (Ivins did work at a biological weapons lab, but he didn't have access to the strain that was used in the attacks.)
Remember, facts are now judged not only by their truth and relevance, but also by their political significance.
Re:Hmm! (Score:5, Informative)
Funny that in Europe many people think its the redneck militaristic Americans who are the douchebags.
At least we respect freedom of religion in this country and aren't busy passing [wikipedia.org] legislation [cnn.com] to infringe upon the practice of that freedom. Maybe you should take a look at your own backyard before you start throwing stones into mine?
Re:"No terrorist attacks since 9/11"? (Score:2, Informative)
Yes they were. They intended to extort money out of the Government and were willing to use violence against the population to intimidate the government into complying. That's almost a textbook definition of terrorism.
Re:854,000 (Score:1, Informative)
Speaking as someone who used to hold a TS clearance when I was in the Navy: a TS clearance does not mean that you have access to all material classified as Top Secret, it only means that you can be given access. We only actually get to see the classified material we need to do our jobs.
You don't read much, huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Here you go. [independent.co.uk]
Richard Clarke, the White House counter-terrorism coordinator at the time, has revealed details of a meeting the day after the attacks during which officials considered the US response. Already, he said, they were certain al-Qa'ida was to blame and there was no hint of Iraqi involvement. "Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq," Mr Clarke said. "We all said, 'No, no, al-Qa'ida is in Afghanistan.'"
But Mr Clarke, who is expected to testify on Tuesday before a federal panel reviewing the attacks, said Mr Rumsfeld complained in the meeting that "there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq." A spokesman for Mr Rumsfeld last night said he could not comment immediately.
Re:Hmm! (Score:2, Informative)
For Anglo-Saxon contributions? How about the Magna Carta?
Re:Hmm! (Score:4, Informative)
Ummm, have you forgotten the Fort Hood shooting by Nidal Malik Hasan last November? 13 dead, 30 injured, by a Muslim terrorist who was basically a sleeper agent inside the US Military? Or the attempted car bomb in Times Square back in May (the fact that it didn't go off had nothing to do with any efforts by our intelligence forces)?
Re:Wha? (Score:2, Informative)
Oh - I don't know about that. All Russia needed to do was wait for the idiots in Germany to launch a couple more winter campaigns against Moscow.
Your right, you don't know about it. The Soviet Union's entire logistical apparatus was dependent on lend-lease. They brought American supplies to the front using American trucks. Their fighters flew with high octane gasoline that was refined in American refineries. Their trains were pulled by American locomotives. Their troops were fed American rations.
For the most part they made their own weapons (though in some instances these with combined with American material aid, i.e: Katyusha rockets that were launched from the back of Studebaker trucks) systems but in so doing they neglected the rest of their economy. That's where lend-lease came in. Don't take my word for it though, ask Uncle Joe [time.com]: "Without American production the United Nations could never have won the war."
I hate when my fellow Americans take the attitude that we won the war after Europe lost it.
I didn't take that attitude. I just pointed out that the Soviet Union would have not survived without Western material aid. That's a historical fact that isn't in much dispute -- even most Russian historians will acknowledge it.
Those people forget that we actually helped to enable Hitler in his earlier years. How 'bout those IBM contracts, that helped to chart all those Jew's geneology?
Peacetime trade is not the same thing as enabling. The real enabling occurred in Paris and London. If the French had marched into the Rhineland and enforced the Versailles treaty the war might never have happened. Ask the man himself [historyplace.com]:
Once again, the whole world waited to see how the French and British would react. German troops entering the Rhineland even had orders to scoot back across the Rhine bridges if the French Army attacked. But in France, the politicians were simply unable to convince their generals to act, and were also unable to get any British support for a military response. So they did nothing. The French Army, with its one hundred divisions, never budged against the 30,000 lightly armed German soldiers occupying the Rhineland, even though France and Britain were both obligated to preserve the demilitarized zone by the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact of mutual assistance.
It had been a tremendous gamble for Hitler, one that might have cost him everything if his troops had been humiliated by their old enemies. Later, Hitler would privately admit: "The forty-eight hours after the march into the Rhineland were the most nerve-racking in my life. If the French had marched into the Rhineland, we would have had to withdraw with our tail between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even a moderate resistance."
TS isn't high (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hmm! (Score:4, Informative)
No, the so-called "Coalition of the Willing" that the US brought to bear agaisnt Iraq had nothing to do with NATO.
The mutual defense obligations under the NATO treaty had something to do with the NATO response in Afghanistan, because the US was attacked by terrorist based in and supported by the de facto government of Afghanistan.
Re:You don't read much, huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hmm! (Score:2, Informative)