I wanted a chance to digest the first part of Priest's reporting on "Top Secret America" before having a take.
At the end of the day, my take is pretty simple. Beyond the money and the growth of a massive security state there is an underlying issue for me: accountability.
If what she reports is true, then there are embedded factions in the post-9/11 intelligence community that essentially answer to no one outside their own bubble, not to CIA, DoD, the DNI, and sure as hell not Congress or the President.
This is a situation that we here at the wire were worried might happen; I just didn't think it would happen on quite this big a scale.
What the articles describe is essentially the "Treadstone" scenario, described in the Jason Bourne spy novels. Essentially it is a black ops group within CIA that has gone off the reservation and has decided that it is a law unto itself.
No republic can sustain itself under these conditions. We have no idea what kind of international (or domestic for that fact) horror shows are being perpetrated in the name of our collective security. Maybe nothing at all...
But – and this one goes out to all the wingnuts out there – do you really trust your government to act in your best interest under these circumstances?
mojo sends
