The Monday, July 19, 2010, edition of The Washington Post featured an investigative report entitled "Top Secret America," with the subtitle, "A hidden world, growing beyond control." The report begins, "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.
In Joel Skousen's World Affairs Brief (July 23, 2010), Skousen writes, "The [Post] series has just enough tantalizing information to sell a lot of papers, but almost nothing that exposes the illicit side of US operations--a large portion of which is involved in recruiting, training, and running covert agents--only a small portion of which are spying on real enemies. A lot of spying targets our allies and patriotic Americans who the government worries could someday provide a source of rebellion against the growing totalitarian state."
Skousen further charges that there is a "dark side" to "each agency of [federal] law enforcement." This "dark side" involves "a lot of compartmentalization, front activities, hidden budgets and false stories in order to keep honest government employees and agents from knowing what's going on behind their backs."
The Washington Post report (for all its failures) should serve to remind the American people of just how vulnerable we are (and have always been) to totalitarian government, how fragile liberty and freedom are, and how necessary it is that we remain eternally vigilant to resist the machinations of power-mad Machiavellians in Washington, D.C.
