![]() ![]() "The contractors, in the beginning, were just supposed to be supplemental to the federal employees. "The government is now contracting contractors to do the security clearances for other contractors," she says. And now an entire industry has sprung up to provide those clearances, says Priest. More than 800,000 people now hold top-secret security clearances. So in addition to costing more, it cost the government some of its best people - and then it sold those people back to them at two or three times as much money." And it did it because it could attract them with relatively high salaries and less stressful work than when you're working in government. It sucked away the very people that those agencies needed to keep. "It's created this unintended adverse consequence: also drew from the agencies. " is willing to pay these companies money to get the bodies," she says. Many of the contractors that the government hired to do counterintelligence and security work are paid much more than their public counterparts in the CIA and Homeland Security. Top Secret America: A Washington Post Investigation That role falls largely those with security clearances and the intelligence committees within Congress. "So what you have are good-hearted people and companies and employees who are doing what they think they can get paid for and what might help but so much of it is reinventing the wheel that another organization has already reinvented five times," she says.īecause much of the counterterrorism work is classified, she says, there's no room for the public to have any kind of oversight into the process. For example, there are 51 federal organizations and military commands, she says, that track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks. ![]() Priest and fellow Post reporter William Arkin found that many security and intelligence agencies do the same work. And nobody still, 10 years later, is really in charge of those questions." "Not only does the government find it difficult to get its arms around itself, it doesn't know what's inside, it doesn't know what works, it doesn't know what doesn't work. of dollars and a blank check after that for anybody with a good idea to go and pursue it,' " she says. "The government said, 'We're facing an enemy we don't understand, we don't have the tools to deal with it, here's billions. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Top Secret America Subtitle The Rise of the New American Security State Author Dana Priest and William Arkin ![]()
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