Washington Post: U.S. Intelligence System Massive, Ineffective

source http://www.economyincrisis.org/content/washington-post-us-intelligence-system-massive-ineffective

The United States' national intelligence apparatus has grown so large and disjointed in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that it has become largely inefficient, according to a two-year study conducted by The Washington Post.

The report found that the nation's intelligence system has become "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."

What is known is that there are 1,271 government entities and 1,931 private companies engaged in intelligence-gathering work in at least 10,000 separate U.S. locations.

Since the attacks, 33 building complexes dedicated to intelligence work have been built or are under construction, the report found. Their sheer size is equal to the capacity of three Pentagons and 17 Capitol Buildings.

The study was conducted "based on government documents and contracts, job descriptions, property records, corporate and social networking Web sites, additional records, and hundreds of interviews with intelligence, military and corporate officials and former officials."

In the intelligence bureaucracy 854,000 people work with top-level security clearances, although its is unclear what the total employment figure is.

Much of the work done is redundant with 50,000 intelligence reports published each year, much of them overlooked in the jumble of work.

"There has been so much growth since 9/11 that getting your arms around that - not just for the DNI [Director of National Intelligence], but for any individual, for the director of the CIA, for the secretary of defense - is a challenge," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told The Post.

The growth in intelligence gathering is yet another example of the nation's bloated defense budget. In the 2010 fiscal year, the Pentagon was allocated $663.8 billion. Other defense related expenditures outside of the Department of Defense totaled $361 billion, bringing the total military budget to $1.03 trillion.

The U.S. spends nearly as much as the rest of the world combined on defense. The 2010 budget was nine times higher than the next closest nation, China, which spent just $98 billion.

Much of those funds are spent stationing troops in countries that pose little to no danger to the U.S., building weapons that are outdated and, of course, fighting wars that are exercises in futility.

As of February 2009, the U.S. military had 865 bases abroad, according to the Pentagon. However, Foreign Policy in Focus says that the number is actually closer to 1,000 when installations in Afghanistan and Iraq are included.

Of those bases, the U.S. still has 268 in Germany 65 years after the end of World War II and 20 years after the fall of the Berlin wall. Likewise, the U.S. has 124 bases in Japan. And 57 years after the end of the Korean War, the U.S. still has 87 bases protecting the southern portion of the peninsula.

Even more egregious, according to Foreign Policy in Focus, the U.S. military operates 324 golf courses around the world.

"It costs nearly 15 percent less to build in the United States than in Germany. In addition, the U.S. military has invested $1.4 billion in German infrastructure from 2006 to 2010, while Germany's contribution has averaged $20 million per year — or less than 10 percent," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson recently wrote in the San Angelo Standard-Times.