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.
“The investigation’s other findings include:
*Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
*An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
*In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings-about 17 million square feet of space.
*Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.
*Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year-a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.”
On the surface, the Post report appears to be a valiant effort by a major mainstream newspaper (second in influence to only the New York Times) to expose widespread government abuse and chicanery. But don’t get too excited yet.
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.”
Skousen continues: “What few do get a glimpse into government’s dark side are warned off with threats, some subtle and some lethal-threats which send a chilling message to others to not ‘ask too many questions.'” Skousen then quotes the Post report as saying that since 9/11, the NSA (National Security Agency) has grown to where it now consumes “1.7 billion pieces of intercepted communications every 24 hours: emails, bulletin board postings, instant messages, IP addresses, phone numbers, telephone calls and cellular conversations.”
Concerning all those government organizations and private companies working on counterterrorism projects that the Post report refers to, Skousen writes, “Once again, the series tells us nothing about the substance of what they do, much of which is unsavory and illegal.”
Skousen goes on to say, “What [the Post report] won’t tell you is that almost a third of these [NSA] operations are dedicated to black operations against Americans and other Western governments who need to be surveilled in order to control them and keep them from resisting the agenda of the New World Order. Much expense is allocated to spying on the unsavory private behavior of Congressmen, and even State officials-building compromising dossiers on people who influence the political process so they can be coerced into compliance when necessary.”
Skousen also chides the Post report for failing “to show how connected certain companies are to the mercenary contractor explosion that is growing into a force that will eventually be used to threaten individual liberties at home. The Powers That Be don’t need to hire foreign armies to clamp down on American dissidents. They are training hundreds of thousands of mercenary Americans to do it and using foreign wars to sort out who is ruthless enough or unprincipled enough to take orders without questions-similar to the way the Nazis sorted and selected those who would form the Brownshirt and SS brigades.”
See Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief at:
http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com/
See The Washington Post report at:
http://tinyurl.com/washpost-hidden-world
In short, while claiming to expose the federal government’s “hidden world,” the Post report actually does little to uncover the illegal and dark activities that Washington employs against the US citizenry, and by so doing serves more to cover up this sinister activity. Even so, do you not find it more than a little interesting just how few media sources did anything to pick up the Post report? Did you read any of this in your local paper? Did you see anything of this on CNN or Fox News? Come on, folks! You are aware that most of the media outlets (including network television) in this country obtain the vast majority of their “news” from The New York Times and The Washington Post, are you not? So, how convenient is it that this report (such as it is) was virtually ignored?
As I’ve said in speaking engagements-both large and small-all over America, We have more to fear from Washington, D.C., than from Tehran or Baghdad, or from any other foreign entity. America’s founders understood this and tried to warn the American people accordingly. For example, Daniel Webster warned, “There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence. I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men and become the instruments of their own undoing.”
The protection of the people from the totalitarian tendencies of their own central government in Washington, D.C., is why the framers of the Constitution included the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights. The Second Amendment was never about duck hunting or target shooting; it was all about the American citizenry being prepared to defend itself against its own federal government. The founders’ distrust of the central government is why they attempted to divide the power and authority of government into three separate branches. They expected the three branches to compete against each other and to hold each other in check and balance against governmental abuse. And this is also why the individual states each maintained their own sovereignty and independence when creating the central government in 1787, because, at the end of the day, it is going to be the states that form the final fortress for freedom.
For all intents and purposes, the three branches of the federal government have done nothing to prevent the massive expansion of unconstitutional governance by Washington, D.C. The passage of the Seventeenth Amendment was the beginning of the end, as far as separated power was concerned. Neither has it made much difference which political party was in power in DC. The unlawful expansion of federal power has continued under both. This means that there are only two remaining protections against absolute federal tyranny: 1) strong, independent, and defiant State governments, and, 2) a determined and fully armed citizenry.
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.
Posted on Jul 27, 2010
Source: Chuck Baldwin
More information:
– Obama Administration Plans Secret Big Brother ‘Perfect Citizen’ Net Surveillance
– General James Mattis who said it was ‘fun to shoot people’ takes over US Central Command
– EU gives US access to its citizens’ private financial data
– Obama Administration To Sue Arizona Over Immigration Law
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– Obama Internet ‘Kill Switch’ Approved By Senate Committee
– Americans buying their own health insurance face an average 20 percent increase in premiums
– Big Brother DHS And DOD Want To Open US Skies To Spy Drones
– President Obama Has Already Outdone Every Previous President In Prosecuting Whistleblowers
– US government debt to rise to $19.6 trillion by 2015
– Left-Wing Icon Daniel Ellsberg: ‘Obama Deceives the Public’
– US: $13 Trillion Debt Poised to Overtake GDP (Chart of Day)
– 10 US States Where An Absurd Percentage Of The Population Works For The Government
– US ’secret war’ expands globally as Special Operations forces are deployed in 75 countries
– Paul Craig Roberts: A Plague Upon The World: The USA is a “Failed State”
– President Obama Wins The Right to Detain People With No Habeas Review
– US posts 19th straight monthly budget deficit; April deficit nearly four times higher than in 2009
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– President Obama Repaying His Masters At Goldman Sachs
– Marriage Penalties Increase Dramatically Under ObamaCare
– The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente on ObamaCare, Dollar Devaluation And Gold
– Rep. Ron Paul: President Obama Is ‘Not A Socialist.’ ‘He Is A Corporatist.’
– Dylan Ratigan Show With Alan Grayson: The Great Con Job By The Fed, The Government And The Banksters
– Michelle Obama says Barack’s Home country is Kenya – full statement
– Obama Administration Approves Targeted Killing of American Cleric
– Judge Napolitano on Obama’s Private Army
– Obama Gives ‘Pesticide Lobbyist’ Post as Chief Agricultural Negotiator
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– Rep. Ron Paul: Healthcare Will Drive US To Bankruptcy
– Gerald Celente: This time they will close the Banks & Wall Street (03/27/10)
– John Pilger: Have a Nice World War III, Folks
– The War on WikiLeaks … and Why It Matters
– White House Press Corps longest-serving member Helen Thomas on her one question for Obama
– Joe Biden to Barack Obama: ‘Mr. President, This Is A Big F****** Deal’
– Rep. Ron Paul: Healthcare Bill is ‘Blatantly Unconstitutional And Contrary to The Ideals of Liberty’
– US: THE Most Important Chart of the CENTURY
– Health Care Bill ‘Dangerously Expands IRS’s Power’
– US Government Preparing For Civil Unrest In America
– Record: National Debt Up $2 Trillion in Just 421 Days on Obama’s Watch
– Obama agencies invoking secrecy provision more often than under Bush
– US budget deficit hits record $221bn, the largest monthly deficit in history
– Michael Moore: ‘Democrats are a bunch of wusses … It’s disgusting … I’m sick of them’
– President Obama signs one-year extension of Patriot Act
– Cybersecurity Bill To Give President Obama New Emergency Powers
– Judge Napolitano and Angela Keaton on Freedom Watch: Obama’s Bush Foreign Policy
– Obama Signs Law Raising Public Debt Limit from $12.4 Trillion to $14.3 Trillion
– President Obama’s Pledge Never to Raise Taxes on Anyone Making Less Than $250,000 a Year
– Paul Craig Roberts: It Is Now Official: The U.S. Is A Police State
– Prof. Russell Roberts Testifies Before House Committee: ‘I Want My Country Back!’
– Director of National Intelligence Says US May Kill Americans Abroad
– President Obama Ups Pakistan Drone Strikes in Assassination Campaign
– The New Vision of the Obama Administration: War Without End
– Pentagon’s New Record Black Budget Tops $56 Billion
– Rep. Ron Paul on Obama seeking to assassinate ‘US citizens’ he labels as terrorist
– White House to Paint Grim Fiscal Picture: Another Record Budget Deficit
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– Marc Faber: Obama Makes Bush Look Like a Genius
– Obamanomics: Why Did the ‘Stimulus’ Fail to Help the US Economy?
– Paul Craig Roberts: How Wall Street Destroyed Health Care – Greed, Be Thou My God
– President Obama to indefinitely imprison detainees without charges
– Ron Paul: US Foreign Policy is Bankrupting America
– Rep. Ron Paul: State of the Republic Address – ‘Dangerous Times Indeed.’
– America’s Impending Master Class Dictatorship! (MUST-READ!)
– The CFR Controls American News/Media
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– The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: Financial Mafia Controlling US and Wall Street
– Peter Schiff: The Lunacy of US Government Programs
– Former Dean of Harvard College Harry R. Lewis: Larry Summers, Robert Rubin: Will The Harvard Shadow Elite Bankrupt The University And The Country?
– Experts: Dollar Crisis Looms if US Doesn’t Curb Debt
– Fitch: US Must Cut Spending To Save AAA Rating; US December Deficit Nearly Doubles
– The Coming Sovereign Debt Crisis
– US slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels
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– Barack Obama’s Health Care Lies And Reversals
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– US: Public Pensions Face $2 Trillion Deficit
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– Prof. Dr. David Michael Green: Now I’m Really Getting Pissed Off … With Obama
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– The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: The Terror And The Crash of 2010
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Traitor in chief:
– Treason: Obama gives INTERPOL immunity from the Constitution (Amending Executive Order 12425)
– Peter Schiff on Obamacare, Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae: The Nightmare Before Christmas
– Obama administration backs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac no matter how big their losses may be
– Rep. Dennis Kucinich: US War Presidents ignore Congress and Constitution
– Obamacare: Big payoffs to senators on health bill stoke public anger
– US: Trillions Of Troubles Ahead
– Chinese central banker Zhu Min: ‘The world does not have so much money to buy more US Treasuries.’
– Obamacare: Change Nobody Believes In
– Obama’s surge comes at a cost: At least $57,077.60 per minute
– US National Debt Tops Debt Limit
Hypocrite in Chief (Funny):
– President Obama: Another Busy Day in The Oval Office!
– Fascism in America: By Political Definition The US Is Now Fascist, Not A Constitutional Republic
– John Williams of Shadowstats: Prepare For The Hyperinflationary Great Depression
Liar in Chief (NOT funny!!!):
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– Rep. Dennis Kucinich: ‘These Wars Are Corrupting The Heart Of Our Nation!’
– Famous Investor Jim Rogers: Incompetence In Washington, Abolish The Fed And The Treasury
– Rep. Dennis Kucinich: The Truth About Afghanistan
– Obama’s Big Sellout (Rolling Stone Magazine)
– Obama administration to lift debt ceiling by $1.8 trillion
– Climategate: President Obama’s rule by EPA decree is a coup d’etat against Congress, made in Britain
– Obama administration tells Pakistan: Tackle Taliban or we will
– MSNBC Rachel Maddow: War President Obama
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– Afghanistan Surge to Cost At Least $40 Billion, That Is $1.333.333 For One US Soldier Per Year
Liar in Chief (Over 300 soldiers died in 2009 because of this lie!!!):
– Obama: ‘I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am President, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank.’