The Redundancy Inside "Top Secret America"
The Washington Post's Dana Priest and Bill Arkin launched an explosive series this week, "Top Secret America" which examines the intelligence and counterterrorism agencies created in response to the attacks on September 11th.
What Priest and Arkin discovered was a secret world where it's unclear how much money is being spent, how many people are employed, how many programs exist and how many agencies are doing the same work.
On Monday's Washington Unplugged, Priest spoke with CBS News Chief Legal Correspondent Jan Crawford and noted the most startling finding was how many agencies were working on the same project, without any knowledge that their counterparts were, in essence, doing the same thing.
Priest told Crawford, "When you talk about what are the most shocking features, it's not the numbers, it's not the size, it's not even the money, it's that the people inside who want to do a good job have been overwhelmed by the growth of this to the extent that they themselves don't know how big it's become and expressed frustration about that."
Last year's Fort Hood shooting is cited as an example of this communication breakdown that is plaguing "Top Secret America". Priest added, "This isn't just a question of money and bodies, it's a question of how effective is the system, and the system becomes too big, and the lines of responsibility blur and that's what happened in the Fort Hood case."
From "communication breakdowns" to a community that's grown too large to be sustainable, there's also internal envy that permeates when it comes to Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), special rooms designed to process Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) level classified information.
In this case, size does matter, and as Preist told Crawford, "The human ego plays into this to an extent that is shocking. 'Turf battles' and resistance to share what you have, and resistance to pare down what you have because it's not really necessary. It runs counter to people who want to build their 'empires', who want to have bigger organizations and more control over things. It goes beyond ego and into effectiveness of government."
Watch Monday's Washington Unplugged also featuring CBS News Chief Political Consultant Marc Ambinder and Reuters Washington News Editor Kristin Roberts on the White House's "Recovery Summer".
"Washington Unplugged," CBSNews.com's exclusive daily politics Webshow, appears live on CBSNews.com each weekday at 2:00 p.m. ET. Click here to check out previous episodes.
