National Insecurity Apparatus

Hey, Tea Party smaller government guys?  Where were you when the Republicans were demanding all this after 9/11 -- and getting all of it?

"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 said in an interview with The Post last week.

In the Department of Defense, where more than two-thirds of the intelligence programs reside, only a handful of senior officials - called Super Users - have the ability to even know about all the department's activities. But as two of the Super Users indicated in interviews, there is simply no way they can keep up with the nation's most sensitive work.

"I'm not going to live long enough to be briefed on everything" was how one Super User put it. The other recounted that for his initial briefing, he was escorted into a tiny, dark room, seated at a small table and told he couldn't take notes. Program after program began flashing on a screen, he said, until he yelled ''Stop!" in frustration.

"I wasn't remembering any of it," he said.

850,000 plus people with top secret or higher security clearance, all redundantly not finding Osama Bin Laden and putting 5 year olds on flight watch lists.  All this new security stuff created by your friend George W. Bush here.  The right hand not only has no idea what the left hand is doing, it can't find the left hand because there are a couple hundred of them all doing slightly different things, and none of them know the full picture.

Now here's some government that I agree needs to be made smaller.  You know, so we can afford unemployment and roads and schools.

Do read through that WaPo special report on our national insecurity apparatus.