The services put in place after Sept. 11 have become so fragmented and many it is impossible to know with precision the effectiveness, says the Washington Post, after two years of investigation.
The attacks of September 11 have led to uncontrollable growth of U.S. intelligence. At the price Perhaps their effectiveness and safety of the population, concerned the Washington Post. The newspaper began publishing on Monday his extensive survey of two years on “America top secret”. In nine years, “the world’s top secret that the government (…) birth has become so vast, difficult to maneuver and secret that nobody knows how much it costs, how it employs people, how many programs exist or how different services perform the same task, “the newspaper said.
The figures released are staggering. Since 2001, 263 organizations have been created or upgraded. A total of 1,271 government agencies and 1,931 private companies, spread over 10,000 sites, working on programs related to the fight against terrorism or intelligence. Nearly 854,000 people have access to secret information. Thirty-three buildings have been built or are under construction just in metropolitan Washington. The equivalent of three surface Pentagons. Economically, this abundance also has a weight: 75 billion dollars (58 billion euros) was spent in 2009 to intelligence, twice more than before September 11. And yet this figure represents only part of the formal curriculum. Many missions are unofficial and are not included in this sum.
Too many reports, often ignored
This avalanche of institutions resulting in administrative duplication and overlap. The Washington Post has identified 51 federal agencies located in 15 different cities, all are responsible for monitoring the movement of terrorist funds. A weakness that has come to light after the massacre at Fort Hood, where a Muslim soldier had shot 13 classmates last November. The institution in charge of intelligence-cons in the army, the 902nd Intelligence Group, should consider the information collected on disturbing the commander Hasan as its threats and emails with a radical imam in Yemen. He preferred to concentrate the terrorist groups operating in the United States, a task already completed by the Department of Homeland Security and a unit of the FBI. “It’s a lack of concentration and not a lack of resources has been at the heart of Fort Hood,” regrets the Washington Post.
Similarly, the intelligence agencies produce about 50,000 reports per year and many of them are ignored or repeated. “Once something happens, all agencies want to cover. They are rehashing information already in circulation, “admits one former official, quoted by the newspaper. Another disadvantage of U.S. intelligence agencies is their level of confidentiality. Some programs are so secret that their existence is known only to a privileged few. This culture of mystery and the proliferation of services hinder the sharing of information between agencies. The Washington Post cites the example of flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. Several organizations have collected information on the planned attack failed Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab “but no one has assembled the pieces of the puzzle because the system is so huge that the responsibilities have become blurred,” admitted the official.
