WaPo Investigation Delves Into America's National Security Infrastructure

Jillian Bandes | July 19, 2010 8:40 AM

It's an important piece, highlighting the extent to which national security operations here in the U.S. have become disorganized, overly-complicated, and expensive.

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.

At 5,500 words, the piece could be a game-changer. But it's also raised concerns that top secret information could be at stake. I'm not sure about that — the piece does reveal the locations of several anti-terrorism / national security buildings, but that information would be readily available to anyone with a car and map. It does reveal frustrations that senior intelligence officers have with the current system, but they don't speak specifically about pieces of information that have bothered them.