WASHINGTON — Since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, top-secret intelligence gathering by the government has grown so unwieldy and expensive that no one really knows what it cost and how many people are involved, The Washington Post reported.
Monday, in its first installment of a series of reports on its two-year investigation, the Post said there are now more than 1,200 government organizations and more than 1,900 private companies working on counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the U.S.
About 854,000 people have top-secret security clearance, the paper said.
Col. Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said Monday the issue of redundancy within the intelligence community is a “well-known” problem.
“We’ve been fighting two wars since 9/11 and a lot of that growth in the intelligence community has come as a result of needed increases in intelligence collection and those types of activities to support two wars,” Lapan said.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Post that he doesn’t believe the massive bureaucracy of government and private intelligence has grown too large to manage, but that it is sometimes hard to get precise information.
“Nine years after 9/11, it makes sense to sort of take a look at this and say, ‘OK, we’ve built tremendous capability, but do we have more than we need?’ ” he said.
The Post said its investigation also found that many intelligence agencies are doing the same work, wasting money and resources on redundancy, and so many intelligence reports are published each year that many are routinely ignored.
“There has been so much growth since 9/11 that getting your arms around that — not just for the (director of National Intelligence), but for any individual, for the director of the CIA, for the secretary of defense — is a challenge,” Gates told the Post.
The White House released a memo from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence listing what it called eight “myths” and intended as a point-by-point answer to the charges the Post series was expected to raise.
Among them was that contractors represent the bulk of the intelligence work force. The memo put the number at 28 percent.
The memo said that 70 percent of the intelligence budget is spent on “contracts, not contractors.”
“Those contracts cover major acquisitions such as satellites and computer systems, as well as commercial activities such as rent, food service, and facilities maintenance and security,” the memo said.
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