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The Rise of the New American Security State
Dana Priest and William M. Arkin
Hachette Audio
September 8, 2011 / ASIN: B005M38DDQ
Nonfiction / Security / Audiobook – Unabridged/Audio CD/12
hrs, 8 min
Amazon
Reviewed
by Jo Rogers
Top Secret America is full of interesting information.
It tells about security in America after September 11, 2001. Before
that date, the United States had several agencies charged with gathering
information that could help keep our country safe and our citizens
safe both here and abroad. But they weren’t obligated to share
the information they received or to work together to act on that
information.
Thus, the Department of Homeland Security was born. It was headed
by a Director who, with his staff, was supposed to correlate the
information and see that it was sent to the proper people to take
care of it. However, the various agencies acted like spoiled, selfish
children and got Congress to take away the director's power to actually
force the individual agencies to share the information. Instead
of consolidating security efforts and eliminating the overlapping
work, another giant bureaucracy skilled in wasting taxpayers' money
was created.
With all the redundancy, important information was often buried
in the many terabytes of mundane information sent daily. Billions
of dollars were spent preserving individual jobs without any concern,
force, efficiency or cost. President Obama, faced with a fourteen-trillion-dollar
debt, made no effort to cut the budget for this huge sinkhole of
inefficiency. In fact, now that many Al Quaida officers have already
been killed along with most of their financial support, this massive
agency could easily be trimmed down to a much smaller and cheaper
size.
Will this book change anything? It should. It contains enough information
that the agencies involved in national security asked the authors
not to publish the book. There's nothing in it to harm national
security, but it could cost a lot of cushy jobs, especially in Congress.
So, in this coming election year, listen to "Top Secret America"
and stop being scared. Instead, get mad and get involved.
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