America’s Secret Government

May 9th, 2013

Peter Nolan

by
Bill Bonner
Bill
Bonner’s Diary

Recently
by Bill Bonner: The
Greatest Lie the Fed Ever Told

US
stocks continue to climb. The Dow has passed the 15,000 milestone.
Gold,
meanwhile, got smacked yesterday. It sank back to $1,448 per
ounce.

What’s ahead?

A mood of prophecy,
perhaps brought on by a large helping of osso bucco from our local
Italian restaurant, came over us last night. We looked into the
future. And there we saw a grim world.

As we reported
last week, public life bumbles along under a combination of false
pretenses and self-imposed delusions. Monday’s news told us that
the
worst enemy Americans now face is themselves. For every one
of them bumped off by a terrorist, nearly a thousand more do themselves
in using everything from pistols to automobiles, to household
cleaners. But instead of declaring war on themselves or even turning
in their firearms which would be the logical response
they hire armies of guards, gumshoes, cops and spooks to protect
themselves… from someone else!

The enemy is
invisible, they argue. Their champions must be invisible too. After
all, they are engaged in a hidden war with an enemy who can’t be
seen by the naked eye. In fact, he can’t be seen with telescopes
or microscopes either. Because he doesn’t much exist.

Even those
few crackpots and malcontents who might want to strike a blow against
the US lack the organization, training, tanks, missiles, computers,
artillery, ships, guns, trucks… and all the other paraphernalia
that might make even a tiny dent in the imperial armor.

So the “war”
must remain a secret. It takes place in the shadows… a kind of
imaginary battle… in which thousands of make-believe soldiers
pretend to protect Western civilization from millions of fantastic
foreign fiends.

Sorry
It’s Classified

How many combatants?
How much military hardware is on the field? How much will this war
cost?

We can’t tell
you. It’s classified! The
Washington Post told the tale:

The top-secret
world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks
of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive
that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it
employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many
agencies do the same work.

These are
some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington
Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography
of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public
view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented
spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place
to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness
is impossible to determine.

The investigation’s
other findings include:

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,
DC, 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 US Capitol buildings about
17 million square feet of space.

Many
security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating
redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations
and military commands, operating in 15 US cities, track the
flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

Analysts
who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign
and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000
intelligence reports each year a volume so large that
many are routinely ignored.

In the spirit
of civic improvement and solidarity, we offer a modest suggestion.
Instead of screening people in airports to find those who forgot
to take the mouthwash out of their hand luggage, why not ask travelers
if they have considered blowing their brains out? Those who answer
in the affirmative could be assigned three or four federal employees
with security clearances to watch them day and night. The suicide
rate would plummet.

As it is, our
spook resources are clearly underused. There are probably 10,000
security personnel for every potential terrorist. What do all these
people do? What will happen to a nation that devotes so much of
its resources to fighting a war with largely imaginary enemies?

“You get
what you pay for,” said Milton Friedman.

Spending billions
on terrorism is bound to produce terrorists. How long will it be
before the clandestine terrorist agencies begin their own campaigns
of terror? Perhaps they already have.

With so many
secret agencies plotting, conniving, enticing, luring, fomenting,
and sowing their evil seeds, it won’t be long before something takes
root.

One group of
spooks will lay a trap… and catch another group… and accuse
a third group, whom they will mistake for real terrorists. One bomb
will go off. Another attempt will be thwarted at the last minute.
Still another group led on a double agent and financed by
secret funds provided by the taxpayer will be hauled in front
of the TV cameras…

The public
(the same people whose most lethal enemy stares at them from the
mirror) will panic. Convinced that a hell-bent terrorist hides behind
every bush, they will demand even more protection… more lockdowns…
more secret programs… and more jackbooted spooks.

The harder
we looked… the more we didn’t like what we saw.

May
9,
2013

Bill
Bonner is
a New
York Times
bestselling author and founder of Agora, one of the largest independent
financial publishers in the world. If you would like to read more
of Bill’s essays, sign-up for his free daily e-letter at Bill
Bonner’s Diary of a Rogue Economist.

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