Today, the Washington Post began publishing an in-depth series by Dana Priest and William Arkin titled “Top Secret America,” which begins: “The government has built a national security and intelligence system so big, so complex and so hard to manage, no one really knows if it’s fulfilling its most important purpose: keeping its citizens safe.”

RAY McGOVERN
McGovern was an Army infantry/intelligence officer in the early Sixties and then a CIA analyst for the next 27 years. He is a co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, works with Tell the Word (the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington) and regularly writes for Consortium News.

TIM SHORROCK
Available for a limited number of interviews, Shorrock is author of the book Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing.

This morning, following Arkin on the program “Democracy Now,” Shorrock said: “With all due respect to the Washington Post, Dana Priest and Bill Arkin are very good reporters, we have to ask, why did it take them seven years to do this story? … Anyone who’s been covering intelligence or national security in Washington knows that intelligence has been privatized to an incredible extent.”

Shorrock’s webpage features a new photo essay that shows the buildings of the contractors around Washington, D.C. and links to his past work over the last several years on this issue.

He added this afternoon: “We have a merger of corporations with national security. This is antithetical to democracy and constitutional government. Seventy percent of the national security apparatus goes to private contractors. It’s more dangerous than in the past, when it was just for technical issues, now it can cover analysis. And the profit motive can further corrupt intelligence as contractors want to have their contracts continued.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020