The third part of the Washington Post investigation delves deeper into the concentration of the various intelligence apparatus which engulfs the Washington D.C. area. Fort Meade is one such area, with its concentration of many of the intelligence capabilities of the nation, which checks on those that wish to do the nation harm.
Fort Meade, Md., is the capital of Top Secret America -- an alternative geography of the United States defined by the concentration of top-secret government organizations, and the companies that do work for them. It is the largest of a dozen such clusters across the United States that are the nerve centers of Top Secret America and its 854,000 workers.
The Washington D.C. area is the hub, within which all of these secret agencies and companies operate, without the accountability or oversight that we would expect. One such agency is The National Security Agency, just up the beltway in Maryland, with its buildings occupying 6.3 million square feet - about the size of the Pentagon - and are surrounded by 112 acres of parking spaces. As massive as that might seem, documents indicate that the NSA is only going to get bigger: 10,000 more workers over the next 15 years; $2 billion to pay for just the first phase of expansion; an overall increase in size that will bring its building space throughout the Fort Meade cluster to nearly 14 million square feet.
How effective has our intelligence been over the years? What are we getting with this massive bureaucracy, do we even know? Maybe now is the time to start asking?
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