Live Q&As

Dana here: you can't do if from the outside. You need to examine all programs, determine what's working, really working and what is not. A thorough review. Overlap is one sign that it has indeed gotten too big.  

Thanks for your comment.  Of course our series is not just about the intelligence community and that is the precise point we make.  The world of counter-terrorism includes uncoordinated and sometimes little known entities of  the military, intelligence community, homeland security, and even civil government.  No one is in charge of it all and Congress hardly has the resources to oversee it all.

Dana: We tried. Got the number 50,000 for intel reports. Such a flood and so much of the same thing that some people don't bother to read. 

I don't think that any of this is being done intentionally to create the end points you describe, but I completely agree that we need to ask these questions, perhaps more in the form of is our form of government really intending to put so much of our national security in the hands of profil making companies rather than public servants.

A nice question.  Dana and I started working on this together in August 2008, realilzing that we were both struggling with the same question,  that we were looking at something but didn't quite know what.  Something had fundamentally changed since 9/11, we could see that.   It proved to be so big and so secret in its totality, frankly it has just taken us this long to wrap our collective arms and brains around it.

You are right Irony, but it is also true that we conducted hundreds upon hundreds of interviews with sources and visited many locations.  So open source is certainly important,  and probably has far too little cachet in the "Top Secret" world of sexier sources.

ok, good idea. if anyone has more information on it, pls send it along to priestd@washpost.com

This is certainly the key question.  And we hope that we are creating enough of a foundation for all of us to find the answers.

Because many more people go to the website on Monday rather than Sunday and this project was designed from the start to be very rich on the web. You should play around with the database to see what I mean.

As citizens, we are all asked to make important national decision, as in our consent to go to war.  As such, this should certainly be informed consent.  Secrecy, or lack of government transparency in general, is certainly an impediment to achieving the American ideal.

Easy. I just asked and they said yes. The notion that we might be able to pull this off was attractive to them, although I have to say this was the most difficult thing I've ever worked on and several times during the two years I wonder whether we would be able to translate what we were seeing into journalism. editors here a committed to investigative work and certainly so are the reporters/

The objective was to describe this most important part of the US government, to analyze what we found, to point out the problems. We took operational and personal security into consideration at every step. Notice, for instance, that the story today gives you a sense of what things feel like but usually does not direct you to a specific place. Same with the datatbase. 

I loved Paglen's book and its literary approach.  And any such work that delves into the hidden landscape is inspiration.  But as investigative journalists, we did our own work and collected our own data.  I think the extensive story and the online presentation at topsecretamerica.com shows that.

Sometimes I ask myself this question, even after 30 years in the business.  And there is never a clear answer.  But talking to enough people and seeing enough things with your own eyes, and a lot of editors and experts around sure helps.

Obviously that temptation is something we should all be vigilant about and one way for journalists to do that is to continue to try to  write about this world, eventhough it is difficult and eventhough there are prickly security questions involved. if we don't even try because it's tricky, we, as journalists, are abandoning our responsbility. And its a responsibility enshrined in the Constitution---that the free press has a role in checking government.

You should try it in the paper version, maybe that will work better for you.

One thing is abundantly clear about the current intelligence system.  It dwarfs anything previously in terms of the amount of information collected and processed.  I heard someone in the military say once that ONE Global Hawk unmanned reconnaissance mission today uses about the same bandwidth as was used during the entire 1991 Gulf War. 

Obviously we disagree. This is exactly what newspapers should be doing everyday: holding government accountable for how they spend our money and what they get for it--without risking national security. This  is what we believe we've done. But welcome to America, where different opinions can be aired with civility.

This is a great question.  Sometimes just the clearance itself connotes a "need to know," particularly in the networked world.  But in the compartmented world, specific billets are designated for access to information and in this way whoever owns the billet owns the information and thus the control.  I don't think that this is any specified way, and the evidence shows that again and again key people are left out of the loop on ... shall we say, matters of national security.

thak you so much. they are such a great group to work with and they worked soooo hard.

As the editor's note explains in the newspaper and online, we went through a months long process of confirming, fact-checking, and double-checking information and its potential harm even before we went through a months-long dialog with the government at the highest levels.   The balance we achieved I think is exactly right for this information age, enough information to convey the story and the bigness "at a granular level" as the editors say, but also information that could not do harm to the national security.

ha ha

Thanks for the compliment.  It took two years, but we were able to figure it out using hundreds of thousands of pieces of information.

Certainly Iraq and Afghanistan dominate in this area and most of the national security activity and contracting is also concentrated in those two countries, but there has also been an expansion into Africa (with the creation of Africa Command) and a greater intelligence and military presence in certain parts of the world.  It's not the Cold War, but the expansion is global, including inside the United States, where much of the most important work is done.

I hope if I ever become cynical, I will leave for Hawaii or something. No, I'm not cynical. As long as the public can seriously debate  the issues, things can change. I believe journalists play a role in prompting serious discussion about serious issues....and, yes, nice to be back. I have never worked on anything as long as this.

I've been running from interview to interview since 5:30 a.m. CBS Evening News will have something tonight, as did NBC and ABC this morning. thanks for your interest.

We don't publish locations of intelligence operations. We don't even write in detail about intelligence operations. Maybe you should re-read it again.

To me, this is not quite the right question.  It seems to me that while Washington and Congress is awash with special interests, the reality is that absent a clear national security strategy for fighting terrorism, the default is politics, which is to say, that where the bases, projects, emphasis, contracts, etc., get located and where the money goes, is a matter of horse trading and power relationships rather than one that is methodical.  Having said that, there is no denying the fact that the Washngton DC area has been the major beneficiary for the growth since 9/11.  Stay turned for parts 2 and 3 of the series to see this.

There are certainly endless cases of $500 hammers, but in this world it is more the problem of $500 million networks.  This is an information-dominated system we have today and there is no question that there is tremendous duplication and expense being "wasted" in this realm.   That's today's gold-plating.

no

You know, in the end, we were not able to put a total pricetag to Top Secret America, so opaque is the spending and activity.  The official intelligence budget is $75 billion, but I suspect that actual spending, once one incorporates all elements of the military, homeland security, and civil government is closer to double that amount.

not really in charge-in charge, but managing in a more effective way than is right now being done. There will be much debate about the role of the Director of National Intelligence--whose hearing is tomorrow. DefSec Robert Gates see the position like a committee chairman. he can't tell members how to vote, but he can try to cajole and manage them into a consensus. it's worth mulling over.

One of the ironic details we uncovered in our investigation is that many of the "household" named contractors like Halliburton and KBR do little if any Top Secret work.  That should also give you a sense of how small this sector is in comparison to the overall defense sector, but also how much "unclassified" and just secret work is done.

I certainly would hope so. We asked the director of national intelligence for examples that were not already in the media. we received none.

Thanks for your question.  By us regular people, if you mean all of us, I think the answer is that we have built a system with the capacity to collect vast amounts of information, and it could be directed (and has been) to evil uses, if we the people are not vigilent.  But do I personally believe that the government surveilled Citizen A on a regular basis?  I don't.

Transparency itself is not the goal. The goal is to figure out whether the system is working as it should and to make it better. I cannot get so far inside that I would see these answers. Because this is a classified world, we have to rely on people with appropriate clearances to get that detailed information.

Thisis a terrific question, and I hope the answer is yes.   But also at the same time, it isn't just a matter of stopping individuals.  That's the work of security guards and airplane screeners.  We're talking about a far larger problem, of understanding the truth correctly and then finding the most effective (and least costly) way of responding.

interesting point. we'll i guess you could wait to finish it in pieces. we wanted to give you a fuller context though. we tried hard to make the writing smooth so it didn't take even longer---now we hope you'll spend you evening playing around in the database where there is even more fun to be had.

Congress just doesn't have the resources to deal with this problem in a comprehensive way.  There are many things that need to be improved in order for Congress to fulfill its obligation to oversee the Executive Branch, but secrecy is certainly the biggest impediment, not just for Congress, but for the news media and the public.  That is why we concentrated on the "most" secret part of the government's work.

certainly. not much as changed in the national security arena. although, i have to say i don't think donald rumsfeld would have been as open to the implicit criticism as secretary gates was.

one of the striking observations we heard that is not in the stories is the concern that our reaction to every near-miss feeds into the enemies' hands. it's worth thinking about.

What we said in the story today is that most intelligence reports -- of which there are thousands daily -- go unread.  We have been told this again and again by our sources and we have seen it again and again in each new potential terorist event.   Everyone is clear: There is just too much information and not enough analysis.

theoretically yes. the prez can only ask about something he knows to ask about. that's why he needs to rely on staff to bring things to his attention. hence the staff need to have visibility on these sensitive programs.

What has fundamentally changed?  I would say three things:  First, the shift to so many contractors being engaged in matters of national security.  Second, the concentration of power and activity in the United States (rather than overseas) and particularly in the Washington area.  And third, the proliferation of super secrecy and compartmented programs.

i don't think this was meant to be a jobs program.

A great question.  We've spent two years on this, and the Washington Post has put a lot of resources into it.  This is a question of national security; I'm confident that the Post will not only stick with the story, but I look at new hires at the Washington Post in the national security field, like Greg Miller (from the LA Times) or Greg Jaffe (from the Wall Street Journal) to really demonstrate the Post's commitment to serious journalism, even in these difficult financial times.

talk to your representatives. write letters to the editor. raise the general dialogue to a thoughtful, in-depth one. can't help you any more than that.

i haven't been following the reaction much. apparently, though, james Clapper's confirmation hearing for the postion of the top intelligence manager is tomorrow. so it could come up then.

well, i can't.

Ah, why do we have so many cars?  It is to some extinct part of the American character.  But in the same organizations to have so many?  We call it the "bling" of national security and sometimes I get the impression that activities are little more than that.

they signed on right away, although no one knew it would take so long, me included. the funding came from the washington post co., where all our funding comes from.

it took two years of work by two full time reporters who got frustrated at times by how difficult this was, but also by the sheer volume of things out there that we were finding. 

We did not hide Liberty Crossing.  We speak of it being an officially "undisclosed" location.  But we did have a very deliberate internal discussion, and much back and forth with the government, about whether there was any danger associated in describing any individual location.  In the end, I'm confident that the Post struck a comfortable balance between information the public and not jeopardizing public safety (or interests).

The President. And he's got a lot of other things to do.

I'll just say, Nothing Says the Same.

This is a great question and we try, in the third part of the series, to answer this question about the "culture" of Top Secret America.  But I'm afraid we've barely touched the surface of this question.  Ivy Leagers  of yesteryear, no?  But what drives the workers outside of government?  I'm not sure.

I have the Frontline producer, Mike Kirk, here with me now. Mike? We are determined to tell the story that has been published today and add narrative elements that will vividly take viewers inside Top Secret America.  If you know about important events that have happened, critical decisions taken or refused, we are interested.

thank you mike. (he types slowly doesn't he?)

and