Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry
Marc Ambinder, D.B. Grady
Language: English
Pages: 336
ISBN: 1118146689
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
There are indications that this deep state is crumbling. Necessary secrets are often impossible to keep, while frivolous secrets are kept forever. The entire system has fallen prey to political manipulation, with leaks carefully timed to advance agendas, and over-classification given to indefensible government activities.
Deep State, written by two of the country's most respected national security journalists, disassembles the secrecy apparatus of the United States and examines real-world trends that ought to trouble everyone from the most aggressive hawk to the fiercest civil libertarian. The book:
- Provides the fullest account to date of the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance program first spun up in the dark days after 9/11.
- Examines President Obama's attempt to reconcile his instincts as a liberal with the realities of executive power, and his use of the state secrets doctrine.
- Exposes how the public’s ubiquitous access to information has been the secrecy industry's toughest opponent to date, and provides a full account of how WikiLeaks and other “sunlight” organizations are changing the government's approach to handling sensitive information, for better and worse.
- Explains how the increased exposure of secrets affects everything from Congressional budgets to Area 51, from SEAL Team Six and Delta Force to the FBI, CIA, and NSA.
- Assesses whether the formal and informal mechanisms put in place to protect citizens from abuses by the American deep state work, and how they might be reformed.
Deep State is based on the authors' insatiable curiosity for the ground truth and layered on a foundation of original and historical research as well as unprecedented access to lawmakers, intelligence agency heads, White House officials, and secret program managers. It draws on thousands of recently declassified documents and candid interviews with more than 100 military, industry, and government officials.
By the bestselling authors of The Command: Deep Inside the President's Secret Army: Marc Ambinder, editor at large at The Week, contributing editor at GQ and the Atlantic, who has covered Washington for CBS News and ABC News; and D.B. Grady, a correspondent for the Atlantic, national security columnist for The Week, and former U.S. Army paratrooper and Afghanistan veteran.
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massive cyber attacks. The NSA’s collection activities increasingly overlap with the digital detritus that Americans generate. For that reason alone it is worth the effort to put together an accurate account of what the agency does when no one is looking. The NSA has a story to tell and an argument to make. So do critics of its role. In the case of the special programs, excessive secrecy has contributed to several fundamental misunderstandings that undermine any debate about what the NSA’s role
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/03/02/”einstein”-program-disclosed-as-us-cyber-shield/?blog_id=100&post_id=11601. 4. Marc Ambinder, “Pentagon Wants to Secure Dot-Com Domains of Contractors,” Atlantic, August 13, 2010, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/08/pentagon-wants-to-secure-dot-com-domains-of-contractors/61456/; Ellen Nakashima, “NSA Allies with Internet Carriers to Thwart Cyber Attacks against Defense Firms,” Washington Post, June 16, 2011,
1998), 133. 4. Philip H. Melanson, Secrecy Wars: National Security, Privacy, and the Public’s Right to Know (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2001), 173. 5. Charlie Savage, “Cheney Says He Urged Bush to Bomb Syria in ’07,” New York Times, August 25, 2011, A18. 6. Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter, “‘I Can’t Believe What I’m Confessing to You’: The Wikileaks Chats,” Wired, June 10, 2010, http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/wikileaks-chat/. 7. D. M. Thomas Jr., Memorandum for Commander, “Combatant
from an especially sensitive new reconnaissance platform. The compartment for information derived from measurement and signature systems intelligence (MASINT) is GG. Information from sensitive foreign sources is sometimes given the digraph CW. And so on. In 1986, there were more than thirty SCI control systems, accounting for about five hundred different subcompartments.6 Information that flows through one control system must be air-gapped (separated physically) from information that flows
his memoir.11 He visited the secret test site at Area 51 near Groom Lake, Nevada, to see an early version of the F-117 stealth fighter. He spent time at the then classified National Reconnaissance Office watching real-time satellite feeds. He was read in to the highly compartmentalized Continuity of Government procedures, a subject he would take a particular interest in. Under President George H. W. Bush, he would serve as secretary of defense. Charged with vetting potential vice presidential
