The privatization of government is almost complete, especially when it comes to national security.

Frighteningly, it operates without accountability to we the people,

And it should cause the utmost concern among this country's citizens.

As Glenn Greenwald writes at Salon about the Washington Post series on private corporations performing core military and intelligence functions:  ".....we have a Secret Government of 854,000 people so vast and secret that nobody knows what it does or what it is.  Roughly 30% of that Secret Government -- engaged in the whole litany of functions from spying to killing -- is composed of private corporations:  "The Post estimates that out of 854,000 people with top-secret clearances, 265,000 are contractors."  That there is a virtually complete government/corporate merger when it comes to the National Security and Surveillance State is indisputable:  "Private firms have become so thoroughly entwined with the government's most sensitive activities that without them important military and intelligence missions would have to cease or would be jeopardized."

"Relying upon profit-driven industry for the defense and intelligence community's "core mission" is to ensure that we have Endless War and an always-expanding Surveillance State.  After all, the very people providing us with the "intelligence" that we use to make decisions are the ones who are duty-bound to keep this War Machine alive and expanding because, as the Post put it, they are "obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest."  Our military, our CIA, our spying agencies (such as NSA) are every bit corporate as they are governmental:   in some cases more so.  So complete is the merger that it's the same people who switch seamlessly back and forth between governmental agencies and their private "partners," which means we have not only a vast Secret Government, but one that operates with virtually no democratic accountability and is driven not by National Security concerns but by its own always-expanding private profits. 

"If we empower a massive private industry this way -- with core governmental authorities -- to gorge on unchecked power and huge private profits at the public expense, all derived from Endless War and civil liberties abridgments, why would one expect anything other than Endless War and civil liberties abridgments to be the inevitable outcome?"

Jeremy Scahill comments at The Nation: "The Post does a fine job of exploring the scope of the privatization and providing some new or updated statistics....It was also hilarious to read CIA director Leon Panetta—who just gave Blackwater a brand new $100 million global CIA contract—act like he is anything other than a contractor addict. "For too long, we've depended on contractors to do the operational work that ought to be done" by CIA employees, Panetta told the Post. But replacing them "doesn't happen overnight. When you've been dependent on contractors for so long, you have to build that expertise over time." Panetta told the Post he was concerned about contracting with corporations, whose responsibility "is to their shareholders, and that does present an inherent conflict." I wonder if the Blackwater guys working for Panetta can contain their laughter reading those statements. I imagine them taping a post-it note that says "Kick me" on Panetta's back and then chuckling about it with the Lockheed contractors.

"In reality, there is little in the Post series that, in one way or another, has not already been documented by independent journalist Tim Shorrock, author of the (actually) groundbreaking book, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. With the exception of some details and a lot of color, much of what I have read in the Post's series thus far I had already read in Shorrock's book and his previous reporting for Salon, Mother Jones and The Nation. Shorrock was the reporter who first revealed the extent of the radical privatization of intel operations. In 2007, Shorrock obtained and published a document from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence showing that 70 percent of the US intelligence budget was spent on private contractors. Shorrock was way out in front of this story and, frankly, corporate media ignored it.

"The Post and its reporters, Shorrock told me, "are doing their best to obfuscate what contractors really do for US intelligence. They're eight years behind and still haven't caught up. Basically their stories are throwing big numbers at readers—such as the fact that of 854,000 people with top security clearances, 265,000 are contractors. But that's work that can be done by interns; there's virtually nothing in their series about the broader picture—like what it means to have private for-profit companies operating at the highest levels of our national security."

"Much of the series reads like a description of the mundane work of analysts and IT people with the types of stats Shorrock mentioned thrown in.....

"....what about the contractors who have tortured prisoners, flown rendition flights and participated in lethal "direct actions" ie assassination operations?

"Perhaps the Post plans to publish a story called "Top Top Super Duper Triple-Decker Secret America" where the paper actually delves deep into the outsourcing of assassinations, torture, rendition, interrogation and "find fix and finish" operations..."