Justin Raimondo: We Are All Juan Cole

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

  WaPo 2010 Project: Top Secret America

I didn’t realize there were that many people in the US who could KEEP a secret.

In the Department of Defense, where more than two-thirds of the intelligence programs reside, only a handful of senior officials - called Super Users - have the ability to even know about all the department's activities. But as two of the Super Users indicated in interviews, there is simply no way they can keep up with the nation's most sensitive work.

Feel safer yet?

What I want to know is: who’s on Obama’s enemies list? Because, as sure as Washington real estate prices will continue to rise while plummeting in the rest of the country, these very same activities are continuing under the present administration. The heat is off Prof. [Juan] Cole, at least for the moment – having endorsed Obama’s latest war, in Libya, the prominent lefty blogger probably has nothing to worry about. However, this administration has so far faithfully emulated its predecessors in so many other important ways that one has to assume the heat is still on the rest of us: indeed, given the Obama administration’s record on national and domestic security, one must assume domestic spying efforts and other covert actions have escalated.

[...]

[N]one of us is safe. If you stick your head up above the tall grass, and are critical of whatever gang is in charge at the moment in Washington, you are taking a very big chance. Your career, your private life, your financial and professional existence – all are put at risk.

  Justin Raimondo

Of course most of us who are critical don’t have much financial and professional existence to put at risk. Which is probably why things don’t change – they just get worse.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.