Tom Clancy remark about secret off-budget black-ops [View All]

Tom Clancy was on Charlie Rose last night (I saw the rerun today), and he mentioned that the only way to keep black-ops really secret was to fund them outside the regular budget, which is subject to audits and Congressional oversight (or is supposed to be).

Clancy is just a novelist (and I haven't read his books), but he seems to know something about the murky underworld. He's gung-ho Bush* and gung-ho black-ops. He says he knows lots of good CIA people, but that the CIA is too restricted in what it can do, and too bureaucratic. He thinks there need to be unaccountable groups that can work under the radar, and without the rules--he sounds like a charter-member of PNAC, a pure Straussian. So my point is, if Clancy thinks this, can Wolfowitz et al. be far behind? This is a rhetorical question--these are the Iran-Contra people, after all.

The reference to "off-budget" also made me wonder--I've always thought the DoD was rather complacent, taking criticism about the missing $trillion or so without defending its "sloppiness," except to say it was a big organization, etc. Clancy also bragged about guessing right about one secret project, which was "something that flies fast"--so not a small budget item. And with SO much money to play around with, imagine what trouble these guys could be getting into. Imagine that they are NOT stupid about accounting and bookkeeping. Imagine what we might find out if the military had to come clean about how that money was spent and is being spent....

I may be wrong. But if "follow the money" is how to catch "terrorists," it is probably also the way to get our country back, so that unimaginable things are not being done in our name.

I started this thread because I can't help wondering about these bombings in Iraq. I'm trying to stay open-minded, but I really am afraid that control over what we do as a nation may have slipped even farther from us than we ever thought. A $trillion slush fund can do a LOT of damage. It could even fund a wholly private army (I think).

Just wondering. Is it already impossible to follow that money?