One of the most talked about news stories of the past few weeks has been the posting of over 90,000 classified documents on the government watchdog site, “Wikileaks.” The posting of the documents has received media attention because of the storied history of the government hiding important information from the public. But, this security breach is notable for its lack of damning information. Instead, it points out the outrageous waste of an intelligence network grown out of control since the Sept. 11th attacks.  

The U.S. intelligence community has grown so large that few, if any, in the government can begin to estimate the cost annually of the 1,200 government agencies and 1,900 corporations. 

With so many independent entities involved, it should come as no surprise that over 850,000 people in the United States have “top secret” security clearance. Those with clearance represent only a portion of the number employed by the intelligence community. The hundreds of thousands employed in intelligence produce millions of documents.

With so many paychecks depending on the production of documents it is a wonder that important documents make it through the deluge of meaningless documents, and come to the attention of those willing and able to act on them.

Wikileaks’ breach of government security may not have released anything particularly important or embarrassing to the government or armed forces, but it has made the nation aware of the waste of the government in concern to its intelligence spending. It is important for sites such as Wikileaks to help expose the senseless spending that our government hides behind the veil of “classified.”

David Holmes is an economics junior. He can be

reached at [email protected]