Netroots Dispatch: Clarke Hammers away at Homeland Security Apparatchiks

Richard Clarke tells a conference of lefty bloggers that we should worry over the junta of military intelligence and private defense contractors running this country's homeland security apparatus:

[He had] sharp words for the Department of Homeland Security, which he cited as lacking transparency and oversight from Congress. “Congress has done a horrible job of overseeing Homeland Security,” he said. “And so has the media.” He touched on what he called the ‘industrial intelligence complex” — thousands of private companies that now do the work of the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

“There are literally thousands of people in the for profit sector who are doing this work and we don’t know what the contracts are worth and there is no oversight — it’s totally out of control,” he said.

There seems to be rather old-style soviet quality to the growing power of the commissars at the federal level, and the lily-livered Democratic Congress seems loath to check it.  Clarke is one of the most knowledgeable and reputable figures on homeland security.  We ignore him at our own peril.