Dear Linda Olson-Osterlund,

Thank you for a mostly enlightening and fresh half hour i-view with William Arkin on Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State.  Many important facets, not least the economic shell-game played by those within government who advocate shrinking government that allows their committees to spend black budget funds (how we got involved backing Mujahideen in Pakistan during the Reagan-Bush years see "Charlie Wilson's War") and argue they have hired fewer government employees and shrunken U.S. troops in foreign invasions and state-building while moving the cost to Americans into the apparently non-audited category of Private Service Providers.  Any of us who've worked for large national corporations over the last 20 years since Clinton's two terms know that the MBA business schools have made conventional wisdom out of downsizing corporate staff (have to pay benefits, high level execs approved for big incentives by downsizing corp staff) in favor of Consultants.  I saw that from the inside at Wells Fargo Executive Office with the increasing use of very expensive contractors who pad their expenses, cost shareholders way more money, create promotions and incentivized bonuses for execs who hire these Consultants while firing the experienced staff that had so effectively managed a problem before the shareholders approved a smaller midwestern bank to take over Wells Fargo in order to increase rate of shareholder return. NSA with its noted lack of Humint (human intelligence in favor of big spending high tech, low intimate info yielding satellites & telecomm) and CIA with its lack of staff trained in Arabic, Pashto, Dari, Urdu, Persian, Uzbek languages and culture led three foreign invasions leaning on contracted translators and interrogators and info-gathering\analyzing staff.

So there was a lot for William Arkin to cover on your show.  I do regret, however, no listener questions allowed as no one at Pacifica Radio (Amy Goodman did no original reporting to advance the mainstream revelations in her coverage and created no Public Forum with elected officials and the GSA to question seemingly illegal practices and clearly anti-APA professional policy guidelines), Nation Magazine, Harper's or the community radio reporting world has pursued two big breakthrough pieces with a Northwestern regional angle in the Mitchell-Jessen Psychological Consultants who disappeared leaving their Spokane offices bare after skipping out once the American Psychological Association began looking into James Elmore Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen's CIA contracts to reshape interrogation of Muslims protocols in the field, Guantanamo, Bhagram and other CIA remote field offices.  The Spokesmen daily newspaper in Spokane broke the story just ahead of the NY TIMES running a three-part eye-popping cover story series last year that has yet to be seriously followed-up on by either mainstream or progressive media.  Please see these links and do follow-up with opportunity for Public Forum a la Town Hall meetings with our congressional legislators:

 http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2007/jun/29/spokane-psychologists-linked-to-cia-congress/ 

http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/2007/06/21/the-cia-psychologists-torture-and-the-apa/ 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/us/12psychs.html?em 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Jessen

http://www.truth-out.org/cia-psychologists-notes-reveal-bushs-torture-program68542/

The consequences get swept under national debate, but these black budgets don't go away, only the contractors themselves like these two Spokane Psychological Warfare consultants and their office staff and records disappear.

Thank you and keep on doing

Mitch Ritter