Lynch at Large

I found this blog today in the Washington Post and it is already one of my favorites. It deals with a wide variety of national security and defense subjects. This is a real which directly, and usually negatively, touches on civil liberties. EARLY WARNING will be linked in the left hand column and I think it is a must read.

Here is how William M. Arkin describes his blog:

Early Warning will report daily on the comings and goings of the national security community -- military, special ops, intelligence, homeland security -- part blog, part investigative journalism (a jog!). Here I can post documents, go into great detail, stick with a story when others have moved on, and introduce one that has escaped the mainstream media.

There's no question that The Washington Post is mainstream media, but in this space of theirs, I'll have more freedom. Still, I won't fudge facts or feed an even more confused and conspiratorial picture of the secret agencies.

My basic philosophy is that government is more incompetent than diabolical, that the military gets way too much of a free ride (memo to self: Don't say anything bad about the troops), and that official secrecy is the greatest threat citizens actually face today.

Earlier this year, I wrote a book -- Code Names -- that not only lays out my views on secrecy, but also provides the goods (and thanks friends for keeping code names coming). As you'll find out, I'm an obsessive compulsive kind of collector - acronyms, code names, nomenclatures, events, dates, documents. For 30 years I've been putting together little pieces of information to try to produce the BIG PICTURE.

Early Warning is an opportunity to put my stockpiles to good use. As I dig into the hundreds of documents already in my possession, I'll be looking for your comment and dissent (and for those of you with your own stockpiles, for your contributions). I know I'm writing mostly for a hyper-informed world of national security geeks, but my larger objective is a more informed public and to demolish false authority, in government, in the special interests, and in the media. My target list, frankly, is too vast to even summarize. I also hope to have some fun in writing without the straitjacket of traditional journalistic conventions.

This week, I'm looking at hurricane Katrina from inside the government's most secret quarters, where terrorism is the overriding compulsion. To find out more about me, check out my bio and look at my Code Names Web site.