'The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest'? Indeed. Janet Phelan is The Woman who Acciddentally Stepped in It.' Running back through the time lines, my guest is still looking for the crossroads where she met the devil. So many roads, so many demons. 'Agent Smith' is the face of the something Other. In a recent Washington Post story, 'Top Secret America' investigative reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin excavate the American labyrinth. And it's a crowded one. It took Priest and Arkin nearly two years to put it all together - which means the Minotaur has been growing in the meantime, right? 'Top Secret America is a project more than a mere "article". It details, inventories and examines the huge national security buildup in the United States. No one knows for sure how many people and how much are actually devoted to the behemoth - but it's a lot. And it's growing every day. Priest and Arkin say it "amounts to an alternative geography" of the nation. Try this: some 1,271 government agencies, 1,931 private companies are working at 10,000 locations. So when you hear Janet Phelan's voice crackling across the ether from a safe house in Merida, Mexico, you are hearing a firsthand report from the Belly of the Beast.
Phelan has agreed to return to 'Air Cascadia' for a full-length interview in which we are going to put all the pieces together and take your call. Don't miss it.
- KBOO