For those who read the initial installments of Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State (Little, Brown, $27.99) in The Washington Post, this book offers an even more extensive, astonishing, alarming, and ultimately dismaying look at the growth of America’s classified world. Authors Dana Priest and William M. Arkin go beyond startling statistics about the rising numbers of security clearances, intelligence reports, and mysterious office complexes to provide case after case documenting the bloat and chaos of the security state. Among the issues they examine are the proliferation of government anti-terrorism programs, the wasteful redundancy of Northern Command, the adoption by local law-enforcement of programs and equipment originally developed to fight terrorists, and the admission by several top intelligence and military officials that even they don’t fully grasp all the programs under their responsibility. In fact, one of the most revealing aspects of the book is how many of those involved in this secret world are themselves upset about all the duplicative or necessary programs.