nine years after the formation of the department of homeland security, it turns out the intelligence community is apparently larger, much larger than it was even then. this was explained in this article. let me show you what the article found. they were looking at things like office space and personnel. 1,271 government organizations comprise our intelligence community. 1,931 private companies are tied to it. those could be contractors, could be providers of services or products. an estimated 854,000 people are not part of the intelligence community. those are only the people who hold top-secret clearances. 854,000 people, that's nearly 1.5 times the number of people who actually live in the washington, d.c. area. there are 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work that are under construction or have been built since the creation of the homeland security agency in september of 2001.