Sep 03 2013
Intelligence Community’s Newly Revealed “Black Budget” Illustrates Extent of Expenses, Priorities, and Covert Warfare
The US Intelligence Community’s budget has doubled since the September 11th 2001 attacks according to budget documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to the Washington Post. The documents have made public the most detailed portrait ever available of how more than $52 billion of tax payers money is being spent.
Even Congress has not been authorized to examine how 16 agencies including the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI spend the money they authorize. The CIA it was revealed, uses the largest chunk of the budget at more than $14 billion.
James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, defended the expenditures, saying the US “spends less than one percent of GDP on the Intelligence Community.” The budget documents also detail the US’s intelligence priorities, which include spying on foreign countries, even allies like Israel, hacking into foreign computer networks, and shockingly, paying telecommunications companies hundreds of millions of dollars to access their networks.
The Washington Post concludes that since 9-11, the US intelligence complex has morphed into “an espionage empire with resources and reach beyond those of any adversary, sustained even now by spending that rivals or exceeds the levels at the height of the Cold War.”
GUEST: Greg Miller, National Security Correspondent, The Washington Post and one of the reporters who analyzed the budget documents
Click here to read Miller’s report in the Washington Post.
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