Classified US Intel Budget Revealed Via Powerpoint

Atario writes "In a holdover from the Cold War when the number really did matter to national security, the size of the US national intelligence budget remains one of the government's most closely guarded secrets. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the highest intelligence agency in the country that oversees all federal intelligence agencies, appears to have inadvertently released the keys to that number in an unclassified PowerPoint presentation now posted on the website of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). By reverse engineering the numbers in an underlying data element embedded in the presentation, it seems that the total budget of the 16 US intelligence agencies in fiscal year 2005 was $60 billion, almost 25% higher than previously believed."

Comments

Here's something to consider...

[tkrotchko]

The only people this was a secret from was the American people.

Every government on earth (and the "bad guys" as well), knew the size of the budget. Or did someone think Putin was going to look at this powerpoint, smack his forehead with his hand and say "ah ha! now I know!"?

Re:Guess the DoD changed their security policy

[turing_m]

Obviously you've never heard of Operation Mincemeat then. You know, the one where the Allies put fake landing plans on a dead guy left to wash up on a Spanish beach.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat

If they can successfully go to those lengths, how hard is it to accidentally-on-purpose leave some bogus figures in a Powerpoint presentation?