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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."
These are not the budget numbers you are looking for..
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Well, they have to fund the Stargate program SOMEHOW don't they? Why not take the money from an agency that nobody would suspect of being involved? :)
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
The intelligence community is so large and diverse, that it is literally quite possible that the government itself didn't know how much money was spent on "intelligence".
Not because of incompetence, corruption, waste, or secrecy - though all those are certainly elements to varying degrees - but in reality because of the wide variety of agencies and activities that fall under the guise of "intelligence".
The article itself notes, correctly:
This top line $60 billion figure is 25% above the estimated $48 billion budget for FY 08. It is quite probable that this total figure was not even known by the government until recently. Greater control and oversight of the Intelligence Community budget was a hallmark of the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 that created the position of the Director of National Intelligence and gave it the mandate to get an overview of the entire amount spent on intelligence government-wide. To this end, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has recently gathered all parts of the previously fragmented Intelligence Community budget together for the first time as part of its Intelligence Resource Information System (IRIS). In the report from the Select Senate Committee on Intelligence released last Thursday, the committee praised the Office of the Director of Intelligence for creating a "single budget system called the Intelligence Resource Information System." It also recognizes their efforts in helping create what "will be used for further inquiry by the Committee's budget and audit staffs and will be a baseline that allows the Congress and DNI to derive trend data from future reports."
Earlier, lower estimates were most likely only included what fell directly under the Director of Central Intelligence and which would have omitted parts of NSA, NRO. A total Intelligence Community number, with the Intelligence Community as defined by 50 U.S.C. 401a(4), would also now include the various military intelligence services (e.g. Army Intel, Navy Intel, etc.), each with its respective weapon technology intelligence exploitation shop. A total budget would also include a large portion of the budget of the Department of Homeland Security which was previously fragment across multiple government agencies. A $60 billion government-wide Intelligence Community budget is not at all out of line with the post 9/11 organizational reality. It seems that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is just now getting a clear picture of the fragmented intelligence community budget.
When you're dealing with sixteen separate agencies, including elements from the Department of Defense, to say something like "intelligence budget" is almost meaningless. What's pure intelligence? What's national defense? What is a mix? In fact, it often comes down to what some particular task or program is "anointed" by management. Different areas get reorganized and shuffled into different organizational structures. To say nothing of the fact that the addition of DHS to the Intelligence Community was the largest government reorganization in over a half-century, since the creation of the Department of Defense and CIA by the National Security Act of 1947.
Shuffle more, and you can probably make the "intelligence" budget appear lower. But the truth is that "it seems that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is just now getting a clear picture of the fragmented intelligence community budget."
And that should be a good thing.
On a different note, revealing classified or sensitive information by improper handling of technology solutions is a perennial problem, and it still floors me that the vetting and release process doesn't properly capture things like this (though they've gotten MUCH better).
Yeah, that's no longer there.
It's now been posted by the Federation of American Scientists.
There are, however, a number of other contracting briefs and presentations posted here
Funnily enough for the first few seconds I read it as Intel computers, bit of a bad choice of abbreviation for a Tech website, next story will be "EU bans AMD", referring to acid mine drainage no doubt.
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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!"?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Only $60B ???!!!
Personally, I'd rather see us spend $120B on intelligence and get it RIGHT than only spend $60B and get it WRONG and end up going to war based on that faulty intelligence at a price tag of $82B up-front and more annually!
Politics and loss of life aside, it's just better economics!
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
Name that quote
;-)
Ooh, ooh, I know!
Part of the "decorative pattern" on Bush's private toilet-paper.
I think the silly, meaningless sentence you quoted comes from the first roll, ninth sheet.
Surely no government of a free and democratic country would be based on such a radical ideal. Give people information like that and next thing you know they'll want some voice in how that money gets spent, and that way lies anarchy.
From TFA, it soundly like somebody forgot to strip the hidden data.
This right here is proof as far as I'm concerned that anybody who seriously thinks that the US Government staged 9/11, shot down TWA 800, killed JFK or faked the Apollo landings really needs to have their head examined.
Seriously. This seems like the third or forth story along these lines in as many weeks. Recall the Coalition Provisional Authority leaks because somebody couldn't disable the previous versions feature of word. And now this?
I'm sorry, but our Government is too incompetent to manage any of the things above. I kinda wish they were in a way... then maybe Iraq wouldn't be such a mess, Katrina would have been handled correctly and 9/11 wouldn't have happened.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
That's funny, because I can open up PowerPoint and select "Remove Hidden Data", which coincidentally enough is a feature I pulled from Microsoft's site. It does a fantastic job of removing all that hidden data, too. This is pure user error in not using this function; it has absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft versus OSS.
The only people this was a secret from was the American people.
It's important to remember that $60BN doesn't spend itself, and it doesn't spend itself in small numbers. A whole lot of Americans knew that a whole lot of money was being spent on (essentially) nothing. It's also important to remember that this money mostly goes to defense contractors, and most of that goes to the upper management. Make no mistake: the rich don't spend in proportion to their income. They hoard. This money is being turned into silver spoons for a whole lot of terrorism-profiteers.
Fun trivia: $60BN is enough to give *every* child and adult in the US $200; about half a week's wages for people working minimum wage (before the roughly 1/3rd that goes to taxes, of course.)
It's enough to employ (are you sitting down?) one point two MILLION people in $50k/year jobs.
Now sit there and explain to me why New Orleans is still a disaster area, why 10 million kids in the US don't get enough food to eat, ~1% of the population (3.5 million people) is homeless (third of those are children), and why poor residents living in New England have their federal assistance for home heating cut.
This nation's spending priorities are so out of whack it is abhorrent.
Please help metamoderate.
This right here is proof as far as I'm concerned that anybody who seriously thinks that the US Government staged 9/11, shot down TWA 800, killed JFK or faked the Apollo landings really needs to have their head examined.
Except that the "mistakes" like these are done by the government, so that you would think exactly that. You have just fallen into their trap!
Not really, but your logic makes about as much sense as the conspiracy theorists. Just because one idiot who works for the government screwed up, doesn't imply anything about other people, and other agencies? Why would it? Just like saying someone working for one company screwed up, so all companies must be incompetent, and have been for 40 years? Do you not think that sounds screwy as well?
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?
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.