Annual US Intelligence Bill Tops $80 Billion

Ponca City writes "The LA Times reports that the US government has disclosed its annual intel budget for the first time in more than a decade: $80.1 billion on intelligence gathering, representing about 12% of the nation's $664-billion defense budget. The government revealed the total intelligence budget twice before, in 1997 and 1998, in response to a lawsuit. It was $26.6 billion and $26.7 billion, respectively, meaning the budget has tripled in 12 years. 'It is clear that the overall spending on intelligence has blossomed to an unacceptable level in the past decade,' says Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. Dana Priest reported that more than 1,200 government agencies or offices and almost 2,000 outside contractors are involved in counter-terrorism activities, producing about 50,000 intelligence reports each year, far more than the government can effectively digest. The US is running so many secret programs that James R. Clapper Jr., director of national intelligence, said during his confirmation hearings that 'only one entity in the entire universe' knows what they're all doing, and 'that's God.'"

Comments

Re:Why not just scarp US Intelligence

[swanzilla]

Take 10 Billion have a massive pizza party for all of the US

You obviously haven't seen Americans eat...might want to add a significant figure or two.

Re:Statistics work both ways....

[cindyann]

Isn't it obvious?

OP is a Republican and Feinstein is a Democrat. A California Democrat as well. And a woman.

I expect he wants bipartisan cooperation too, but he's disappointed that the Dems are cooperating about as much as the Repubs did during the Bush years.

Boo hoo.

Go ahead, mod me a troll. See if I care.

Re:Why not just scarp US Intelligence

[blair1q]

Here's Obama satisfying his promise as far as he's legally capable, and doing it in one of the first orders he ever signs in his administration:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22gitmo.html

Here's the fact of the constitutional separation of powers coming back to foil his promise 5 months later:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/us/politics/26gitmo.html?hp

You'll note that this same story explains how things had already changed at GITMO, and that closing it isn't off the table, it's just buried under a pile of more important things that are backed up because his political opponents are more willing to destroy the nation than to let him succeed at anything.

Now, you can apologize, you can sulk off forever, or you can keep coming around acting like you didn't just have your ass handed to you. Seriously, you're an idiot.