Slashdot Mirror
Inside the 2013 US Intelligence "Black Budget"
i_want_you_to_throw_ writes "U.S. spy agencies have built an intelligence-gathering colossus since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but remain unable to provide critical information to the president on a range of national security threats, according to the government's top secret budget. The $52.6 billion 'black budget' for fiscal 2013, obtained by The Washington Post from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, maps a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny. Although the government has annually released its overall level of intelligence spending since 2007, it has not divulged how it uses those funds or how it performs against the goals set by the president and Congress."
Slashdot - and other news aggregation websites - should put warning labels on links that go to leaked classified information. Some people can get into trouble for viewing it. I love reading it, but some people who read Slashdot work in the classified world and have to work under some of its sillier rules. (Like having to wipe your unclassified work computer because it got Top Secret data on it from the Washington Post.)
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
"open source" refers to analysis of publicly available information such as news, social media, etc. (https://www.cia.gov/careers/opportunities/analytical/open-source-officer-foreign-media-analyst.html)
Come on folks... read the damn info. The site says that "open source" data is "publicly available information appearing in print or electronic form". I'm gonna speculate part of the open source budget goes towards the salaries of linguists, computers for translation and the support staff, etc.
There's also a government website: www.opensource.gov
I think the only thing that is "intelligent" about "intelligence agencies" is the way they secure unlimited black box budgets. $60 billion for 100,000 staff is an average of $600k for each staff member. what are they spending it on? contractors i bet.
Iraq and Vietnam were different cases. In Iraq, the evidence was manufactured at the outset to get us in there. In Vietnam, it was a misunderstanding of the internal politics (a civil war) plus lies later on about how badly things were going.
Have gnu, will travel.
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=vietnam+CIA+false+flag+
Like Iraq, Vietnam was also based on manufactured false information. You may limit your reading to the wikis, or you may dig deeper, as you wish. But, Tonkin Bay, which was the primary igniter in getting our troops into Vietnam was entirely a false flag operation.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Between the CIA and the DoDIA they have over half a billion in the category "open source". Very interesting.
The notion of CIA and "open" impacts my mind pretty much as cognitive dissonance. If I leave aside the software context and put "CIA + open source" alongside, the impact is double (what the hell can be source from CIA and still be open?)
IIRC, Open source in this context refers to intelligence gathering from public sources like newspapers and public records and such.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Funny thing, that.
When Bush did it, Obama (rightfully) stated "The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
And Biden stated "I teach separation of powers in Constitutional law. This is something I know. So I brought a group of Constitutional scholars together to write a piece that I'm going to deliver to the whole United States Senate pointing out that the president HAS NO CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY to take this country to war against a country of 70 million people unless we're attacked or unless there is proof that we are about to be attacked. And if he does, I would move to impeach him."
After the bullshit the government tried to stir up in/over North Korea, Libya, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, and so on the last few years -- I wondered when these comments were finally going to catch up with them. Tonight, I saw them in The Atlantic, even -- which tells me they are not going to remain forgotten and ignored, except by the politicians, themselves.
Their statements and positions were right, when they stated them against Bush. They were right when they ran for office on these statements and promises to the American people. They are still the right positions to maintain.
And it's not just this black budget' either. Google "GOA DOD not auditable" and you'll find that the office of accounting has pretty much zero idea how the Pentagon budget (of some 800 billion at present) is spent.
See this huff post article for example. Further digging indicates that the DoD has effectively been unaccountable even since before 2001.
Currently they are promising to be auditable by 2017...
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Being mathematically accurate does not mean that it's a reasonable metric. GDP is not a measure of government spending. Comparing a subset of government spending to a measure of something other than government spending is meaningless without prior knowledge of other facts, like the ratio of total government spending to GDP, for example. It's comparing apples to bushels: you have to know how many apples in a bushel before the comparison makes any sense. That makes it unreasonable.
In addition, there's no possible reason for Clapper to be using that specific metric, even if it were reasonable. The argument can be made that comparing entitlement and defense spending to GDP can be informative, because those two subsets of spending can be used as proxies for, respectively, the income of a certain population subset and the health of a manufacturing industry subset. But unless you're suggesting that the intelligence community represents an important share either of the population or of industry, then comparing its budget to GDP is not informative. It's simply being used as a tool to lower people's perception of the amount of money being spent. It's a comparison made to obfuscase, not to inform. That makes it laughable.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
World War 3 is what is being staged here. Russia has already sent a fleet to the area. Both Russia and China have warned the US not to strike Syria.
That was not said at all. They cautioned about leaping to conclusions about the nature of the attack and should let the weapons inspectors finish their investigation. They said, literally, "Military strikes could have catastrophic consequences for the entire region." No one said anything about war, except Iran, who no one cares about. Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23845800