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."

Comments

Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to pretend like the president has any actual control over any of this! Makes you feel like you as an American matter, doesn't it?

Douglas Adams was right. The presidency does not exist to wield power. The presidency exists to distract attention away from the wielding of power.

Re:Cool

[noh8rz10]

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.

Re:Cool

[jythie]

People tend to vastly overestimate how much defacto power a president has.

Re:Cool

[PPH]

The presidency is like a piano player in a whorehouse. He knows what is going on upstairs, but there's not much he can do about it other than to drown out the sounds.

Re:Cool

[Runaway1956]

Drones. That's where the money goes. Drones are expensive. And, the facilities to operate the drones. The military industrial complex, and the components of that complex, sets their own prices. Like the no-bid contracts exposed in the Iraq war, money is no problem. Secret deals are made, complete with kickbacks and campaign donations, and the government pays whatever the contractor says to pay. The people who authorize these expenditures are part of the same group that authorizes expenditures for billion dollar aircraft. Think about that - billion dollar aircraft.

Alright - maybe I exaggerate the drone cost some, but I am pretty damned serious.

Re:Cool

[Camael]

Time to pretend like the president has any actual control over any of this! ...The presidency does not exist to wield power. The presidency exists to distract attention away from the wielding of power.

I'm afraid I have to disagree. Obama is apparently a a keen supporter of intelligence spending.

Jun. 2, 2009

When U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair met with President Barack Obama in February to discuss a proposed new constellation of multibillion-dollar imaging satellites, the resulting series of conversations was unusual and maybe unprecedented in the country's decades-long history of using orbiting cameras to spy inside foreign borders. ...

Obama's personal involvement in formulating a satellite acquisition proposal to Congress was "very unusual," said a retired intelligence official. U.S. presidents often receive briefings about spy satellite capabilities at times of crisis, the official said, but he did not know of another president being involved in acquisition planning. That is normally left to the intelligence community, which manages construction of spy satellites and operates them through the National Reconnaissance Office. Acquisition proposals are accepted indirectly by presidents when they sign off on their classified budget requests to Congress.

Well, since Obama was personally (and unusually) involved in formulating a satellite acquisition proposal to Congress, I'd say the argument that he is a mere figurehead doesn't quite fly.

Re:Cool

[shadowofwind]

Though drones don't cost that much, there are other billion dollar aircraft.

After Obama won in 2008, his administration's spending plans had large increasing drone spending before he even took office.

The revolving door is another big part of how the system work: retiring colonels have lucrative employment deals lined up with the contractors before they award the contracts. And of course private stock offerings are another mechanism for congressmen. I've been out of the industry for a few years now, and it still makes my blood boil.

Re:Cool

[erikkemperman]

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...

Re:Cool

[schnell]

People tend to vastly overestimate how much defacto power a president has.

Why do people on Slashdot keep saying this? The POTUS really does hold ultimate power over the Executive Branch of the US Government, which includes the DoD and the DNI agencies. I get that we want to think he doesn't know or that he's just some dupe, but he's not. (It reminds me of how Soviet citizens in the '30s would look at terrible abuses or atrocities - usually specifically approved by Stalin - and often say, "If only Stalin knew!")

Anyone who has spent much time around the government in DC can tell you that, yes, defense companies and lobbyists wield a lot of influence over the Legislative Branch... but they're not really in charge of the National Security apparatus - the president is. And he's not some patsy. The sad truth about these activities is that he knows about them and he thinks they're OK.

Maybe he's right that they do actually stop terrorist attacks, maybe he's just letting these programs continue because he doesn't want to look "soft" on terrorism or get blamed if there's another attack. I don't know and neither do you. But either way please don't delude yourself that the POTUS has not 100% approved what the intelligence community's big initiatives and scope of surveillance are.

Re:Cool

[betterprimate]

Time to pretend like the president has any actual control over any of this! ...The presidency does not exist to wield power. The presidency exists to distract attention away from the wielding of power.

I'm afraid I have to disagree. Obama is apparently a a keen supporter of intelligence spending.

Well, since Obama was personally (and unusually) involved in formulating a satellite acquisition proposal to Congress, I'd say the argument that he is a mere figurehead doesn't quite fly.

That's President Obama. Now, if you were to quote Senator Obama, your point would be valid. You want to know how much he is a pawn? Military action against Syria will happen between next Saturday night and Tuesday morning. He will take action, as Presidents before him have, while Congress is in recess. He has until the 9th. This will be the main focus of his Presidential Address on Sunday; justifying the legality and U.S. interest in doing so. He'll pull at liberal heart strings.

This has been planned for the past 15 years now just like the Iraq war was. U.S. and Britain (primarily) won't miss their chance even though there is more evidence to counter the claim Assad used chemical weapons. They're manufacturing evidence.

The Elites need the Syrian pipeline and this is their chance to take it.

(Did I mention the U.S. and NATO have been funding the destabilization of Syria for the past four years?)

Next stop: Iran

Re:Cool

[BlueStrat]

This has been planned for the past 15 years now just like the Iraq war was. U.S. and Britain (primarily) won't miss their chance even though there is more evidence to counter the claim Assad used chemical weapons. They're manufacturing evidence.

The Elites need the Syrian pipeline and this is their chance to take it.

(Did I mention the U.S. and NATO have been funding the destabilization of Syria for the past four years?)

Next stop: Iran

You're close, but think bigger. Much bigger.

The global interests have decided that it's time for global change. They want the "Age of America" as a top superpower finished and over with. They want a major global power-shift.

The only way outside of natural disasters/pandemics that major and sudden global changes happen is through world war.

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. The US will be facing Russia, China, Iran, and much of the Middle East and others with an over-extended and exhausted US military. The US doesn't come out of that well.

The US Dollar is about to collapse. They've been running the printing presses at warp speed to maintain a rough status-quo while they make preparations. They see a war as not only the only way, but the preferred way, out of the somewhere-north-of ~$17T debt (that's admitted to), while simultaneously taking the US out of the top-global-superpower club and allowing martial law to be declared in the US and massive domestic political/societal changes made via the barrels of guns.

Hang on boys and girls.

Shit's about to get real after Obama strikes Syria.

I firmly believe it will be the "Archduke Ferdinand" moment that starts a world war and signals the end of the US as a top superpower, and the end of constitutional civil liberties as we've known them for the people in the US.

Strat

Re:Cool

[Deluvianvortex]

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

Re:Cool

[dkleinsc]

Further digging indicates that the DoD has effectively been unaccountable even since before 2001.

Actually, they've arguably been unaccountable since about 1935 or so during the run-up to that little problem in Europe and the Pacific. Dwight Eisenhower was warning the country about it back when he was president. There have been numerous documented cases of the DoD and intelligence agencies flat-out lying to presidents and legislators when it suited their interests, and never being called to account for that.

Re:Cool

[interkin3tic]

It's amazing to me that we voters accept that budgeting needs to be secret for legitimate security purposes. "Oh no! If China knew how much money we're spending on tanks, they'd only have to spend ONE MORE DOLLAR to get an edge on us and take our freedom in a tank war!"

Wow... I RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

And saw the American public ripping the big government a new asshole.

Good job peeps. Keep doin gods work.

We could spend this money almost any other way and do much more good.

Open Source

[chill]

Between the CIA and the DoDIA they have over half a billion in the category "open source". Very interesting.

Re:Open Source

[tukang]

"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)

Re:Open Source

[thoth]

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

Re:Open Source

[NotSanguine]

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.

Bomb Syria

[bhlowe]

Obama's (and the neocon's) response: bomb a civil war in the Middle East...

Re:Bomb Syria

[Seumas]

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.

Re:Bomb Syria

[Seumas]

Fool me once (Iraq, Afghanistan), shame on - shame on you.
Fool me (Lybia, Iran, Syria, Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon and so on down the road) -- you can't get fooled again.

Except that, clearly, we can.

Oversight

[Anonymous Coward]

If we are ever going to rein in our out of control government we desperately need to have all the public scrutiny we can get. Maybe even put some penalties up, say your budget gets slashed by a billion dollars every time one of your officials gets caught lying to congress or gets caught up in a scandal.

Re:Oversight

[jythie]

I doubt that would actually help much. Look how protective they get over secrets and accountability when the only 'cost' is embarassment. Imagine how much energy they would put in to not being accountable if there were actual penalties.

Links to classified data should be labeled

[Myria]

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.)

Re:Links to classified data should be labeled

[Charliemopps]

No, fuck that. It's our moral responsibility to make sure this shit hits every wall in the room.

Re:Links to classified data should be labeled

[bill_mcgonigle]

No, fuck that. It's our moral responsibility to make sure this shit hits every wall in the room.

Right - don't enable the bastards. Does a spook have to spend three days re-installing his PC because some stupid rule says that he has to if he reads a WashPo article? Good, that's three days less that he can be doing other damage.

Somebody give me a "Top Secret" nugget that's been in the MSM for months so I can I can put in my .sig.

Re:Links to classified data should be labeled

[AHuxley]

From that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451 ~"unpleasant content and contradicting facts and opinions" is now just "secret" news.

Re:Links to classified data should be labeled

[CoolGopher]

I'm sorry, but if it's available to all and sundry on the internet, it is no longer secret, let alone Top Secret. The cat is out of the bag, the genie is out of the bottle, the train's left the platform, etc.

If institutions fail to adapt to the changing world, that's their problem, not the world's.

Re:Links to classified data should be labeled

[Gravis Zero]

Slashdot - and other news aggregation websites - should put warning labels on links that go to leaked classified information.

yes, that's it, let's have everyone go out of our way to help those poor souls like you that are helping perpetuate the problem. oh wait, here's a better idea, dont work for criminals or companies that help them.

Re:Links to classified data should be labeled

[EmperorArthur]

The problem is that the agency responsible for all that shouldn't be the same agency looking at US citizens.
That's not a moral, or even constitutional issue. It's a management one.

Go through all this data to do any of the things you refer to above are specific tasks. Things no one has a problem with. The problem comes when the NSA has information overload because every AT&T office in the middle of no where has a tap on it. I hope that last statement was just hyperbole, but you get my point.

Terrorism is such a nebulous term in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians. It's being used to justify huge amounts of departmental overreach. I want the NSA to watch Russia, and Iran, and North Korea. What I don't want is for them to watch everyone at home. Doing so makes as much institutional sense as replacing policemen with soldiers.

Re:Links to classified data should be labeled

[bill_mcgonigle]

Like making sure Russia isn't cheating on its ballistic missile treaty obligations? Like looking for North Korea making preparations to launch missiles at Japan? Like Iran assembling a nuclear warhead? I think you have a "funny" idea there, probably more than one.

Your scare tactics don't work on me - I don't live in fear, and America doesn't work when people do (even Francis Scott Key got that right) . Japan can worry about Japan. Russia isn't planning to bomb the world. Iran hasn't started a war with another country in 150 years. If you're afraid of Iran, you should look at the CIA, which even admitted this week to overthrowing its democracy and installing the government that led directly to the Islamic Revolution and the current clusterfuck of a government they have there.

America is not the World Police, but the US intelligence agencies do violate our highest laws (and International law) every single day. We need to take care of our internal problems as our primary responsibility.

Re:Links to classified data should be labeled

[cold fjord]

Sorry, but it doesn't stop being classified if it is stolen and published. The only way it stops being classified is to be declassified in the usual way. There are lots of reasons for that.

Re:Links to classified data should be labeled

[b4dc0d3r]

if you haven't paid attention to the many other threads, your computer has to be wiped. as a programmer I keep notes and snippets and URLs and all kinds of helpful stuff handy. not to mention the installation and config.

if I worked on a controlled pc and clicked an interesting link while researching why Md5 is harmful so u can explain why a Microsoft patch disables cert checimg for md5 signatures, I have to start over.

a controlled computer, without being able to set options like disabling scripts, and likely ie8, on potentially underpowered hardware is a recipe for browser unresponsiveness. I constantly mis- click on android browsers, and dad's ie8 is slower than sloth crap.

a warning would be helpful, and if you still disagree, you should do all of your computing from a livecd with a 3.5" floppy for storage, to remind yourself what starting over entails.

assuming that source is controlled, mails are on the server, and your home drive is not local, most people would be down at least a day, best case, and slower than normal for weeks.

Re:Links to classified data should be labeled

[rastos1]

I did notice your name on several interesting posts during last 2 weeks, but this time I'm not so sure that you are right.

When talking how Iran menaces it's neighbors it reminds me of this picture. If you say that that Iran threatens the world supply of oil by blocking the Persian Gulf - yes, they do. Does that mean that you can force them to give up their right to control their territorial waters? Do you have some god-given right to that oil or what? Yes, it would cause troubles world wide if they did that. So we just march in and take over the oil reserves? If you say they were involved with Beirut bombing - that was 30 years ago. Move on. There is no point in bringing up that stuff again again - apart from learning from past mistakes. If you describe what USSR/Russia did 50 years ago ... the politicians as well as foreign politics of both USSR and USA changed a lot since that time. When the ballistic rockets start flying, they will fly over my head, not yours - because I live in central Europe. If Russia decides to take out the radar control stations that give information to US rockets, they will hit my country, not yours. Americans seem to be keen on going into military actions around the world - because it is happening far away from them. It is easy to order military strikes when you do that with remote control and drones. When all you see is the footage on CNN. Russia isn't positioning military bases outside of their territory - USA does that. And everybody caves in because of USA power. You are becoming a bully.

America may not be the "World Police," but America has interests around the world. Sure. I'm interested in living like a millionaire sipping mojito on a beach. Does not give me right to force someone to give me their stuff and land.

Don't be mistaken. I'm not supporting Russia/Putin and I'm not supporting Iran developing nuclear weapons nor Syria using chemical weapons. I'm just much closer to the scene and I don't see the world powers trying to resolve the situation with minimum required force.

Clearly, they are doing something wrong.

[PolygamousRanchKid]

$52 billion? That's like burning up a Bill Gates or a Warren Buffet every year.

With that amount of money spent, there shouldn't a terrorist left breathing on the face of the planet.

Um, Secret Squirrel guys, I think that you are doing something completely wrong with that money. I know that you like listening to other folks telephone calls, but clearly, this isn't the way.

Re:Clearly, they are doing something wrong.

[Charliemopps]

Ah, I see you're mistake. This budget has absolutely nothing to do with terrorists. As with all government programs its primary goal is in justifying its own existence.

Re:Clearly, they are doing something wrong.

[whoever57]

Um, Secret Squirrel guys, I think that you are doing something completely wrong with that money.

Perfectly reasonable statement, but wrong. The goals of the program are being well met -- it's just that you misunderstand the goal, which is really to funnel money into the privatized defence/intelligence community.

Too much secrecy, not too little, is the problem

[InterGuru]

Thought experiment: What if just before we went into Vietnam and Iraq, someone leaked all our intelligence about these countries. There is a good chance the outcry would have stopped these stupid/criminal wars.

May well be the Most Transparent Administration...

[Anonymous Coward]

...thanks to Edward Snowden.

Re:Too much secrecy, not too little, is the proble

[PPH]

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.

My favorite part

[Antipater]

I loved when Clapper tried to minimize the number by saying that it accounts for "less than 1% of GDP". Not 1% of government revenues, not 1% of the government's total budget. 1% of fucking GDP is his chosen comparison. That's like someone claiming they're not an alcoholic because they only drink one bottle a day, and Jack Daniels makes thousands!

Re:My favorite part

[causality]

It amazes me that conservatives have given Obama such a free pass on all of this so far. Hopefully that changes now.

It amazes me how you or anyone else can see this happen time and time again and still believe that we have two distinct parties.

Jefferson knew what a two-party system would become and specifically warned against it. At some point they both realize they can play the voters in the middle, sort of like "good cop, bad cop". For maximum effect, switch roles once in a while. Then people support a given one for irrational, emotional, tribal, "my team" reasons and stop thinking critically. Take a hard look at the world of US politics and tell me this isn't exactly what's happening. Then make the next tiny leap and understand that someone definitely benefits from this, and it is not accidental.

Re:My favorite part

[Antipater]

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.

Re:Too much secrecy, not too little, is the proble

[Runaway1956]

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.

Re:Too much secrecy, not too little, is the proble

[Anonymous Coward]

you're completely wrong about Vietnam.

Vietnam started at the request of France. They wanted the US military to help back them up in Vietnam because they were losing control of it [Vietnam being a colony of France at the time]. France turned the revolution in Vietnam into a civil war, with the revolutionaries turning into the VC and the other side becoming our guys. The US was pulled wholesale into the conflict by the NSA and the Johnson administration distorting information around the gulf of tonkin incident.

We started in Vietnam to support France's colonial interests, and went all in because the administration of the time faked intelligence. There was absolutely no misunderstanding of vietnam's internal politics.

Re:Yet they STILL didn't stop Boston

[Seumas]

No, but they *did* convince people that they were "being rescued" by the end of an assault rifle barrel when being forced to stay in their homes and then forced at gunpoint to get out of their homes for mandatory searches.