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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

May well be the Most Transparent Administration...

[Anonymous Coward]

...thanks to Edward Snowden.

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: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.