Security

Secret Intel Budget Revealed

Secret Intel Budget Revealed

It took the 9/11 report and an act of Congress, but the intelligence budget today was finally announced. For fiscal year 2007, the intel community got $43.5 billion. That number, while hardly suprising to those who followed the budget, was a secret that intel leaders fought tooth and nail to protect.

Spy_vs_spyusb Steve Aftergood, writing on Secrecy News, describes the arduous journey to disclosure:

The disclosure was strongly resisted by the intelligence bureaucracy, and for that very reason it may have significant repercussions for national security classification policy.

Although the aggregate intelligence budget figures for 1997 and 1998 ($26.6 and $26.7 billion respectively) had previously been disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the Federation of American Scientists, intelligence officials literally swore under oath that any further disclosures would damage national security.

"Information about the intelligence budget is of great interest to nations and non-state groups (e.g., terrorists and drug traffickers) wishing to calculate the strengths and weaknesses of the United States and their own points of vulnerability to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies," then-DCI George J. Tenet told a federal court in April 2003, explaining his position that disclosure of the intelligence budget total would cause "serious damage" to the United States.

Don’t expect the top-line budget to be the first in a series of disclosures. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued this statement, making it clear the floodgates are not opening:

Any and all subsidiary information concerning the intelligence budget, whether the information concerns particular intelligence agencies or particular intelligence programs, will not be disclosed. Beyond the disclosure of the top line figure, there will be no other disclosures of currently classified budget information because such disclosures could harm national security. The only exceptions to the foregoing are for unclassified appropriations, primarily for the Community Management Account.