U.S. intelligence spending more than $47.5 billion

October 28, 2008
U.S. intelligence spending more than $47.5 billion
Posted by Jonathan Landay - McClatchy blog

For the second year in a row - because of an act of Congress - the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has disclosed the total amount of money spent on the bulk of the country's intelligence programs. For fiscal 2008, it was $47.4 billion.

That amount was $4 billion more than the total spent in fiscal 2007 for what is known as the National Intelligence Program.

The NIP covers most of the programs overseen by the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. But not all, according to Steve Aftergood, who oversees the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, and has been following the issue for years.

Defense intelligence programs that support military operations, like those that provide tactical information for use on the battlefield, are not part of the NIP. So the amount the United States spent in fiscal 2008 - which ran from Oct. 1, 2007, until Oct. 1, 2008 - on all intelligence programs was at least $57.4 billion or more, according to Aftergood.

The Intelligence Community for years fought against disclosing its budgetary top line, contending that doing so would damage national security. But Congress in 2007 approved legislation implementing recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, and one provision requires the ODNI to disclose the annual NIP budget total within 30 days of the end of every fiscal year.

"Disclosure is an important step as it is part of the process of normalizing intelligence and subjecting it to the rule of law," said Aftergood.

Only twice has the Intelligence Community disclosed the full amount of annual U.S. intelligence spending. In fiscal 1997, the figure was $26.6 billion, and the following fiscal year, the total was $26.7 billion.

In other words, spending on intelligence under the Bush administration has more than doubled, a result no doubt largely due to the so-called war on terror and the two overseas conflicts the United States is embroiled in.

The ODNI's announcement made it clear that the national intelligence czar is not happy about having to publicize the NIP's top line.

"Any and all subsidiary information concerning the intelligence budget, whether the information concerns particular intelligence agencies or particular intelligence programs, will not be disclosed," it said.