Holy Moly: Snowden leaked the "black budget" summary to the WaPo

[cali]

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.

The summary describes cutting-edge technologies, agent recruiting and ongoing operations. The Washington Post is withholding some information after consultation with U.S. officials who expressed concerns about the risk to intelligence sources and methods. Sensitive details are so pervasive in the documents that The Post is publishing only summary tables and charts online.

“The United States has made a considerable investment in the Intelligence Community since the terror attacks of 9/11, a time which includes wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction technology, and asymmetric threats in such areas as cyber-warfare,” Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said in response to inquiries from The Post.

“Our budgets are classified as they could provide insight for foreign intelligence services to discern our top national priorities, capabilities and sources and methods that allow us to obtain information to counter threats,” he said.

<snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/black-budget-summary-details-us-spy-networks-successes-failures-and-objectives/2013/08/29/7e57bb78-10ab-11e3-8cdd-bcdc09410972_story.html

[DontTreadOnMe]

1. Yeah, and if you read it carefully, you will be SHOCKEd that we spend LESS money on SPYING...

... than during the Cold War in the 1980s.

So the NSA Spying budget is actually much smaller than most people thought, AND the CIA's budget has grown by 25%.

And overall, the Defense budget is 10 time larger than the "spying programs".

[stevenleser]

2. That IS a lot smaller than I expected. I'm shocked actually. nt

[notadmblnd]

3. 32 Trillion alone for Iraq and Afghanistan wars

That's a lot of money going to the military industrial complex. Someone needs to keep the pot stirred for future revenue. I guess the CIA decided to take on that role?