Our intelligence services are run by dumbasses, they accidently released the "black budget"...

[Solon]

Found this on Slashdot, here:

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/11/132205&from=rss

And there is a detailed post about this here:

http://www.thespywhobilledme.com/the_spy_who_billed_me/2007/06/exclusive_offic.html

And if you are curious, here is a mirror of the powerpoint presentation that has the figures:

http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/everett.ppt

By the way, the black budget is about 60 billion dollars.

[Dhalgren]

1. K&R! Unfreakingbelievable...

60 billion dollars, Jesus on a hot cross bun...

[kestrel91316]

2. Fascist police states are expensive to run, especially on the sly.

[Solon]

3. The thing I wonder about is the source for the money...

Some may have been "lost" by the Pentagon in the past few years, but I wonder how much is from "independent", i.e. illegal sources of income.

[melody]

4. Oh, most of it :)

The CIA has been running drugs forever. The Company just stole the idea from French
intelligence, though.

[BuyingThyme]

10. The black budget is a "legitimate" budget. (It's your taxes.)

[Solon]

14. Too bad they can't spend the money on some competent IT people. n/t

[Dhalgren]

18. Well, that's the nature of a "black" budget - you can't really say

where it is from...

[BuyingThyme]

19. You can say where it's from; you just can't say what it is.

The black budget came out of the National Security Act (Congress).

[Dhalgren]

20. There is absolutely no way for you to know that. You can assume that,

because it is written somewhere, but the whole idea of a "black budget" means you don't know what goes in, what goes out, and never "why" or "what for". I appreciate the "official" nature of your statement, but I just don't see how it can be trusted when dealing with an invisible mechanism...

[BuyingThyme]

21. I'm just telling you what the black budget is. It's a creation of Congress.

There are representatives who know what goes in.

[Dhalgren]

23. I know what it is. You were saying that the budget came from our taxes

and I was saying that we can't know that. How did we get from where the money comes from to what a "black budget" is? I think that we all know what a "black budget" is. LOL :hi:

[BuyingThyme]

28. If you knew what it was, you'd know it comes from our taxes.

[fooj]

32. It seems to me like OUR TAXES have been LONG SPENT, eh?

We can't have money available when we are running a record deficit, can we?

Just askin'...

[BuyingThyme]

35. Deficits are simply taxes we have to pay in the future.

[Dhalgren]

34. Prove it. If you know where a "black budget" comes from, show me.

I know that you can't, it will be interesting to see if you know that you can't...

[BuyingThyme]

36. Why are you trying so hard to look silly?

The black budget is not some kind of big mystery. It's simply the part of the budget which is classified.

Start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_budget

Then roam around over here:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=black+budget

[Dhalgren]

37. Ok, here is a document that explains what I am saying.

" Another key official is a retired Drug Enforcement Agency agent, Celerino Castillo III, who was the lead DEA agent in Guatemala and discovered that the CIA was involved in the drug trade to raise finances for its covert operations. In a written statement to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Castillo gave detailed information on a number of drug running operations that involved cooperation between the CIA and organized crime cartels. <68> Celerino claimed:

The key to understanding the "crack cocaine" epidemic, which exploded on our streets in 1984, lies in understanding the effect of congressional oversight on covert operations. In this case the Boland amendment(s) of the era, while intending to restrict covert operations as intended by the will of the People, only served to encourage C.I.A., the military and elements of the national intelligence community to completely bypass the Congress and the Constitution in an eager and often used covert policy of funding prohibited operations with drug money. <69>"

Here's more:

"An estimate of the size of the CIA’s black budget, would therefore be unaccounted movement of funds through the DoD. According to an investigative journalist, Kelly O’Meara, the use of a range of accounting mechanisms such as "unsupported entries," "material-control weakness," "adjusted records," "unmatched disbursements," "abnormal balances" and "unreconciled differences" are evidence of large sums of money that are moved through the DoD that cannot be accounted for. <81>"

"Acting Assistant Inspector for auditing DoD wrote in a 2002 report that “DoD processed $1.1 trillion in unsupported accounting entries to DoD Component financial data used to prepare departmental reports and DoD financial statements for FY 2000.” <82>"


http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/exopolitica/esp_exopolitics_I_1c.htm#estimating



This is why I say that you just cannot say where all of the money comes from, because you simply cannot know. In 2002 there was 1.1 trillion dollars, the origin of which could not be verified. How does that compare with the 60 billion dollar figure "accidentally" released today?

This is all I am saying...

[BuyingThyme]

38. The stuff you posted talks about auditing/tracking tax dollars.

[Dhalgren]

39. Ok. I'm the "silly" one...

:eyes:

[Selatius]

41. To be sure, drug money probably does fuel CIA operations to some extent.

But I would think that the CIA would only list money coming from taxpayers, not from drug cartels. If we add the drug money in, we're probably aiming at something more than the 60 billion that this report is estimating. With the massive explosion of the opium trade as a result of poppy growers in Afghanistan now freely being able to farm, which was prohibited by the Taliban, it might not be too unreasonable to suspect that the drug revenue those poppy fields have generated have partially helped to fill the coffers of the intelligence apparatus of the US government.

[Dhalgren]

42. The report I cited above says that in 2002 there was

1.1 trillion dollars that could not be determined where it came from or where it went. Yeah, I think that the 60 billion dollar figure is way, way too small. And, again, I am not saying that some of the "black budget" money doesn't come from taxes, I am just saying that we have no idea how much money is there or where it all comes from. "Black" doesn't just mean how the money is spent, it means the entire accounting of these massive amounts of cash is completely invisible to any oversight or regulation. For some reason some folks seem unable to grasp the nature of this god-awful pile of blood-money. And, yeah, you are absolutely right; with the Afghan poppy fields now in near full production, the black budget is probably doing pretty good...

[Raksha]

31. It's my understanding that you can say where it's from (tax revenues),

you just can't say where it goes!

[kestrel91316]

33. Oh, you mean selling on the street all the drugs the feds have confiscated??

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Makes ya wonder why

they call it "intelligence."

60 bil and they can't hire people smart enough to keep a secret.

[Solon]

6. Apparently they suck at computer security, that's for sure...

This is as dumb as the classified report on the Italian reporter's attempted murder by U.S. troops. The Military released a report, in a PDF file, about the incident, and like many reports, it had "blacked out" sections. The problem was that all you had to do was open the file, and SELECT the blacked out section, and then read the highlighted portion. Our current government sucks at data security.

[KansDem]

29. 60 bil and they can't find OBL...

...who is in need of regular dialysis.

Bin Laden has often been reported to be in poor health. Some accounts claim that he is suffering from Hepatitis C, and can expect to live for only two more years. According to Le Figaro, last year <2000> he ordered a mobile dialysis machine to be delivered to his base at Kandahar in Afghanistan.

whatreallyhappened

[Marie26]

7. This isn't the "black budget"

It's the total spending for all 16 intelligence agencies.

[Solon]

9. Is this information even supposed to be publicly available? n/t

[Marie26]

11. Guess not

The article said that they try to keep the budget secret so that other countries can't track fluctuations in intelligence funding. Whatever, I think it should be made public. But this is different from actual "black budgets," which fund special (usually illegal) programs within the intelligence agencies.

[Solon]

13. Actually, I wondered about that...

Generally I would consider any money allocation that can't be scrutinized by the public as a "black budget". I imagine trying to get an FOIA request for the CIA budget, and getting a 500 sheet report where the only words not blacked out are "the" and "a".

I assume that at least certain members of Congress are aware of this budget, otherwise it is truly a "black budget".

[Marie26]

15. Oh, I'm sure they are

They have to approve the funding. This is taxpayer-funded budget. The real "black budgets" are for the shady, illegal things that Congress doesn't know about.

[Solon]

16. Too bad the reforms of the 1970s were toothless...

especially the weakening of them since during the Reagan/Bush I/Bush II years.

[IChing]

8. Kakistocracy

Kakistocracy, rule by the least-able or least-principled of citizens,
is a form of government in which the people least qualified to control
the government are the people who control the government.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. "Our intelligence services are run by dumbasses..period.

[Solon]

17. Just a suggestion for the fine people in our "intelligence" services...

Spend some of that 60 billion on this:



That is all. :)

[LSK]

22. $60 billion?? thats it???

[porphyrian]

24. You're making the assumption that those weren't intentionally released. - n/t

[Edweird]

27. Psy-Ops 101. "accidentally" releasing "secret" info. It's misdirection.

[porphyrian]

30. Of course, they'll expect us to think that as well...

;)

[firefox_fan]

25. Yup, well-known.

[Rex]

26. Well, they can't find a couple trillion over at the Pentagon

Rummy probably knows where some of it went - funny how he 'retired', not really. Our intel groups can't be that stupid. I prefer to think that they have been compromised somehow by the BFEE. That PNAC moles are exploiting them and their resources.

I mean, Cheney OWNS the Justice Department. It is disgusting watching him and Gonzo yuk about their power over honest people. I just can't believe intel groups are that stupid.

[wildbilln864]

40. I agree with Rex....

This is suspicious IMO. Rummy announced that $2.3 trillion was "unaccounted for" the day before 9/11 happened! $9 billion gets lost in Iraq! I believe they play this incompetence card way too much lately. Meanwhile the PNAC world domination agenda marches on! :shrug: