Intel Inside

By John Liang / October 28, 2008 at 5:00 AM

The intelligence community spent $47.5 billion during fiscal year 2008, the office of the director of national intelligence announced today.

A federal law passed in 2007 mandates that the DNI disclose to the public "the aggregate amount of funds appropriated by Congress to the National Intelligence Program (NIP) for fiscal year 2008 not later than 30 days after the end of the fiscal year," the DNI statement reads.

But don't expect the intel community to be any more forthcoming.

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

Getting the intelligence community to disclose even the above amount has been something that Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists has long advocated. Aftergood, who writes about this in his Secrecy News blog, last month highlighted the debate in Congress on how much oversight the intel community should have, when Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) was defending congressional intelligence oversight and rejecting a proposal by Sen. Christopher Bond (R-MO) to set up an intelligence subcommittee within the Senate Appropriations Committee:

Sen. Bond’s proposal, according to Sen. Inouye, would have the undesirable effect of reducing the number of Senators and staff who are engaged in intelligence oversight. “It would put all decisionmaking into fewer hands,” he said.

In making his argument, Senator Inouye also provided some fresh insight into current intelligence oversight arrangements in the Intelligence and Appropriations Committees.

“I would point out that the Intelligence Committee has one professional staff member on the majority staff who reviews the budget for the National Reconnaissance Office; so do we ((on the Appropriations Committee)). The Intelligence Committee has one professional staff member on the majority staff who reviews the budget for the National Security Agency; so do we.”

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