Spending on Spies

Updated October 2013

Another day, another revelation about the NSA.  

A recent release of the so-called Black Budget document shows American taxpayers how much was budgeted for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, covering expenditures on the CIA, the NSA and other government departments excluding funding for military intelligence gathering.

Here's the opening page of the FY 2013 Congressional Budget Justification, signed by one James Clapper:

For fiscal year 2013, James Clapper's objective was to receive $52.6 billion in funding which would be allocated to the following activities:

The Central Intelligence Agency was to receive 28 percent of the funds, to be budgeted into the following categories:

The budget for the CIA has risen by 56 percent since 2004, most of which has been spent on data collection.

The National Reconnaissance Program (NRP) which operates the nation's networlk of spy satellites was to receive 20 percent of the funds, to be budgeted into the following categories:

The Consolidated Cryptologic Program (CCP) which includes the National Security Agency was to receive 21 percent of the funds, to be budgeted into the following categories:

In case you wondered, here's a graph that shows how the funding for CCP has changed since fiscal 2004:

The budget for the NSA alone has risen by 53 percent since 2004.  The NSA has spent heavily on management, facilities and support and spends about 20 percent of its budget on data analysis.

Here's a graph showing how the number of employees working within CCP (including the NSA) has changed since 2004:

In total, there are just over 107,000 employees in the intelligence community with the equivalent of just under 84,000 full time equivalent civilian employees and just over 23,000 military positions.  Sequestration has had an impact on the intelligence community as well; just over 1200 positions have been shed or just under 1 percent of the total workforce.

One phrase that I did find interesting was under the Objectives section of the report as noted here:

"Counterintelligence (CI). To further safeguard our classified networks, we continue to strengthen insider threat detection capabilities across the Community. In addition, we are investing in target surveillance and offensive CI against key targets, such as China, Russia, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, and Cuba." 

I found the inclusion of Israel as an offensive Counterintelligence target in amongst China, Pakistan and Russia rather odd!

Here's another one:

"The counterproliferation (CP) mission continues to support a variety of actions to deter, disrupt, and prevent proliferation. This includes improving our understanding of Pakistani nuclear weapons and dangerous nuclear material security; intelligence on proliferators, such as Iran and North Korea, to roll back and block weapons programs; increasing our ability to ascertain global chemical and biological threats; and better integrating multidiscipline coverage of WMD targets such as chemical weapons in Libya and Syria." (my bold)

So, how well did that work for the people of Ghouta in Syria?

  

Now at least we know where some of those tax dollars that are remitted to Washington are headed and how much it is costing American taxpayers to have their emails, text messages and cell phone calls listened to, not to mention those of approximately 40 world leaders.