Secrecy
News Blog:
http://blogs.fas.org/secrecy/ INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
BUDGETS REVEALED IN WASHINGTON POSTINTELLIGENCE AGENCY BUDGETS
REVEALED IN WASHINGTON POSTSecret intelligence agency
budget information was abundantly detailed in the Washington Post yesterday
based on Top Secret budget documents released by Edward Snowden. See
"U.S.
spy network's successes, failures and objectives detailed in 'black budget'
summary" by Barton Gellman and Greg Miller, Washington Post, August
29.
The newly disclosed information includes individual agency
budgets along with program area line items, as well as details regarding
the size and structure of the intelligence workforce. So one learns,
for example, that the proposed budget for covert action in FY2013 was
approximately $2.6 billion, while the total for open source intelligence
was $387 million.
Some of the information only confirms what was
already understood to be true. The budget for the National Security Agency
was estimated to be about $10 billion, according to a recent story in CNN
Money (
"What
the NSA Costs Taxpayers" by Jeanne Sahadi, June 7, 2013). The actual
NSA budget figure,
the
Post reported, is $10.8 billion.
And the involuntary
disclosure of classified intelligence budget information, while rare, is
not unprecedented. In 1994, the House Appropriations Committee
inadvertently
published budget data for national and military intelligence, the size
of the CIA budget, and other details. (
"$28 Billion Spying
Budget is Made Public by Mistake" by Tim Weiner, New York Times,
November 5, 1994)
But the current disclosure of intelligence
budget information dwarfs all previous releases and provides unmatched
depth and detail of spending over a course of several years, based on
original documents. The disclosure is doubly remarkable because
the
Post chastely refrained from releasing about 90% of the Congressional
Budget Justification Book that it obtained. "Sensitive details are so
pervasive in the documents that The Post is publishing only summary tables
and charts online," Post reporters Gellman and Miller
wrote.
This is not a whistleblower disclosure; it does not reveal any
illegality or obvious wrongdoing. On the contrary, the underlying budget
document is a formal request to Congress to authorize and appropriate
funding for intelligence.
But the disclosure seems likely to be
welcomed in many quarters (while
scorned
in others) both because of a generalized loss of confidence in the
integrity of the classification system, and because of a more specific
belief that the U.S. intelligence bureaucracy today requires increased
public accountability.
Though it has never been embraced as
official policy, the notion of public disclosure of individual intelligence
agency budgets (above and beyond the release of aggregate totals) has an
honorable pedigree.
In 1976, the U.S. Senate Church Committee
advocated publication
of the total intelligence budget and recommended that "any successor
committees study the effects of publishing more detailed information on the
budgets of the intelligence agencies."
In a 1996
hearing of
the Senate Intelligence Committee, then-Chair Sen. Arlen Specter badgered
DCI John Deutch about the need for intelligence budget secrecy.
"I think that you and the Intelligence Community and this committee have
got to do a much better job in coming to grips with the hard reasons for
this [budget secrecy], if they exist. And if they exist, I'm prepared to
help you defend them. But I don't see that they exist. I don't think that
they have been articulated or explained," the late Sen. Specter
said
then.
Committee Vice Chair Sen. Bob Kerrey
added: "I
would concur in much of what the Chairman has just said. I do, myself,
believe not only the top line, but several of the other lines of the
budget, not only could but should, for the purpose of giving
taxpayer-citizens confidence that their money is being well spent."
In 2004, the 9/11 Commission itself recommended disclosure of
intelligence agency budgets: "Finally, to combat the secrecy and complexity
we have described, the overall amounts of money being appropriated for
national intelligence
and to its
component agencies should no longer be kept secret" (at
page
416, emphasis added).
These are clearly minority
views. They could have been adopted at any time -- as disclosure of
the aggregate total was -- but they haven't been. (And even these
voices did not call for release of the more detailed budget line items that
are now public.) And yet they are not totally outlandish either.
The initial response of the executive branch to
the
Washington Post story will be to hunker down, to decline explicit
comment, and to prohibit government employees from viewing classified
budget documents that are in the public domain. Damage assessments
will be performed, and remedial security measures will be imposed.
These are understandable reflex responses.
But in a lucid
moment, officials should ponder other questions.
How can public
confidence in national security secrecy be bolstered? Is it possible
to imagine a national security secrecy system that the public would
plausibly view not with suspicion but with support, much as the strict
secrecy of IRS tax returns is broadly understood and supported? What
steps could be taken to reduce national security secrecy to the bare
minimum?
Looking further ahead, is it possible to devise an
information security policy that is based on "resilience" to the
foreseeable disclosure of secrets rather than on the fervently pursued
prevention of such disclosure?