14 DAY TRIAL // It isn’t exactly a secret that the NSA and the intelligence community in general is one of the biggest spenders in the United States, but now there’s a clue about exactly how much money they have on hand.
According to the Washington Post, citing documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the intelligence agencies had a “black budget” of $52.6 billion (€39.7 billion) for this fiscal year alone.
The government hasn’t exactly been open about how much it spends on intelligence since 2007, but a new document from Snowden indicates that it’s a lot.
The budget summary has 178 pages, the source states, detailing the success, failures and objectives of the 16 spy agencies in the United States.
The news about the size of this black budget wasn’t even denied by James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, who responded to inquiries from the Washington Post.
“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,” he states.
Furthermore, he claims the budgets are classified since they could provide insight for foreign intelligence services to discern the US top national priorities, capabilities and sources to obtain information.
The documents revealed by The Post indicate the NSA isn’t even the biggest spender of the bunch, but rather the CIA, which was given an additional black budget of $14.7 billion (€11.1 billion). The NSA’s budget is of $10.8 billion (€8.15 billion).
Most of the money from all agencies goes into data collection programs, a big stake goes into processing and exploiting this data, while another set goes into analyzing it.
The money goes into funding several mission objectives. For instance, warning U.S. leaders about critical events is a top priority of the intelligence agencies, while combating terrorism takes a second place.