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Tuesday, February 17, 2004; Page A18

THE CIA WON a big victory last week. No, Osama bin Laden isn't in custody, and weapons of mass destruction have still not materialized in Iraq. But the agency managed to convince a federal court in Washington that if the public learned the total amount the United States spent on intelligence in fiscal 2002, intelligence sources and methods could be compromised. The agency cares a lot about this pointless bit of secrecy.


Since 1995, Steven Aftergood -- an anti-secrecy activist with the Federation of American Scientists -- has been seeking the release of intelligence budget numbers, historical and current. In response to an earlier lawsuit brought by Mr. Aftergood, the agency released the aggregate figure for fiscal 1997 ($26.6 billion), and it did so again the following year ($26.7 billion). But after that, CIA Director George J. Tenet refused further disclosures. Publicizing the 2002 figure, he told the court in an unclassified declaration, "could be expected to provide foreign intelligence services with a valuable benchmark for identifying and frustrating U.S. intelligence programs" and "could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security." U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina bought it and dismissed Mr. Aftergood's case.

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The Washington Times, Editorial page



[ February 17, 2004, 09:02 AM: Message edited by: Bob_Scopatz ]
 

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Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
 

quote:

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Publicizing the 2002 figure, he told the court in an unclassified declaration, "could be expected to provide foreign intelligence services with a valuable benchmark for identifying and frustrating U.S. intelligence programs" and "could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security."

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Really? You mean foreign powers could discern what we are spending our national security budget on just by knowing the amount of money spent?
 

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Posted by jexx (Member # 3450) on :
 
Ela,
You know that foreigners are very, very sneaky. Also, they spend more time in school than your typical American. That means they are very smart! It must be true, I read it on the internet!
*grin*
This story makes me shudder. Secret warrants, secret budgets, secret courts. Scary times.
 

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Posted by PaladinVirtue (Member # 6144) on :
 
Is this really a bad thing? Why is not plausable that information about the amount of money we spend on national security could be of use foreign agency to identify certain programs? And just because the budget isn't a matter of public record does not mean that there are not factors in place to limit it. Tenet answers to his bosses (senate commitees and the President himself) like any othr employee.
 

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Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
 
Either one of three things are going on here.

Either 1) They are just trying to hide thier enourmous budget. This is especially important if they are playing budgetary games, like diverting funds set for the Parks Department or something like that.

This is very unlikely, but will be what most people and almost all critics will suspect.

2) They truely fear that the brains out there will deduce valuable information from limited information. That is because they have been deducing information they think is valueable from such limited sources of information for decades. They are so set on this approach that they don'trealize thier own mistakes. This is why they avoid the uses of true undercover operatives in favor of technical analysis.

3) They think there are enough leaks in Washington that if more people knew their budget, they would be able to play Algerbra and figure out that 22.5Billion minus the cost of 15 satelites, 35 spy planes, and 15 poisonous scorpions leaves X amount for spy works, etc etc until they figure out that the CIA has about 1 years salary unaccounted for, that matches the salary of Joe Schmoe the Embassy Janitor.

This is possible.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
I think it's more likely that they're trying to hide the fact that the budget has been cut or not substantially increased.
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
Tom!!!

Quick, take a peek outside. Are there black helicopters circling? Sheesh! You gotta be more careful what you post in public!!!
 

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