On the So Called Black Budget
Wikipedia defines a Black Budget as “A government budget that is allocated for classified or other secret operations of a nation. The black budget is an account expenses and spending related to military research and covert operations. The black budget is mostly classified due to security reasons.”
“The black budget can be complicated to calculate, but in the United States it has been estimated to be over US$50 billion a year.The black budget has been known to hide multiple types of projects from elected officials. With secret code names and hidden figures, the details of the black budget are revealed only to certain people of congress, if at all. This budget was approved by the US National Security Act of 1947, they created the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council and reorganized some military bases with help of the Defense Department.The U.S. Government claims that the money given to this budget investigates advanced sciences and technologies for military issues. This kind of research is responsible for the creation of new aircraft, weapons, and satellites.”
What are the facts? Neither the number of employees nor the size of the CIA’s budget can, at present, be publicly disclosed. A common misconception is that the Agency has an unlimited budget, which is far from true. While classified, the budget and size of the CIA are known in detail and scrutinized by the Office of Management and Budget and by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Defense Subcommittees of the Appropriations Committees in both houses of Congress. The resources allocated to the CIA are subject to the same rigorous examination and approval process that applies to all other government organizations.
In 1997, the aggregate figure for all US government intelligence and intelligence-related activities — of which the CIA is but one part — was made public for the first time. The aggregate intelligence budget was $26.6 billion in fiscal year 1997 and $26.7 billion for fiscal year 1998. The intelligence budgets for all other years remain classified.
The CIA’s budget is scrutinized by the Office of Management and Budget and by SSCI, HPSCI, and the Defense Subcommittees of the Appropriations Committees in both houses of Congress. The resources allocated to the CIA are subject to the same rigorous examination and approval process that applies to all other government organizations. Internally, the CIA Office of Inspector General performs independent audits, inspections, investigations, and reviews of CIA programs and operations, seeking to detect and deter fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. The same applies to the DOD and all other Intelligence Agencies.
