Amid secrecy, some disclosure

For the first time since the formation of the CIA, intelligence funding is being disclosed to the public:

The Bush administration said it had spent $43.5 billion on spying infiscal 2007, as it bowed on Tuesday to a law ordering disclosure of afigure the government has kept secret for most of the past 60 years.   

"Disclosure of the amount of the budget is a good first step towardaccountability," said Steven Aftergood of the Federation of AmericanScientists, which has campaigned for publication of the annualintelligence budget.

The figure, which is roughly equal to the entire economy of Croatia orQatar, dwarfs the estimated intelligence budgets of any other countryincluding the closest U.S. ally, Britain, which spends about 10 percentof the amount, he said.

Now that the lid is off on intelligence funding, the debate will begin on whether spending nearly $50 billion per year is worth it.

Comments

[granny]

I wonder why they released that?

With so many documents and figures pending...
why do they want us to turn our attention to this?

[Chief Editor: Todd]

Well, that's pretty cynical. I don't think the government is against us. We just have incompetent people at the top. By the way, sorry if that sounded like a "strawman" comment, I didn't mean it like that.

This disclosure was going to happen as soon as the Cold War was over, but took years and years because of bureaucratic hoops that needed to be jumped through. Still, this does not disclose everything within the intelligence budget, which is disappointing.