Spying costs reach $50 billion
The WaPo reports on the size of the U.S. spying budget.
The director of national intelligence will disclose today that national intelligence activities amounting to roughly 80 percent of all U.S. intelligence spending for the year cost more than $40 billion, according to sources on Capitol Hill and inside the administration.
The disclosure means that when military spending is added, aggregate U.S. intelligence spending for fiscal 2007 exceeded $50 billion, according to these sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the total remains classified.
Cernig helps put the number in perspective:
It's more than every other nation except three (China, Russia and the UK) spend on their entire defense budgets. It's ten times Iran's entire defense budget. It's as much as the US government spent on all its science, energy and environmental programs in 2006.
Wow, the costs of exploding cigars is exploding.
What a deeply nutty nutty country.
This country tortUreS people.
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Bush_lawyer_Waterboarding_legal_but_no_103...
but we are safer so shut up. we haven't had any bombs in the us since 9/11!
and the percentage of the ungodly sum that goes to private corporations tasked with spying on americans and non-americans??
figure around 70%
which is, yet another, recipe for disaster. the conservative/neoliberal ideology of quashing govt and handing over, what should be, govt tasks to private corporations will be our undoing.
donviti @ 4:
Well, there weren't any bombs used on 9/11 either!
donviti @ 4:
there were bombs used in 911?
and, just out of curiousity, how many years passed btwn the first world trade center attack (the ones where a bomb was actually used) and 911?
[disregard this if you were being colbert-esque)
More proof that reich-wingers are anti-American:
Spying, war, torture, destruction, death, and murder = Good
Health care for children = Bad
Hey, give them a break. They have to spend all of that money on spying 'cause God forbids that they spend it on the needy.
So private corporations have been handed the keys to the kingdom.
With not only the technology to spy on Americans (ALL of them) but the BLESSINGS of the government they are now free to spy on our elected Representatives, gather incriminating evidence together and blackmail them into what ever the corporate power wants to be done.
We are a fascist nation in all ways.
This is the new face of fascism kids, look hard and remember. Tell your children. They won't know any different in a few years.
donviti @ 4:
I bought a new T.V. shortly after 9/11. Since I have owned that T.V., we haven't been attacked once...as long as you do not include the attacks on our soldiers, the anthrax attacks, the attacks on our democracy, the so-called "foiled attacks", etc.
My T.V. is protecting America.
If we spent half as much on spying we could build 125 miles of subways in major urban areas each year.
That is nearly a Paris subway system every year. (Paris's subway system is 133 miles).
Politicians spend. Period. They spend your money...easily...cause it ain't theirs.
The difference is simple. Republicans spend money on their cronies in the corporate elite and then sell the public on "voodoo economics" that says the benefits will "trickle down".
The Democrats spend money on their cronies in the corporate elite, but at least throw a crumb down to the masses.
When the Bill Moyers link was posted a couple of days ago, I followed the logic into this realm and blogged on the effects of spying and out of control spending.
In a nutshell, this pattern looks a lot like the one the USSR followed on their way to Perestroika and beyond.
As the dollar devalues and branches of government start competing for ever expanding quantities of worthless dollars, it will have to start spying on itself and it's employees. The price tag will mushroom as the government become the US economy and begins to fight itself.
jefff @ 12:
We could build a kickass retirement prison for Bush and his cronies. We could pay for remedial classes that might actually turn GW Bush into a coherent, viable human being. We could build a kickass hospital for all of Dick Cheney's hunting buddies. We could pay for kickass memory improvement classes for Alberto Gonzales.
That's not exactly true Dr. Matt.
You see, I used to live in NYC, but right after I moved back to CA we got attacked.
Now that I am back on the East coast there have been no more attacks.
Also, My baby girl was born right after the first attack, and what do you know, no more attacks.
It is my presence on the East coast and cuteness of my baby girl (the terrorists just can't bring themselves to kill something that cute) that have kept us terror free.
Oh, and your television. That I am sure has had some affect on the situation. :)
Please give credit where credit is due. Antonio Prohías created the iconic Spy vs Spy that became popular during the 60s in Mad Magazine. Spy vs Spy shows the futility of fighting fire with fire. The original Mad artists gave our culture its healthy cynicism and they encouraged our kids to question authority. A virtue which is sorely missing in today's media and culture. If you want to know who emboldened the youth of America to question authority in the 60s look no further than the original Mad artists of the 50s. It took 10 years to come to fruition, so there is hope!...boy, do we need some fun subversives today!
And I'll bet the farm it's a gross underestimate of the real cost.
We are so doomed.....I'm beginning to think the damage done to this country and its people by its own government can never be undone. Truly sad.
Dr. Matt @ 11:
ghouliani?
Good Post Steve. Interesting facts. SCary too. I imagine a lot of this money is going to private corporations like Wackenhut and Blackwater, etc. Sickening. I hope we as American people can do something before it is too late. This country is too great to waste.
I think I have figured out the equation for all of this money for spying. The WH sends money to telecoms for their help in breaking the law, the telecoms then pay the congress to enact laws making their lawbreaking illegal, so we the people are just donating more to the Congress for non-oversight.
donviti @ 4:
That's because the terrorists, insurgents or whatever are litterally having a blast using bombs on our personnel in Iraq. They even film the bombings.
So why come here when you can blow up Americans there?
If you count those bombs it adds up to well over 1000 fatalities on our people since 9/11.
Several of the planned attacks, outside Iraq, that were busted were by European intelligence agencies and not the US.
We're better off spending those billions on Energy research here at home so we don't keep buying oil from terrorist countries. Kind of stupid to keep buying oil from the Arabs when they are the ones whose people attacked us.
Just 1 billion of that money could be used to increase biodiesel, solar, wind and fuel cell research. Or give it to NASA so we can go back on the Moon again. Or give it to our crumbling infrastructure or our schools. We're spending too much on boogeymen and shadows.
Dr. Matt @ 11:
LOL
great stuff Dr. Matt. it reminds me of the reason why FSM followers dress like pirates...
Samson- @ 5:
That's what I want to know. It's one thing to spend a lot of money to spy on other countries... it's another to spend a lot of money to spy on your own citizens.
Why are we paying so much on "spying" if bush doesn't even use the information he gets (Ie No WMD, and plame knew it!)
Damn, they could listen to my phone calls for $2.99 a minute with a 3 year minimum and they would have had enough left over to go out and had a good time over the weekend!
Chip @ 26:
c-mon, it's simply logic...if Bush knows what we aren't doing then he will know exactly what not to charge us with when he locks us in Gitmo. everyone knows that...geez!
And as I remarked at unbossed.com, the current budget is nearly twice as large as the budget from 10 years ago. Right there, that's your National Security State that Bush has been building.
Chip @ 23:
It's going to take more than 1 billion to fix our infrastructure... it's so fucked from 20 years of neglect that the ASCE estimates it will take $1.6 trillion to fix.
donviti @ 4:
What are we doing paying the bastards off? 50 billion...tsss. It's expensive for a president to shove his head up the citizens ass!!
But what we fail to notice is that the addition of 10 billion or so for Defense spending is just for Defense SPYING.
When you add in the TOTAL Defense budget it becomes even more obvious how truly f**ked up our spending priorities are.
I mean, just the other day Bush added 46 billion to the 150 billion he needs to keep his war hard-on up.
So I would bet that, at least on a percentage basis, that we are way over what anyone else is spending on "Defense."
RobertPaul,
The US now spends as much on defense as the rest of the world combined.
Regards, C
PS Thanks for the link, Steve
Dr. Matt @ 11:
Wait a minute, I bought a camera just after 9/11, so that camera is protecting us. So there!
smintheus @ 29:
"Disclosure, including disclosure to the Nation's enemies and adversaries in a time of war, of the amounts requested by the President and provided by the Congress for the conduct of the Nation's intelligence activities would provide no meaningful information to the general American public, but would provide significant intelligence to America's adversaries and could cause damage to the national security interests of the United States." - George Bush
So 70% of America's enemies are already in the US?
if 40% is outsourced, then 20billion goes to 'contractors' and 'analysts' outside the gov't.
On a lenghthy PBS interview recently, Rep. Ron Paul vowed to dismantle the CIA. We save 50 Billion right there.
Peace.
Kevin Simms @ 34:
hey! I took pictures on 9/11 and I watched TV so not counting the wellstone plane, the anthraxed postal workers and reporters and congressmen and senators and the Louisiana hurricanes or the California fires or the wisconsin bridge or the frisco quake or the georgia, my camera, my tv and my eyes are protecting america. We should all feel safer because we don't need the national guard or a fully functional army.
Kevin Simms @ 34:
Welll I bought an issue of Barely Legal, so there.
donviti @ 4:
and before that we hadn't been bombed since tim mcveigh.
$50B is just tooooo EXPENSIVE!!!
38 --> Georgia drought
donviti @ 4:
Well, are you including the entire last 6 years of GW Bush, the first season of Dancing with the Stars, and this year's World Series?
Amazing! We spent $50B on 'US Intelligence', Bush's IQ has barely reached double digits, and the US populace is so stupid that nearly half of them voted for him twice.
Symes @ 16:
My T.V. can beat up your T.V.....and cute baby. :)
Kevin Simms @ 34:
Prove it...I already said my T.V. is protecting America. It's even posted on the internet(s), so it must be true.
Preacher Boob @ 43:
and a partridge in a pear treeeeeee.
donviti @ 4:
No you shut up-- waaah waaah. Gawd. Are you old enough to be up so late deary? I'm rubber and you're glue... ...(get a life)
And not a penny for sick kids.
[Who are these sinsister cartoon characters? I remember them from my youth.]
Weaseldog @ 14:
I would imagine there is a healthy measure of the governement turning on itself already. Agencies spying on other agencies. Politicians spying on other politicians. One branch spying on another branch. Bush/Cheney spying on all branches and every corporation and citizen (that is the BIG PRIZE right there = power and money) It's all about power and who you're connected to. It's a big game (at our expense).
If you don't like it, you might be telling the business-end of a Blackwater rifle. But, still, never give up!!!
ysbaddaden @ 39:
It must be YOU thats been protecting us!
Thank you, thank you soo much!
Dr. Matt @ 45:
I don't know, my TV is pretty big.
The baby is probably toast though... =)
Quick somebody help me!
I forgot the reason why we can't assume that there have been no more attacks because the neocons only needed one to scare the piss out of everybody!
Again! What's our proof that this is not the case? Seriously, I forgot.
donviti @ 4:
we didn't have any bombs on us 9/11, it was aircraft you moron.
Spies and thieves creep in the same alleys.
They trade notes.
50 billion for a police state seems kind of expensive. lets not buy it.
$50 billion and they are not any more intelligent than they were before 911. All those text messages sent by young people might be a bit hard to decipher via computer algorithms so they've got 300 billion stupid messages to sift through. Have fun 'intelligence' community sifting through your own kids emails, phone calls and text messages...I hope one of the 'other' agencies don't 'accidentally' rendition your kids because they text messaged a friend that they had blast downtown at the water slides.
We have not had another terrorist attack because 1) OBL does not want us to be seen as victims again, 2) OBL does not want to once again reveal AQ as the blood thirty nuts they are, and 3) we are shooting ourselves in the foot everyday in the Iraq and the greater ME.
Incidentally, we may be able to look down the dress of every woman on earth from 23 miles in space and keep track of every one of our ex's and their/our kids, but $40 BN of every gizmo known to mankind could not stop 19 punks with box cutters.
Our ROI on the intel budget = $1/2 tril. spent + being stuck in a third world shit hole + 4,000 deaths (7,000 incl. 9/11) + the hatred of the entire Muslem world. Not to mention the most expensive military in the solar system. Piss poor investment if you ask me.
BTW, we have no intelligence ... OBL is still alive.
Damage control is expensive. The more lies and illegal actions the CIA commits, the more people they have to pay off to keep information concealed.
Stasi won the lottery
Um, looks like we are "paying the price" for our Admin outing Plame and all the agents she worked with and all the assets she had overseas. Gosh, who could have seen that coming?
$600 Billion for the Department of Defense
$190 Billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
$50 Billion for espionage and intelligence
$20 Billion for Foreign Aid
$9 Billion for diplomacy through the Department of State
Talk about screwed up priorities.
It's really strange that the government spends mountains of money to shut people up-- corraling them in to free speech zones, paying journalists to write sympathetic columns, producing fake news stories, retaliating against whistleblowers and protesters, arresting protesters, keeping detainees out of the courts, accusing the opposition party of treason or of being unpatriotic, or obstructionist...
And then they have to spend billions of dollars to spy on people to see what they're saying.
I'm no genius, but I have observed that if you let people speak their mind, they will tell you what they think. If you give them the freedom to speak, people will blab. You don't have to spend billions on spying. You just have to let people talk.
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