Intelligence activities across the U.S. government and military cost a total of $75 billion a year, the nation’s top intelligence official disclosed on Tuesday, revealing publicly for the first time an overall number long shrouded in secrecy.

The disclosure by Dennis Blair, President Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence, put a spotlight on the sharp growth in intelligence spending as well as on the huge and long obscured role of military intelligence programs, which, based on previous disclosures, would account for roughly $25 billion to $30 billion of the $75 billion total.

In comparison, when total intelligence spending was accidentally published in a congressional document in 1994, it totaled about $26 billion, including $10 billion for military intelligence programs, according to Steven Aftergood, an expert on intelligence spending with the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy.

Source/Full Story:: Reuters
Technorati Tags: Project on Government Secrecy

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