FAS | Intelligence | News | 2007 ||||

Newer News: November 2007

October 2007 Intelligence News

• U.S. spent $43.5B on intel in 2007 by Richard Willing, USA Today, October 31. "Federal spending on most intelligence programs totaled $43.5 billion this year, up more than 50% from a decade ago, according to figures released Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence."
• U.S. intelligence tab: $43.5 billion in 2007 by Pamela Hess, Associated Press, October 31. "The U.S. government spent $43.5 billion on intelligence in fiscal 2007, according to the first official disclosure of such spending under a new law implementing recommendations of the Sept. 11 Commission."
• U.S. reluctantly reveals spy budget by Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, October 31. "Forced by law to reveal how much the nation spends on its spy agencies, the Bush administration disclosed Tuesday that the country's intelligence budget was $43.5 billion last year, an increase of about 50% since the Sept. 11 attacks."
• Spy budget, at $43.5 billion, is no secret now by Randall Mikkelsen, Reuters, October 30. "The Bush administration said it had spent $43.5 billion on spying in fiscal 2007, as it bowed on Tuesday to a law ordering disclosure of a figure the government has kept secret for most of the past 60 years."
• Cost of U.S. spying efforts released by Steve Henn, Marketplace, October 30. "For the first time in almost a decade the federal government has pulled back the curtain on the American intelligence budget."
• 2007 Spying Said to Cost $50 Billion by Walter Pincus, Washington Post, October 30. "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."
• DNI Releases Budget Figure for National Intelligence Program, news release, October 30. "The aggregate amount appropriated to the NIP for fiscal year 2007 was $43.5 billion."
• Spies Do a Huge Volume of Work in Invisible Ink by Scott Shane, New York Times, October 28. "Nothing expresses American ambivalence about government secrecy as vividly as the old Washington craft of redaction, the selective removal of passages from once-secret papers or books by spies. It is the bureaucratic equivalent of lingerie, covering the very parts you most want to see."
• Spy Chief Makes it Harder to Declassify NIEs, Washington Post (AP), October 27. "National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has reversed the recent practice of declassifying and releasing summaries of national intelligence estimates, a top intelligence official said yesterday."
• Watercoolered: The CIA's Double Secret Probation by Laura Rozen, Mother Jones, October 25. "Valerie Plame was just the latest woman to run up against Langley's Kafkaesque workplace culture."
• CIA Stealth Venture Fund Focuses on Spy Gadgets Even `Q' Adores by Kambiz Foroohar, Bloomberg, October 24. "Since In-Q-Tel was founded in 1999, the firm has reviewed more than 6,300 business plans for everything from identity recognition software to nano-sized electronic circuits."
• DNI to disclose total intelligence budget, United Press International, October 23. "The director of national intelligence says the total size of the current classified U.S. intelligence budget will be disclosed for the first time within a week."
• Spy chief to disclose secret: U.S. intel spending by Siobhan Gorman, The Swamp, October 22. "The nation's spy chief will soon divulge one of the government's most tightly-held secrets: the size of the national intelligence budget."
• White House Opposes House Bill to Amend FISA, Statement of Administration Policy, October 16. "If H.R. 3773 is presented in its current form to the President, the Director of National Intelligence and the President�s other senior advisers will recommend that he veto the bill."
• Clinton Criticizes CIA for Shying Away From Hands-On Work by Josh Gerstein, New York Sun, October 16. "At a time when many Democrats are faulting the CIA for its aggressive interrogation practices and a new Hollywood film is attacking the agency for transferring terrorism suspects to shadowy regimes, Senator Clinton is going against the grain by critiquing the CIA for shying away from the hands-on overseas work needed to keep America safe."
• White House Opposes Bill to Extend Jurisdiction to Crimes Committed by Contractors Abroad, Statement of Administration Policy, October 3. "The bill would have unintended and intolerable consequences for crucial and necessary national security activities and operations."
• Bush's Free-Speech Radical by Jack Shafer, Slate, October 1. "Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates adores the press, and he doesn't care who knows it. Well, he's a tad more direct than that--Gates adores the press, and he wants everybody to know it."
• Commercial Satellite Imaging Closing In on Military Capabilities by Eleanor Stables, CQ Homeland Security, September 30. "The Department of Homeland Security will delay a program to expand domestic satellite surveillance to answer lawmakers' questions regarding the program's impact on civil liberties and privacy."