Classified US Intel Budget Revealed Via Powerpoint 364
Atario writes "In a holdover from the Cold War when the number really did matter to national security, the size of the US national intelligence budget remains one of the government's most closely guarded secrets. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the highest intelligence agency in the country that oversees all federal intelligence agencies, appears to have inadvertently released the keys to that number in an unclassified PowerPoint presentation now posted on the website of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). By reverse engineering the numbers in an underlying data element embedded in the presentation, it seems that the total budget of the 16 US intelligence agencies in fiscal year 2005 was $60 billion, almost 25% higher than previously believed."
Link to the actual PowerPoint slideshow (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Guess the DoD changed their security policy (Score:3, Informative)
It's been taken down though, slashdotted before the first post even...
Outdated link (Score:5, Informative)
It's now been posted [fas.org] by the Federation of American Scientists.
There are, however, a number of other contracting briefs and presentations posted here [dia.mil]
Re:Name that quote (Score:3, Informative)
RTFA ! (Score:5, Informative)
third column for 100% :
95 1850 2643
96 1950 2786
97 1800 2571
98 1775 2536
99 2150 3071
00 1754 2506
01 2170 3100
02 3140 4486
03 4203 6004
04 4049 5784
05 4200 6000
06 3964 5663
So, from 1995 to 2005, an increase of 227%, correspondig to an annual increase of 8,5%.
And, from 2000 to 2005, an increase of 239%, corresponding to an annual increase of 19,1%.
Re:Quote from ID4 (Score:5, Informative)
1. How right you are about the no-bid, money-wasting thing--it's happening right now in Iraq, where millions have been wasted and in many cases, little reconstruction to show for it [coastalpost.com] (sorry about the Coastal Post link--it was in major news publications a couple of weeks ago, but this is the most relevant recent hit in a Google News "Bechtel Iraq" search).
2. Isn't it sad that you have to say "probably," because in so many cases, it seems like these huge taxpayer decisions are made without anyone knowing about them?
Re:Important information from the article... (Score:1, Informative)
I'm thinking of Vanity Fair's interesting article about SAIC.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/
Re:Important information from the article... (Score:4, Informative)
Um, yes, that's what this entire issue is about.
The blog that contains this article [thespywhobilledme.com] is called "The Spy Who Billed Me: Outsourcing the War on Terror", and the presentation itself [fas.org] is titled "Procuring the Future", and is entirely dedicated to contractors and contract acquisition, and the fact that the IC couldn't function or do its job without the variety of speciality contractors and services. The way the IC budget was "deduced" was by seeing dollars spent on contractors, and the knowledge that constituted "70%" of spending.
Yeah, the contract issue in general is one of concern, but, like all things, it's not simply "good" or "bad"; it has benefits, drawbacks, advantages, and problems, and the key is proper management of such resources. Keep in mind that all contractor issues aren't "outsourcing" in the way some like to think: it includes all manner of acquisition of capabilities and services, which also necessarily includes labor.
Not really (Score:3, Informative)
That is also how the DOD, CIA, and NSA works. There is so much information, that it is impossible to hide it all. This is no different than the "slip-up" that occured in the 80's concerning project aurora. It never was. But it kept the USSR and our free press (it was relatively free back than; now it is censored.) looking for it, rather than at our space birds.
Re:Guess the DoD changed their security policy (Score:1, Informative)
Assumption being that the Cold War is indeed over (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Outdated link (Score:2, Informative)
This happens all the time, and in badly checked documents, you can often find whole paragraphs that are entirely unrelated to the subject. I see it all the time in purchase specifications and requisitions that get created in the industry that I work in.
A good reason to abandon formatted word-processing documents and return to plain text files.