© Washington Post
U.S. spy agencies have built an intelligence-gathering colossus since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but remain unable to provide critical information to the president on a range of national security threats, according to the government's top-secret budget.
The $52.6 billion "black budget" for fiscal 2013, obtained by
The Washington Post from former intelligence contractor
Edward Snowden, maps a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny. Although the government has annually released its overall level of intelligence spending since 2007, it has not divulged how it uses the money or how it performs against the goals set by the president and Congress.
The 178-page budget summary for the National Intelligence Program details the successes, failures and objectives of the
16 spy agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, which has 107,035 employees.
The summary describes cutting-edge technologies, agent recruiting and ongoing operations.
The Post is withholding some information after consultation with U.S. officials who expressed concerns about the risk to intelligence sources and methods
. Sensitive details are so pervasive in the documents that
The Post is publishing only summary tables and charts online.
"The United States has made a considerable investment in the Intelligence Community since the terror attacks of 9/11, a time which includes wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction technology, and asymmetric threats in such areas as cyber-warfare," Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr.
wrote in response to inquiries from
The Post.
"Our budgets are classified as they could provide insight for foreign intelligence services to discern our top national priorities, capabilities and sources and methods that allow us to obtain information to counter threats," he said.
Among the notable revelations in the budget summary:
Comment: The "intercepted communications", by the way, came via Israel's equivalent of the NSA... Israel has already bombed Syrian military installations so it's not exactly an impartial observer in all of this.