Coins DIG

The secret of the spy budget has been disclosed by the Bush administration. The budget is estimated at $43.5 billion. It is interesting to note that the secret of the budget has been kept for more than 60 years.

"Disclosure of the amount of the budget is a good first step toward accountability," outlined Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists.

At the end of fiscal 2007 in October, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence made public the whole figure for overall U.S. intelligence spending.

U.S. Congress authorized the disclosure of the spy budget in its law, which passed in August. It was made for implementing the recommendations of a commission that lead the investigations regarding the attacks of September 11.

According to the intelligent office, the details about the budget will remain confidential. For a long time their opposed to disclosing their budget fearing that the enemies might learn from the information.

The $43.5 billion is a figure, which is 50 percent above the sum that the government presumably spent back in 2001.

"That's a large increase in spending that is difficult to spend wisely," mentioned Aftergoo. He also added that this figure does not comprise about $10 billion spent for military intelligence.

As a response to the suite of the federation the CIA disclosed its spending of $26.6 billion in 1997, including money for military intelligence.

A year later CIA has once again lost the fight and revealed its budget. This however did not happed in 1999 when CIA finally won. All the other efforts meant to make the CIA budget public also failed.

According to Aftregood, making the budget public will help in putting in perspective the money spend by intelligent agencies. The current figure represents 1.6 percent of the U.S. budget for 2007.

Democrat John Rockefeller of West Virginia, who is the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a statement mentioned, "The American people have a right to know what their government's priorities are and whether we're spending too much or too little on intelligence matters."