Top secret report shows US spending $52.6bn on spy agencies

Top secret report shows US spending $52.6bn on spy agencies  US intelligence agencies are spending USD 52.6 billion on data collecting and foreign surveillance efforts, according to the latest top secret files released Thursday by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. Snowden's latest cache of top-secret government documents, printed in the Washington Post, includes a 178-page budget summary for the National Intelligence Program, which revealed the massive "black budget" for fiscal 2013 to fund intelligence operations and surveillance operations for over 16 spy agencies. The budget is reportedly 2.4 percent lower that of the year prior. It marks the first time any information has been given detailing the intelligence community's use of government funds or how it performs against the goals set by the White House or Congress. According to the documents, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) requested USD 14.7 billion in funding for 2013, nearly 50 percent more than that of the USD 10.8 billion by the National Security Agency (NSA), which conducts the wide-reaching domestic and foreign surveillance operations, and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which build the nation's geo-imagery satellites, has USD 10.3 billion. The NRO works closely with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Program (NGIP), which generates the imagery once the satellites are in orbit. The NGIP receives USD 4.9 billion per year out of the black budget. There are at least 4,000 cases of possible insider threats that the NSA planned to investigate in 2013, according to documents. These reveal the fear within the intelligence community that suspected sensitive information may have been leaked prior to Snowden's leak last month of the NSA's top-secret surveillance of millions of citizens. Intelligence agencies remained fixed on terrorism as the most serious threat to national security, with counterterrorism efforts accounting for one-third of the overall black budget spending. Counterintelligence operations are also "strategically focused against the priority targets of China, Russia, Iran, Cuba and Israel." Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the US has boosted spending on the intelligence community to allow spy agencies to fund cutting-edge technologies and for agent recruiting and ongoing operations. The Department of Defense has spent an estimate USD 500 billion on counterterrorism over the past 12 years. The surge in spending funded secret prisons, a controversial interrogation program, the deployment of lethal drones and a huge expansion of its counterterrorism center. Both the CIA and NSA have also launched an aggressive new effort, known as "offensive cyber operations," designed to hack into foreign computer networks to steal information. The demand for foreign surveillance has increased following the Arab Spring uprisings, proliferations of weapons of mass destruction technology, and cyber warfare threats. But despite the vast resources, US intelligence agencies still face gaps in intelligence, called "blind spots," particularly related to chemical and nuclear weapons. There are at least five "critical" gaps related to North Korea's nuclear program and more gaps in the chemical programs in Russia and Pakistan.