Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s latest document release entails the top secret U.S. intelligence “black budget” for fiscal year 2013, as obtained and published by the Washington Post on Thursday.
The $52.6 billion document, which the Post presented in summary tables and charts due to the sensitive nature of information, reveals cutting-edge technologies employed by the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies, as well as recruitment and ongoing operations, in particular China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
The summary provides a detailed look at how the U.S. intelligence community has been reconfigured by the massive infusion of resources that followed the Sept. 11 attacks. The United States has spent more than $500 billion on intelligence during that period, an outlay that U.S. officials say has succeeded in its main objective: preventing another catastrophic terrorist attack in the United States.
The result is an espionage empire with resources and reach beyond those of any adversary, sustained even now by spending that rivals or exceeds the levels reached at the height of the Cold War.
Read the Post’s report here.
Brendan Buck, press secretary for House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), reacted to the report on Twitter:
What whistle is being blown with this latest disclosure?
— Brendan Buck (@Brendan_Buck) August 29, 2013