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Dear Mr. President:

We are writing to urge you to make public the total intelligence budget for the current fiscal year, as your Administration has done for each of the past two years, as well as the total amount requested for intelligence for FY 2000, as recommended by a bipartisan consensus of national security experts.

Disclosure of the intelligence budget total is an outstanding symbol of the intelligence community's efforts to adjust to the new demands of the post-Cold War environment. Following a year of deliberation, the bipartisan Aspin-Brown Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community concluded that each year the budget total and the amount requested for the coming year could and should be disclosed:

"After weighing the arguments, the Commission concludes that the President should disclose to the public the overall figure for the intelligence budget. The Commission believes this can be done in a manner that does not raise a significant security concern. While disclosure would necessarily convey limited information, it would let the American public know what is being spent on intelligence as a proportion of federal spending. This in itself is a worthwhile purpose, and may, to some degree, help restore the confidence of the American people in the intelligence function. A number of foreign governments, including the British and Australian, have disclosed their intelligence budgets to the public without adverse effect. The Commission believes it can be done here as well."

"[Recommendation] 14-2. The Commission recommends that at the beginning of each congressional budget cycle, the President or a designee disclose the total amount of money appropriated for intelligence activities for the current fiscal year (to include NFIP, JMIP, and TIARA) and the total amount being requested for the next fiscal year. Such disclosures could either be made as part of the President's annual budget submission or, separately, in unclassified letters to the congressional intelligence committees."

Accordingly, we request that at or around the time the FY 2000 budget request is submitted to Congress, you disclose the amount of the total intelligence appropriation for FY 1999 and the amount requested for intelligence for FY 2000, as unanimously recommended by the Aspin-Brown Commission.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr.
Barney Frank
Bernie Sanders
Sam Farr
Gary Ackerman
Peter DeFazio
George Miller
Jerrold Nadler
James Oberstar
Lloyd Doggett
Lane Evans
Maxine Waters
Jim McDermott
Carolyn Kilpatrick
Bill Luther
Bennie Thompson
Dave Minge
Pete Stark
Nancy Pelosi
John Spratt
Norm Dicks
Maurice Hinchey
Melvin Watt
James McGovern
Dennis Kucinich
Tom Barrett

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