CIA Won't Disclose Total Intelligence Appropriation for Fiscal Year
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 25, 1998; Page A10
The controversy, unfolding in federal court, began two years ago, when the Federation of American Scientists filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA to obtain the total amount of government appropriations for the CIA and a dozen other U.S. agencies that gather intelligence.
Tenet ultimately provided the information, revealing that appropriations for intelligence totaled $26.6 billion in fiscal 1997 and $26.7 billion in fiscal 1998, which ended Sept. 30. Although fairly accurate estimates long have been available, that marked the first time taxpayers knew how much was being spent to support overseas espionage, counterterrorist and counternarcotics activities, satellite imagery, worldwide electronic eavesdropping and covert operations in places such as Iraq.
The FAS and other disclosure advocates hailed the move, arguing that taxpayers have a basic right to participate in the debate over federal spending priorities. The advocates noted at the time that a blue-ribbon government panel on the future of U.S. intelligence had recommended in 1996 that each year's intelligence appropriation, and the request for the coming year, should be included in the president's annual budget submission to Congress.
But when the FAS decided to push for that standard and asked the CIA last January to divulge the administration's fiscal 1999 request for intelligence, the CIA refused on national security grounds.
In August, with the fiscal 1999 budget still being debated, the FAS filed suit in U.S. District Court to obtain the information after the CIA denied its final FOIA appeal. A second lawsuit could be in the offing if the CIA continues to deny a new FOIA request filed by the federation in October to obtain a number for the fiscal 1999 appropriation.
Tenet's response to the first lawsuit amounts to an unambiguous denial. Divulging the administration's budget request for intelligence, he argued in a lengthy affidavit filed two weeks ago, "would permit foreign governments to learn about United States' intelligence collection priorities and redirect their own resources to frustrate the United States' intelligence collection efforts, with the resulting damage to our national security."
Tenet made no direct statement in the affidavit about whether he intended to release the fiscal 1999 appropriation in concert with the practice he began two fiscal years ago. But he noted that disclosure of the appropriation is not automatic and "will be considered only after determining whether such disclosure could cause harm to the national security by showing trends over time."
Steven Aftergood, who directs the FAS's project on government secrecy, rejected Tenet's argument that disclosing the country's budget total for intelligence could somehow tip America's adversaries to particular intelligence priorities. Disclosing the mere fact that the Clinton administration had requested around $26 billion for intelligence, he said, would tell an adversary nothing about hundreds of individual, classified programs funded in the budget across a dozen agencies or more.
Yet disclosing the number, Aftergood argued, is critical to the public. "Each year the intelligence community is given an enormous sum of money without public awareness or debate," he said. "Disclosure of the aggregate amount would enable a minimal level of public participation in the intelligence budget process without endangering national security."
In his affidavit, Tenet said that the CIA Act of 1949 expresses Congress's view "that intelligence appropriations and expenditures . . . be shielded from public view. Simply stated, the means of providing money to the CIA is itself an intelligence method. . . . Therefore I have determined that disclosure of the budget request would tend to reveal intelligence sources and methods that are protected from disclosure."
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company