U.S. secret intelligence budget surges after 9/11 terrorist attacks: report

The secret budget for the intelligence community in the United States has gone up greatly since the terrorist attacks more than a decade ago and as a result of aggressive new efforts made to hack into foreign computer networks, the Washington Post reported Thursday citing new documents revealed by former defense contractor Edward Snowden.

Citing findings in the classified documents obtained from Snowden, the newspaper said the U.S. spy agencies have built “an intelligence-gathering colossus” since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but remained unable to provide critical information to the president on a range of national security threats.

The “black budget” for the fiscal year 2013, for instance, totaled 52.6 billion U.S. dollars, about twice the estimated size of the 2001 budget and 25 percent above that of 2006.

According to a 178-page budget summary for the National Intelligence Program, the U.S. intelligence community consists of 16 spy agencies with 107,035 employees.

Spending by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has grown to 14.7 billion dollars in requested funding for the year of 2013, more than any other spy agency and nearly 50 percent above that of the National Security Agency (NSA), which has been under fire at home and abroad for secret spying programs revealed by Snowden since June.

In a response to inquiries from the Washington Post, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admitted the U.S. has made “a considerable investment in the Intelligence Community” since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The documents also disclosed that both the CIA and NSA have launched new “offensive cyber operations” to hack into foreign computer networks to steal information or sabotage enemy systems. Also, the NSA has planned to investigate at least 4,000 possible insider threats in 2013, and the U.S. spy agencies have worried long before Snowden’s leaks about “anomalous behavior” by personnel with access to highly classified material.

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