Former Intelligence contractor Edward Snowden has leaked a new top-secret document showing the United States has built an Å“intelligence-gathering colossus” with a whopping Å“black budget” of $52.6 billion for the current fiscal year.
The 178-page budget summary for the National Intelligence Program, obtained by the Washington Post, discloses for the first time how the US spy agencies spend tens of billions of dollars annually on spy programs without being able to provide Å“critical information to the president on a range of national security threats.”
The US intelligence budget is not allowed to be published for those outside of the intelligence community and is only made known to a portion of people who are briefed on spying operations.
According to the newly-disclosed documents, the Å“black budget” is larger than the sum received by the Department of the Interior, the Department of Commerce and NASA this year combined.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) receives the lionâ„¢s share-$14.7 billion– of the secret budget.
Snowden gained access to thousands of top-secret intelligence files while working for the National Security Agency (NSA) as a contractor. The tech analyst, who now resides in an unknown location in Russia, has revealed a portion of those documents to the news media.
The NSA’s portion of the intelligence budget was $10.5 billion in 2013, according to the Post.
The new files also show that the CIA and the NSA have begun Å“offensive cyber-operations” to hack into computer networks in other countries to steal information or sabotage their systems.
HJ/HJ
Republished from: Press TV