Did 9/11 Make CIA Richer? ‘Black budget' Shows Fat Growth of CIA
The U.S. secret budget shows great progress since the twin tower tragedy.
9/11 has apparently had a strange effect on the intelligence community budget. It has grown significantly. "Black Budget" is used for hacking foreign networks, reports the Washington Post on Thursday. There have been fresh endeavours to have more control over the international computer networks, it seems. Secret documents which had previously been revealed by the whistle-blower Edward Snowden showed critical evidence that supported the allegation.
The total amount of the "Black Budget" for the financial year of 2013 is $52.6 billion. The amount is almost twice the estimate of the budget in 2001. It is 25% more than what was allotted in 2006. According the Snowden's documents, American spy agencies established a "colossus" that had been gathering critical information since 9/11. On the contrary, it has miserably failed to provide any details to the U.S. president regarding any sort of security threat on the country.
Snowden's documents further show that the community of the American intelligence consists of 107,035 employees in 16 spy agencies which are involved in overseas covert operations, cyber sabotage and similar activities all over the globe.
The dramatic resurgence in the CIA budget comes as a surprise to many as CIA has accepted intelligence failure to prevent the 9/11 tragedy as well as the 2003 Iraq invasion by the U.S. army. CIA has interestingly increased its strength of employees to 25% compared to what it consisted of a decade back. This year CIA consists of 21,575 employees.
The plump budget is used for its employees, spy satellites and high-tech equipment. The list of employees include linguistic experts, analysts, cryptologists and cyber specialists who appear to grower larger over the time.
In addition to that, the amount is also used in funding a counterterrorism centre, several paramilitary operations and secret prisons. Around $2.3 billion are spent for human intelligence operations, according to the Washington Post.
James Clapper, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, responded to the Post's queries and confessed that there had been "a considerable investment" that served the Intelligence Community since 9/11.
Video source: YouTube:Alex Kaplan