US lawmakers want to know details of spying budget

A bipartisan group of 62 members of the US House of Representatives have called on President Barack Obama to disclose the details of the US spying budget in his fiscal year 2015 budget.

“The current practice of providing no specificity whatsoever regarding the overall budget requests for each intelligence agency falls woefully short of basic accountability requirements,” the US lawmakers said in a letter sent to Obama on Wednesday.

“As you develop your fiscal year 2015 budget, we strongly urge you to take a simple step toward much needed transparency by including the total amount requested for each of the sixteen intelligence agencies. We believe the top line number for each agency should be made public, with no risk to national security, for comparative purposes across all federal government agencies,” they added.

Congress is only provided with information about the total of the budget allocated to the US Intelligence Community each year when it is asked to approve the budget and the top line spending levels for the 16 distinct spy agencies within the Community are not disclosed.

Based on documents obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Washington Post published in August last year the details of US spy agencies’ spending levels in the fiscal year 2013 budget.

According to the Post’s report, the CIA was the top spender, being granted $14.7 billion of the intelligence budget. The National Security Agency (NSA) was ranked the second top spender, getting $10.8 billion of the $52.6 billion budget allocated to the National Intelligence Program (NIP). The NIP is distinct from the Military Intelligence Program which usually costs American taxpayers something between $20 and $25 billion each year.

Snowden’s leaks also revealed that the CIA and the NSA received a 56 and 53 percent increase, respectively, in their budgets since 2004.