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News :: Miscellaneous |
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PATRIOTISM AND CIA BUDGET SECRECY |
Current rating: 0 |
by Steven Aftergood
(No verified email address) |
02 Apr 2001
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The only thing left out of this excellent article is:
Who accounts for all the drug money that has long financed many of the CIA's shadier operations?
From the April 2, 2001 Secrecy News mail list: |
Patriotism means loyalty to one\'s country. But unlike most other
countries, the United States is established upon a set of principles
that transcend ethnicity or other incidental attributes. So no one can be an
American patriot who is not devoted to those principles, which are
enshrined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
This is inconvenient for those in the U.S. intelligence community who
would claim the mantle of patriotism without the burden of adhering to the
precepts of American democracy.
When President Bush visited the Central Intelligence Agency on March 20,
DCI George J. Tenet told him: \"Mr. President, you will never find a more
dedicated, hardworking, patriotic, decent group of Americans than the
men and women of CIA and our Intelligence Community.\"
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2001/03/cia032001.html
Granting that CIA employees are dedicated, hardworking, and decent, are
they also patriotic? Not if patriotism implies strict adherence to the
Constitution.
CIA\'s secretive budgeting practices place the Agency outside the clear
boundaries defined by the U.S. Constitution, which dictates in Article I
that \"a regular statement and account of the receipts and expenditures
of all public money shall be published from time to time.\"
Though the details of what is required by such a \"statement and account\"
are not spelled out, the Constitution nevertheless guarantees that \"all
public money\" shall somehow be publicly accounted for. This is an
indispensable feature of American governance.
Remarkably, the Constitution\'s only other explicit \"public right to
know\" requirement -- which dictates that each House of Congress publish a
journal of its proceedings, i.e. the Congressional Record -- includes an
exception for portions that \"may require secrecy.\" In contrast, there is no
comparable exemption from publication for secret budget expenditures.
Historically, it is true, some forms of secret spending have been
accepted as a necessary compromise. Even George Washington had a $40,000
contingency fund to use for confidential diplomatic purposes, as Louis Fisher noted
in his 1975 book Presidential Spending Power.
The difference is that in the past such contingency funds were openly
appropriated by Congress. The American public knew how much money was
involved, though not how it was to be used. When it comes to modern day
intelligence spending, however, even this modified form of
constitutional compliance is missing.
Moving Beyond Secrecy to Deception
But it gets worse. Because CIA funds are concealed within the
appropriations for the Department of Defense, the defense budget is
artificially inflated by the hidden CIA dollars. This means that the
publicly reported defense budget is deliberately inaccurate in its
overall size and in some of its details.
Thus, CIA budgetary practices have moved beyond simple budget secrecy to
active misrepresentation, something that never existed in U.S.
government budgets prior to the cold war. Whatever the constitutional requirement
for a \"regular statement and account\" means, it cannot possibly permit a
false statement and account of the defense budget.
In fairness, the CIA is not solely responsible for this policy. In
fact, CIA officials who violate the Constitution, one might say, are simply
obeying the law, especially the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949.
Today, Congressional \"conservatives\" -- whose conservatism apparently
does not extend to a rigorous defense of the U.S. Constitution -- oppose
declassification even of the annual aggregate total of a dozen different
intelligence agency budgets. (The independent-minded Senator Arlen
Specter is perhaps the only Republican exception to this rule.)
It was over congressional objections that the intelligence budget total
was disclosed for the first time as the result of a Freedom of Information
Act lawsuit in 1997 ($26.6. billion) and 1998 ($26.7 billion). Since 1999
it has remained classified.
\"From Time to Time\" Cannot Mean \"Never\"
Still, it is the CIA that is the most egregious violator of the
Constitutional accounting requirement. Recently, CIA officials refused
to disclose even 50 year old intelligence budget totals, claiming that to
do so \"could reasonably be expected to cause damage to national security.\"
This is of course national security nonsense. (As an aside, it might be
noted that some historical budget information has been declassified,
harmlessly and evidently without these officials\' knowledge or
permission.)
More importantly, however, the CIA\'s policy of permanent budget secrecy
is in gross violation of the Constitutional requirement to publish an
account of the budget \"from time to time.\" Whatever \"from time to time\" means,
it clearly does not mean \"never.\"
There may not be a large number of Americans who are eager to know
exactly how much money is in the budget of the CIA and other intelligence
agencies. A 1998 Pentagon survey suggested that a slight majority of
the public actually favors intelligence budget secrecy. Nevertheless, every
American ought to be concerned at the CIA\'s ability to effectively erase
a line of the U.S. Constitution.
If the government is free to simply disregard the requirement to
periodically publish \"a regular statement and account\" of its
expenditures, then the Constitution is little more than a piece a paper at the
National Archives, \"patriotism\" means nothing other than rooting for the home
team, and the rights and liberties that Americans enjoy have no firm foundation.
A recent CIA Inspector General review found that there was no \"official
misconduct\" involved in CIA\'s decision to withhold 50 year old budget
data. Such information, it appears, is properly classified, i.e.
classified according to established procedures. See:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2001/03/cia032701.html
Therefore it seems that the only remaining way to comply with the U.S.
Constitution is through an unauthorized disclosure of \"properly
classified\" budget information.
That would require patriotism of an unusual order.
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