ABSTRACT

Intelligence accounts for approximately 10 percent of America’s security effort.1 Approximately is the correct modifier because intelligence is, of course, mostly a secret enterprise. The government only started releasing an official budget for the “Intelligence Community” in 2007, and it still does not release many details about the allocations to particular programs or activities within this total. The release indicates that it excludes some intelligence activities, but even so, the official numbers are huge, with $66.8 billion appropriated in 2015, down from a peak of $80.1 billion in 2010. Most of that reduction came in the part of the budget that supports the military’s tactical operations, which scaled back as major combat operations stopped in Iraq but is sure to rise again through the ups and downs of US interventions. The annual budget for the National Intelligence Program, which accounts for most but not all activities other than tactical military intelligence, has held fairly steady around $50 billion after its substantial increases in the 2000s.2