WHAT IS THE BUDGET FIGURE FOR THE CIA?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP89B00552R000100080005-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 5, 2004
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: July 31, 1975
• Content Type: PAPER

NNTEf fGENCE COMMUNL' 'STAFF
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31 July 1975
STATINTL'
The draft prepared for DCI's use Monday,
4 August, used most of this. it does need
some beefing up as regards our own analytic
work.
JMC
INFORMATION
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Mr. Chairman,
I am bound by law to protect the intelligence sources and methods
of this nation. I am further bound by my oath of office and by my own
conscience to carry out the duties assigned to me as fully and effectively
as possible. It is crystal clear from the legislative history of the estab-
lishment of CIA that Congress believed that the financial transactions
related to intelligence should remain. secret. The Congress has consistently
reaffirmed that position over the years--most recently in the Senate last
June, when a proposed amendment requiring release of an annual. budget
figure for intelligence was rejected by a vote of 55 to 33. If the Congress
changes the law, we will of course conform. But I am strongly opposed to
such fiction, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to tell you and the
American public why I think it an unnecessary step, and one that inevitably
will weaken our intelligence effort and our national security.
Many people feel that there is something unAmerican about fiscal
secrecy, pointing to the Constitutional provision requiring that ."No money
shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations
made by law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and
Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time . "
Mr. Chairman, that wording was debated at the Constitutional Convention;
the debate shows clearly that the framers knowingly and deliberately
chose those words to give Congress the power to withhold certain
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appropriations and expenditure data from the public, at least temporarily.
And Congress has exercised that option repeatedly over the years
One common argument for an open budget is that Members of
Congress must know whether a particular appropriation bill contains
money for CIA in order to fully exercise their Constutional duties. But
it is a matter of record that CIA funds are contained only in Defense
Department appropriations, and any member who wants to know which
specific line items are involved can readily obtain that information, on
a confidential basis, from the Chairmen of our Appropriations Committees.
Thus this is no reason for declassifying the figure.
Another argument is that the American people have not only a
right,but a real need to know about the CIA budget and that a dollar
alone will satisfy this perceived need. Frankly I do not believe that a
single money amount will serve any useful purpose. The dollar figure
has meaning only if you know what it includes and what it excludes,
how much is spent in the US and how much abroad, how much goes
for people and how much for other purposes, and how these amounts
are related to similar amounts for past years. We go into these details
in depth with the Congressional Committees designated by the Congress,
and I am prepared to support any strengthening of.the oversight mechanism
Congress chooses, so long as confidentiality can be maintained. But I
cannot share these details with the American public without sharing them
with the world at large.
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I could, of course, take the easy way out and answer your question
today,. planning to refuse to answer a similar question next year. Such
a course is impractical. A precedent would be established. At the very
least we would have to reveal a budget total each year. That would
immediately give an intelligence analyst in another country something to
work with. Moreover, I doubt that the damage would stop there. If
figures for two years were available, would the members of this Committee
refrain from questions about the reasons for the differences? Would the
.press?
.My conviction that one revelation will lead to another is based on
more than a "feeling". The atomic weapons budget has always been
considered sensitive, and the Manhattan' project was concealed completely
during World War II. With the establishment of the AEC, however, a
decision was made to include, in the 1947 budget a one-line entry. Erosion
of security followed rapidly. ' By 1974, 'a 15-page breakout and discussion
of the atomic weapons program was being published. Were the intelligence
budget to undergo a similar experience, the consequences could be very
serious .
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There are intelligence analysis techniques that could easily be
applied to budget data on the Agency or any other intelligence organization.
that is why a careful check on our part has not turned up any
.example of a government anywhere in the world that publishes so
much as a single figure on its intelligence budget. Look at this problem as
we in intelligence look at foreign problems. For example, the Chinese
have not published the value of their industrial production since 1960.
But they have published percentage increases for some years without
specifying the base, 'both for the nation and for most of the provinces.
It took one key figure to make these pieces useful; when the Chinese
reported that the value of industrial production in 1971 was 21 times that
of 1942, we could derive an absolute figure for 1971. With this benchmark,
we could reconstruct time series. both nationally and province by province.
If we begin releasing budget figures, others will be able to take scraps
of information about the Agency and use a similar kind of analysis to
ferret out details that would put some of our operations in jeopardy.
Let me turn your attention for a moment to the development of the
U-2. Our budget did increase significantly during the development
phase. That fact, if public, would have attracted attention abroad.
If. it had been supplemented by knowledge available perhaps from Aviation
Week, industry rumor or advanced espionage techniques) that funds were
being committed 'to a major aircraft manufacturer and to a manufacturer
of sophisticated mapping cameras, the correct conclusion would be simple
to draw. The US manufacturers in question, their employees and their
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