Some Corrections on Intelligence Budget Secrecy
Earlier this week, we noted that it was increasingly unlikely that the budget for the National Intelligence Program (NIP) would be removed from concealment in the Defense Department budget and given its own budget line item, as the Director of National Intelligence and others had proposed.
Instead, the status quo is likely to persist, we wrote, because “Congress likes it that way.” But this remark was too glib. The language we cited from the House version of the Defense Appropriations Act that would prohibit NIP separation has not been adopted in the Senate. Influential members of the Senate Intelligence Committee actually favor a separate NIP budget as a way to increase transparency and to provide the DNI with greater control of appropriated funds. So Congress is not of one mind on this question, and it has not completed action on the prohibition proposed in the House.
We also mistakenly credited the DNI with “voluntarily” disclosing the amount of the FY2012 NIP budget request in February of this year. But in fact, that disclosure was not voluntary. It was mandated by Congress in the FY2010 Intelligence Authorization Act (section 364).
While disclosure of the budget request for the National Intelligence Program is required by law, the disclosure of the budget request for the Military Intelligence Program (MIP) is not specifically required. Secrecy News asked the Pentagon to disclose it anyway. Officials said a response to that request would be forthcoming “sometime around January 1, 2012.”
Satellite imagery of RAF Lakenheath reveals new construction of a security perimeter around ten protective aircraft shelters in the designated nuclear area, the latest measure in a series of upgrades as the base prepares for the ability to store U.S. nuclear weapons.
It will take consistent leadership and action to navigate the complex dangers in the region and to avoid what many analysts considered to be an increasingly possible outcome, a nuclear conflict in East Asia.
Getting into a shutdown is the easy part, getting out is much harder. Both sides will be looking to pin responsibility on each other, and the court of public opinion will have a major role to play as to who has the most leverage for getting us out.
How the United States responds to China’s nuclear buildup will shape the global nuclear balance for the rest of the century.