[Intelforum] Secrecy News -- 11/03/11

Thu Nov 3 10:02:10 EDT 2011

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SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2011, Issue No. 103
November 3, 2011

Secrecy News Blog:  http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

**     HELP SUPPORT SECRECY NEWS
**     SOME CORRECTIONS ON INTELLIGENCE BUDGET SECRECY

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Last week, the Congressional Research Service issued a report about "The
Arsenal Act," a peculiar and little-known law dating back to 1854 that
authorizes the Secretary of the Army to "abolish any United States arsenal
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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.

	http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2011/11/prospects_fade.html

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).

	http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2010_cr/house-fy10auth.html

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."

_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
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_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web:    www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email:  saftergood at fas.org
voice:  (202) 454-4691
twitter: @saftergood