The simplest way to avoid asking a question is to treat the answer as given. We have seen a good example of this in Alexander Cockburn's approach to the assassination: the question of conspiracy is insignificant because there was no conspiracy. The first question, Was there a conspiracy?, is never asked, much less answered.
This is especially common with figures, because no matter how wildly inaccurate they are, "figures don't lie." People do, though. For example, somehow, somewhere, the figure of $30 billion for the US intelligence budget was added to the menu of lies the corporate media present for public consumption. I saw the figure first in Time magazine:
About half of the classified fund, estimated at $30 billion for 1990, is earmarked for tactical and military intelligence. The CIA, NSA, DIA and civilian intelligence groups share the remainder (4/23/90).
Note that it suffices to cite the figure, which, despite the "estimated," perseveres from publication to publication without anyone stopping to ask who made the estimation and how. This "information" from the world's largest magazine, published by the world's largest media conglomerate, was seemingly confirmed the same year in a book published by another Time Warner company, which put the intelligence bill plus the cost of all other secret programs hidden in the Pentagon budget at $34-36 billion:
But I can say with assurance that the black budget peaked at about $36 billion a year in 1988 and 1989. This year, in the fiscal 1991 Pentagon request, the declassification of the costs of the Stealth bomber and MILSTAR [a military satellite system designed to coordinate a protracted nuclear war] brought the black budget back down toward $34 billion (Tim Weiner, Blank Check, NY: Warner Books, 1990, p. 16).
A year and a half later, Newsweek can mention "the $30 billion annual U.S. intelligence budget" (9/9/91:20) in passing, treating it as an established truth.
$100 million of taxpayers' money spent secretly every day, 365 days a year, is bad enough. But if Big Brother's mouthpieces are set on having us swallow this much, we can be sure the whole truth is even less palatable. Beyond the unmentionable fact that any secret government budget violates the Constitution, inviting abuse and tyranny, the few reliable sources available on the subject indicate a figure much higher than $30 billion, which leads to the suspicion that Time's anonymous source was the CIA public relations office. If that is true, it is obvious why the source isn't mentioned: it would discredit the "information."
I will propose a different figure, which may also be inaccurate, but at least I will be honest enough to say how I arrived at it.
In The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (NY: Alfred Knopf, 1974, p. 61, 81) Victor Marchetti and John Marks put the overall intelligence budget at $6.228 billion for 1973, of which the CIA disposed of $750 million. Sean Gervasi extrapolates from this and other sources to arrive at an estimated $1.5 billion CIA budget for 1978 (Covert Action Information Bulletin 7, 12/9-1/80, p. 18), which would put the overall budget at $12.456 billion, according to Marchetti and Marks' analysis of the distribution of funds among the various agencies.
This figure of $12.456 billion for 1978 is a conservative estimate, since according to David Wise the overall budget was already at $12 billion in 1975:
In 1975 the entire CIA budget was hidden within a $2 billion appropriation for "Other Procurement, Air Force." The $12 billion total for all U.S. intelligence, much higher than previous estimates, was indicated in the report of the Senate intelligence committee" (The American Police State, 1976, NY: Random House, p. 185).
The figure of $12.456 for 1978 represents an increase of exactly 100% over a period of five years (1973-78). This corresponds remarkably well to Newsweek's report in 1983 that the CIA budget had increased at a rate of 17% annually since 1980 (10/10/83:30). The following figures, then, suggest themselves (in bilions of dollars):
Year
1973
1978
1983
Overall Intelligence
6.228
12.456
24.912
49.824
99.648
CIA
0.75
1.5
3
6
12
1988
1993
The figures for 1991 would be approximately $83.04 billion (overall) and $10 billion (CIA). This conforms with a 1990 estimate of the CIA budget at $10-12 billion by the editors of Covert Action Information Bulletin, a journal that specializes in intelligence affairs (35, Fall 1990, p. 2).
If Marchetti and Marks' breakdown is still correct, about 34.7% of the CIA's budget is spent on covert action. This is supplemented indirectly by about 60% of the allocations officially designated for the Science and Technology and Administration directorates. About one-third of these direct and indirect covert action funds go for media and propaganda activities.
Following this schema, Gervasi estimates the total cost of covert propaganda in 1978 to be $265 million. This is about $10 million more than the combined budgets of Reuters, U.P.I., and A.P. for that year.
The same calculation for 1991 would put CIA propaganda expenditures at $1.767 billion. This makes the CIA a major media mogul. For comparison, in 1989, Time Warner, the worldwide No. 1 media mogul, had total sales of $7.642 billion. Time magazine, which has the largest circulation of any periodical, had revenue in 1989 of $373.4 million. These figures can be compared to a estimated CIA propaganda budget of $1.237 billion for the same year. In other words, the CIA's propaganda budget is more than three times that of Time.
The structure of the CIA (especially with the addition of a fifth economics directorate) and the intelligence community has changed since 1973, but since there is little else to go on, let us see, just out of curiosity, what Marchetti and Marks' breakdown might look like in 1991:
Having said this much, I must admit that none of these figures mean very much. The CIA budget, for example, whatever it is, does not include two other sources of income which are virtually limitless: proprietaries and transfers of funds (as well as men and materiel) from other government agencies. In 1973, Marchetti and Marks tell us that the CIA was "the owner of one of the biggest–if not the biggest–fleets of 'commercial' airplanes in the world" (p. 137). The profits from such proprietaries–companies secretly owned or controlled by the CIA–disappear without a trace into the black hole of non-accountable CIA coffers. To add insult to injury, much of this money comes from government contracts, so that the taxpayer ends up paying twice for his secret police–first through black budget appropriations (hidden in defense and other allocations), and secondly by government contracts awarded to CIA proprietaries. For example, in 1972 Southern Air Transport, a CIA proprietary, had a $2 million AID contract to fly relief supplies to Bangladesh; the next year, Air America, another well-known CIA proprietary airline, received $41.4 million worth of DOD contracts ((Marchetti and Marks, p. 142).
The legal basis for this robbery is the CIA Act of 1949, which states, in blatant violation of the US Constitution:
(a) Notwithstanding any other provisions of law, sums made available to the Agency by appropriation or otherwise may be expended for purposes necessary to carry out its functions, including–(1) personal services, including personal services without regard to limitations on types of persons to be employed...(2) supplies, equipment, and personnel and contractual services otherwise authorized by law and regulations, when approved by the Director.
(b) The sums made available to the Agency may be expended without regard to the provisions of law and regulations relating to the expenditure of Government funds; and for objects of a confidential, extraordinary, or emergency nature, such expenditures to be accounted for solely on the certificate of the Director... (Par. 403j).
In other words, the CIA can spend its money however it likes and doesn't have to tell anybody about it, the Constitution be damned. The "provisions of law" which this law annihilates are the right of the taxpayer to know what the government is doing with his money, a right which the framers of the Constitution thought they were establishing when they wrote:
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 (Article 1, Section 9).
The sums "otherwise" made available to the CIA include, besides income from proprietaries, what L. Fletcher Prouty calls "horizontal financing," which is also anchored in the unconstitutional CIA Act and allows the CIA to
...transfer to and receive from other government agencies such sums as may be approved by the Office of Management and Budget, for the performance of any functions or activities authorized...and any government agency is authorized to transfer or receive from the agency such sums without regard to any provisions of law limiting or prohibiting transfers between appropriations. Sums transferred to the agency in accordance with this paragraph may be expended for the purposes and under the authority...of this title without regard to limitations of appropriations from which transferred (CIA Act, 1949, quoted by Prouty, The Secret Team, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973, p. 383).
In other words, millions or billions of dollars appropriated by congress for one purpose can easily end up being used by the CIA for something quite different. Prouty knows from his personal experience of many years as Air Force liaison officer with the CIA that terms like "authorization" in practice mean little, since
...under high classification few people know that this is going on, and few want to become involved even if they find out. Also, the Agency works long and hard to get its own people, or entirely sympathetic people, into the key jobs where such things as this take place, and they see that the controls of the law do not bind at any point (Prouty, p. 383).
We are talking here about funds that are acquired legally, since the CIA Act, however unconstitutional, is law. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The myriad financial scandals (Iran-contra, S & L, BCCI, BNL) in which the CIA is endlessly implicated but never nailed (an Ollie North scapegoat or two normally sufficing to quell the outrage of the corporate media) provide an occasional glimpse of the shadowy network of ties between the CIA and legal and illegal industry (e.g. drug trafficking). The CIA's pork barrel is not only black and bottomless but directly connected to huge reservoirs of legitimate and illegitimate private capital, creating a coalition of secret power that is staggering to contemplate.