> Can anybody tell me what the estimated budget of the National Security
> Agency is? Extra credit if you can tell me how much it is estimated they
> spend on Echelon, the communications surveillance project.
I had this odd tidbit stored away, but I'd find someone with Times archive access to verify:
"Spying Budget Made Public By Mistake", By Tim Weiner The New York Times, November 5 1994
By mistake, a Congressional subcommittee has published an unusually detailed breakdown of the highly classified "black budget" for United States intelligence agencies.
In previously defeating a bill that would have made this information public, the White House, CIA and Pentagon argued that revealing the secret budget would cause grave damage to the national security of the United States.
$3.1 billion for the CIA $10.4 billion for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines special-operations units $13.2 billion for the NSA/NRO/DIA
I've seen another estimate of +/- $4 billion for the NSA alone, but given that their allocation is officially "off the books" it's probably anybody's guess. Ditto for Echelon of course. A search on "Duncan Campbell" might turn something up, as he's written extensively on Echelon.
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/ dave /