Annual budget for US intelligence totals $44 bln

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- The annual budget for the US intelligence was 44 billion US dollars, a top American intelligence official has revealed at a public conference.

    The revelation by Mary Margaret Graham, a 27-year career veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency and now the deputy director of national intelligence for collection, was made in an apparent slip, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

    Graham revealed the amount of money for US spy agencies at an intelligence conference last week in San Antonio, Texas, and the number was reported Monday in US News and World Report, the Times report said.

    The figure itself came as no great shock, as most news reports in the last couple of years have estimated the budget at 40 billion dollars. But the fact that Graham would say it in public was a surprise, because the government has repeatedly gone to court to keep the current intelligence budget and even past budgets as far back as the 1940's from being disclosed.

    The annual budget for the US intelligence has been disclosed only for a few times in the past years.

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http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-11/08/content_3752268.htm

The Defense budget gets skimmed all the time.

How much are they survelling us anyway.