Public denied access to CIA's decades-old budget information

[seemslikeadream]

CIA budget information from the Cold War is exempt from the FOI Act because its release would compromise "intelligence methods," a federal court has ruled.

Feb. 14, 2005 -- The Central Intelligence Agency may withhold its decades-old budget information because its disclosure would reveal "intelligence methods," a federal district court in Washington, D.C., ruled Feb. 9. The CIA's 1963 budget must be disclosed, however, because of its previous, accidental release by the agency, the court ruled.

Judge Ricardo M. Urbina's ruling came 10 years after Steven Aftergood, project director at the Federation of American Scientists, first requested CIA budget data from 1947 to 1970. In addition to the total amount spent on American intelligence, he asked for how the money was divided among individual agencies.

The CIA refused to release the records, relying on FOI Act Exemption 3's incorporation of a federal law which allows the agency director to "protect intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure." Aftergood sued.

The CIA's then-Acting Director John E. McLaughlin argued in an affidavit filed with the court that the clandestine process of intelligence funding was itself an intelligence method and therefore protected from public release.

more
http://www.rcfp.org/news/2005/0214-foi-public.html

[stepnw1f]

1. Gee... I Wonder Why? **sarcasm** (nt)

[DontTreadOnMe]

2. ugh

well, what did you expect. It's not like it's our public money that funds the CIA anyway. That comes from the secret budget -- therefore secret information. This is simple math folks... move along.

[HerbieHeadhunter]

3. No doubt that "Gannon" has access

to the information. Let's email him and ask for them.

[Lostnote03]

4. Whew...."funding itself was an intelligence method".....uh yea?

.....best not let the Dems in on too much of a good thing....

[Supersedeas]

7. Fiscal Conservatives -- the budget numbers will not be televised

Who's bottom line is next for 'special' protection.

[kodi]

5. Thank God we live in a representative democracy run by the people.

I don't know what I would do if I lived in a country where the government was not responsible to its citizens.

[DS1]

6. The CIA's budget is a WMD. If it ever gets out, there's going to be

thousands of aneurysms across the country.

[emad]

8. Guess they would have to expose a lot about Richard McGarrach Helms

and the cabal that recruited Aldrich Ames.

Not to mention all their JFK files that might cause some disturbance to Jackie Kennedy's idiot sister Caroline Lee Bopuvier Canfield Radziwill and her ex-P2 Lodge husband Prince Stanislaw.....

[Octafish]

9. Lot goes for rat finks.

The CIA's paid BILLIONS to every NAZI psychopath, commie stooge, capitalist warmonger and whatever other cutthroat scuzzbucket stoolie they could find. Half of 'em didn't know a damn thing, but got paid. The other half didn't tell what they knew, but collected anyway.

BTW: The real money's in the Pentagon. They can't find TRILLIONS, let alone find any accounting for it.