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CNN Live At Daybreak

New Intelligence Funding Specifics Classified

Aired February 05, 2002 - 06:31   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The events of September 11 have created a need for a bigger U.S. intelligence budget, but as CNN 's David Ensor reports, it's impossible to say exactly how much spy funding will grow.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They make up a generous ladling of the federal alphabet soup in Washington, the CIA, spies and analysts. The NSA, the eavesdroppers, the NRO, the spy satellite jocks, and there are more. How many people work for U.S. intelligence? Can't say, it's classified. How much more money is there in the new Bush budget for intelligence post 9/11? Sorry, that's classified too.

ROBERT STEELE, AUTHOR, "ON INTELLIGENCE": Intelligence is now too important to be relegated to a secret back room in the federal bureaucracy.

ENSOR (voice-over): Actually the intelligence budget was made public for two years, more than 26 billion in 1997 and '98. Since then, Central Intelligence Director George Tenet has put the lid back on. The government still won't even say what the intelligence budget was back in 1947 under President Truman.

HENRY KELLY, FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS: One of the things we're hoping to illustrate from this is how absurd the classification system is. You know, there are things which have to be legitimately protected, but surely the 1947 intelligence budget isn't one of them.

ENSOR (voice-over): What is not a secret is that the new Bush budget includes billions more for intelligence. More money, officials say, to hire spies, analysts, eavesdroppers, to train them and teach them languages. More for the unmanned, but armed predator drones the CIA has found so useful in Afghanistan. More money for satellites and censors to watch Iran and Iraq's missile and mass destruction weapons programs. And much more, sources say, for CIA covert action teams like the one agency officer Mike Spann was part of when he died in Mazar-e Sharif. Are the right choices being made? You have to trust us, say officials. Not everyone does.

STEELE: The tradeoffs are not being made, and they're not being made in part because the secrecy prevents the people from seeing that their taxpayer dollars are not being wisely spent.

ENSOR (on camera): That the U.S. needs more and better intelligence is debated by almost no one since September 11, whether its general priority should be openly debated or secretly decided, that is a matter of some debate. And whether U.S. intelligence is growing in terms of capabilities, as well as size is something Americans without security clearance can only hope and trust is so.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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