BLACK OPS, BLACK BUDGET, BLACK EYE ON CONGRESS

I TOOK A STAB AT AMERICA'S 'BLACK BUDGET' AND 'BLACK OPS' BEFORE IN 2013, BUT THINGS HAVE NOT IMPROVED SINCE THEN, SO MAYBE WE SHOULD REVISIT THIS 'DIRTY LITTLE SECRET'.

IT'S COSTING US TRILLIONS, THAT'S TRILLIONS WITH A GREAT BIG 'T',  SO, HOPEFULLY, TAXPAYERS WHO ARE ALREADY TAXED ALMOST TO DEATH WILL LIKE TO KNOW WHERE THAT MUCH WASTE AND/OR SECRET MILITARY SPENDING IS GOING.
WELL, ACTUALLY, NOBODY HAS VOLUNTEERED TO TELL US THAT, BUT WE HAVE HAD A FEW WHISTLEBLOWERS AND "REVELATIONS" SINCE 2013 TO HELP US SEE JUST HOW DEEP THIS RIVER OF MONEY RUNS.

JUST 5 DAYS AFTER MY PREVIOUS ARTICLE ON BLACK OPS, WE COULD READ THIS:

NOV. 19, 2013
“$8.5 TRILLION In Taxpayer Money Doled Out By Congress To The Pentagon Since 1996 … Has NEVER Been Accounted For”

[THAT IS A VERY CONSERVATIVE GUESS, ONLY 8.5 TRILLION.]

"Republican Senator Tom Coburn notes that the Department of Defense can reduce $67.9 billion over 10 years by eliminating the non-defense programs that have found their way into the budget for the Department of Defense.

BusinessWeek and Bloomberg point out that we could slash military spending without harming our national security. Indeed, we could slash boondoggles that even the generals don’t want.

BusinessWeek provides a list of cost-cutting measures which will not undermine national security. American Conservative does the same.

Moreover, we’ve shown that the military wastes and “loses” (cough) trillions of dollars.  See this, this,this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

The former Secretary of Defense acknowledged in May 2012 that the DOD “is the only major federal agency that cannot pass an audit today.”  The Pentagon will not be ready for an audit for another five years, according to Panetta.

Reuters quantifies these numbers today:

The Pentagon is the only federal agency that has not complied with a law that requires annual audits of all government departments. That means that the $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996, the first year it was supposed to be audited, has never been accounted for. That sum exceeds the value of China’s economic output last year.

We could easily slash the military and security budget without reducing our national security.

For example, homeland security agencies wasted money on seminars like “Did Jesus Die for Klingons Too?” and training for a “zombie apocalypse” instead of actually focusing on anti-terror efforts."

 [YES, THOSE SEMINARS DID HAPPEN, SO YOU SEE WHAT WE'RE UP AGAINST.]

THE OLD WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE I REFERRED TO BEFORE AFTER THE SNOWDEN REVELATIONS CITED A LOUSY $52 BILLION AS BLACK BUDGET EXPENDITURE...NOT REMOTELY CLOSE!

WHEN CONGRESS QUESTIONED THE FEDERAL RESERVE (WHICH IS NOT A FEDERAL AGENCY, BUT A PRIVATE ONE) AS TO WHERE A MISSING $9 TRILLION WAS AND HINTED THEY WOULD AUDIT THE FED, BERNANKE ACTUALLY THREATENED CONGRESS!
AND CONGRESS BACKED DOWN!

IF WE HAD ACCESS TO CORPORATE RECORDS, WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO TRACE HOW MANY MEGABUCKS THE TOP FIVE DARLINGS OF COMMERCE RAKED IN FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE OVER THE PAST YEAR ALONE.

The top five military contractors by sales are:
1~ Lockheed Martin, 
2~ Boeing, 
3~ Northrop Grumman,
4~ General Dynamics, and
5~ Raytheon. 

THOSE FIVE HAVE GOTTEN THE LION'S SHARE FROM THE PENTAGON/DOD FOR MANY MOONS!

BUT, DID YOU KNOW THAT FIVE "INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES" ALSO FUNNEL (OR SIPHON?) BIG BUCKS TO THE SAME GUYS?

The top five intelligence agencies that often provide 'military use applications' are:
1~ The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
2~ The National Security Agency (NRA),
3~ The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO, BUT HOW MANY OF YOU KNOW THIS GROUP?),
4~  The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA, AND ALSO AN UNKNOWN TO MOST CITIZENS) and
5~  The General Defense Intelligence Program (GDIP)
CREATED IN 1986, THE GDIP IS QUITE A PIECE OF WORK AND DOES NOT COME CHEAPLY! 

GDIP IS MANAGED BY THE 'DIA' (DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY), WHICH IS ANOTHER BIG AGENCY AT THE TOP OF THE HEAP.

In 1983, in order to research the flow of technology to the Soviet Union, the Reagan Administration created Project Socrates within the Agency.
Over the following years Project Socrates's scope broadened to include monitoring of foreign advanced technology as a whole.
Project Socrates ended in 1990 with Michael Sekora, the project's director, leaving in protest when the Bush Administration reduced funding.

In 1984, the Clandestine Services organization, designated STAR WATCHER, was created under DIA with the mission of conducting intelligence collection on perceived areas of conflict and against potential adversaries in developing countries.

During the Iran-Iraq War, DIA officers planned day-to-day strikes against Iran for Saddam Hussein's Air Force.

HONESTLY, WITH FREQUENT CREATIONS WITHIN CREATIONS INSIDE ALL THESE "AGENCIES", IT'S LITTLE WONDER THAT CONGRESS HASN'T GOT A CLUE WHERE THOSE TRILLIONS HAVE GONE!

JUST READING THROUGH ONE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE 'DIRECTIVE', NUMBER 5105.21March 18, 2008, SHOULD SHOW YOU THE COMPLEXITY OF THE STRUCTURE OF OUR "SUPER SECRET AGENCIES".

"1. PURPOSE
Under the authorities vested in the Secretary of Defense by References (a), (b), and (c), this Directive reissues Reference (d) to update the mission, responsibilities, functions, relationships, and authorities of DIA.
This Directive shall be interpreted consistent with law, policy, and directive, including, but not limited to, those promulgated by, or pertaining to, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), as appropriate.

2. APPLICABILITY
This Directive applies to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the Military Departments, the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Combatant Commands(COCOMs), the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Defense, the Defense Agencies, the DoD Field Activities, and all other organizational entities in the Department of Defense (hereafter referred to collectively as the “DoD Components”).

The term “Military Services,” as used herein, refers to the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marine Corps (including Active and Reserve Components). "

AT ANY RATE, ALL THESE AGENCIES WITHIN AGENCIES NEED FUNDING, AND IF THEY CAN'T GET IT ONE WAY, THEY'LL FIND ANOTHER WAY.

CONGRESS IS AWARE OF THE SHIFTING OF FUNDS BUT MOSTLY LOOKS THE OTHER WAY... IGNORANCE IS BLISS ON CAPITOL HILL.

The actual amount of monies that go into funding off the books secret projects, estimated by Bill Sweetman as cited in 'The Economic Crisis and the Pentagon`s Black Budget', exceeds rational comprehension. "

The Pentagon’s ‘black’ operations, including the intelligence budgets nested inside it, are roughly equal in magnitude to the entire defense budgets of the UK, France or Japan, and ten percent of the total."

Projects with code names like the Navy’s "RETRACT JUNIPER" and "LINK PLUMERIA" are simple enough to find in the research development, testing and evaluation budget

(THIS WAS DAMNED HARD TO LOCATE BUT YOU CAN SEE IT ARCHIVED HERE: https://web.archive.org/web/20111015102519/http://comptroller.defense.gov/defbudget/fy2012/fy2012_r1.pdf) 

WHEN YOU GET INTO THAT DOCUMENT, USE YOUR "FIND" TOOL AND TYPE IN JUST THE WORD "TRACTOR"...IT COMES UP 17 TIMES.

There's the Army’s "TRACTOR" projects: "TRACTOR NAIL," "TRACTOR CAGE," and so on.
But then comes along a project like "TRACTOR DESK" hiding in one of the Army’s eight research budget documents, while others find their way to the 'operations and maintenance and procurement' budgets.

These projects are also where to go when searching for what’s getting cut.
Something called the "Classified Program USD(P)," formerly valued around a respectable $100 million, had its budget reduced to zero.

"TRACTOR JUTE" is now on life support and "COBRA JUDY" had its fangs removed.

Most other projects saw lesser cuts, however, and others like "RETRACT MAPLE" even saw minor gains. This is while the 'researchers' at DARPA never receive more than a slight trim, but often are given more funds to play with.

QUITE A LESSON IN BLACK BUDGET 'ECONOMICS', YES?

"According to Ben Rich (Lockheed Skunk Works director 1975-1991), keeping programs secret can add anywhere from 10 to 15% to the overall cost . . . Within the murky world of secret defense projects there are three main categories: SAPs (Special Access Program), USAP (Unacknowledged Special Access Program), and so called "Waived SAPS".

In the case of waived SAPs, their existence is not known by Congress and are possibly unknown by the President."

SLOWLY BUT STEADILY, OTHERS ARE PEELING AWAY THE LAYERS OF "TOP SECRECY" ABOUT OUR 'BLACK BUDGET'.

"The Black Budget Report: An Investigation into the CIA's  'Black Budget'  and the Second Manhattan Project", 11/23/2003 (Revised 02/05/04)

Michael E. Salla, PhD
Center for Global Peace/School of International Service
American University
Washington DC

"This report examines the existence of a CIA  black budget  and an extensive network of  deep black projects  that it funds. 

The report identifies the legal framework established by the US Congress for the creation of a CIA  black budget  from the appropriations earmarked for other federal agencies that are siphoned through the CIA as the sole conduit of black budget funds.

 The report investigates the legal challenges to the constitutionality of the CIA's black budget; how the CIA uses its legal authority to extract appropriations from government agencies such as HUD; how the CIA launders non-appropriated money through other federal agencies; and the efforts the CIA goes to prevent these financial transfers from being exposed.  

Using as a case study the legal difficulties faced by an innovative mortgage finance company, Hamilton Securities, the report will argue that the CIA's covert role in Hamilton's demise is compelling evidence that the CIA was involved in funding irregularities in HUD. 

It will be finally argued that the size of black budget, the secrecy surrounding it, the extent senior officials in Federal agencies go to targeting individuals and companies that threaten to reveal where congressional appropriations are ultimately going, suggest a vast number of  deep black projects  that collectively form a highly classified second Manhattan Project whose existence, goals and budget are kept secret.

Introduction 

Each year the US Department of Defense (DoD) lists a number of single line items in its budget that have a program number such as 0605236F, code names like 'CLASSIC WIZARD' or vague description such as  'special evaluation program',  that don't refer to any weapons system known to the general public, Congressional officials or even defense analysts. 

These single line items are covers for the creation of a  'black budget'  - a top secret slush fund set up by the DoD, with the approval of the US Congress, to apparently fund intelligence organizations such as the CIA as well as covert operations and classified weapons programs by the DoD. 

The  black budget  allows intelligence activities, covert operations and classified weapons research to be conducted without Congressional oversight on the grounds that oversight would compromise the secrecy essential for the success of such 'black programs'. 

These black programs  are typically classified as  'Special Access'  or  'Controlled Access Programs'  that have a security classification system more rigorous than the 'secret-top secret' classifications for most government agencies, making such programs known only to those with a 'need to know'.  

Following the money trail and official efforts to keep secret the size of the black budget and how it is generated, provides the key pieces of a complex financial and national security jigsaw puzzle."

AND WHAT A JIGSAW PUZZLE IT IS!

"In 1997 the Federation of Atomic Scientists made a FOIA request to the CIA, to disclose the secret combined appropriations for the Intelligence community that comprises the CIA, National Security Agency (NSA), National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), and intelligence branches of the Air force, Navy and Army. 

 The DCI refused and the case eventually went before a Federal Court. 

In a last ditch effort to prevent disclosure of the  black budget  the DCI persuaded both the Senate and the House of Representatives to vote against amendments that would have recommended its disclosure.

The CIA's efforts were to no avail and in 1997 the Federal Judge decided in favor of the FAS that the black budget could be disclosed without harming the national security of the US. 

In what was the first major crack in the official secrecy surrounding the CIA's budget and its intelligence activities, the CIA subsequently decided to release for the first time the size of its "official  black budget" (appropriations drawn from single line items on the DoD budget), but reserved the right to NOT disclose this figure in future.

For the fiscal year of 1997, the combined aggregate appropriations for the Intelligence Community (black budget) was SAID to be 26.6 billion dollars."

THAT IS A FAR CRY FROM THE MOST RECENTLY DISCLOSED BUDGET!

"On February 2, 2015, the Administration submitted its Fiscal Year 2016 budget request, including a request of $53.9 billion for the National Intelligence Program (NIP). 

The Department of Defense requested $17.9 billion for the Military Intelligence Program (MIP) in FY 2016.

On March 4, 2014, the Administration submitted its Fiscal Year 2015 budget request, including a base funding request of $45.6 billion for the National Intelligence Program (NIP), and a base funding request of $13.3 billion for the Military Intelligence Program (MIP). 

On June 30, the DNI submitted an updated FY2015 budget request of $49.4 billion for the NIP including funding for overseas contingency operations. 

The FY 2015 intelligence budget appropriation has not yet been disclosed."

AT THIS SITE <CLICK HERE> YOU CAN SEE THE PUBLICLY AVAILABLE INFORMATION ON BUDGET REQUESTS AND WHAT WAS ALLOCATED FOR EACH "AGENCY".

BLACK OPS COSTS ARE UP, YES?

EVEN THE NEW YORK TIMES SEEMED A LITTLE SHOCKED OVER OUR BLACK BUDGET WHEN THEY OFFERED THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IN 2008:

"Budget documents tell little. 

This year, for instance, the Pentagon says Program Element 0603891c is receiving $196 million but will disclose NOTHING about what the project does. 

Private analysts say it apparently aims at developing space weapons." 
WHILE THE TIMES FOCUS SEEMED TO BE ON PATCHES WORN, ALLEGEDLY, BY BLACK OPS MILITARY, EVEN THAT IS MILDLY REVEALING.

"“Oderint Dum Metuant,” reads a patch for an Air Force program that mines spy satellite images for battlefield intelligence, according to Mr. Paglen, who identifies the saying as from Caligula, the first-century Roman emperor famed for his depravity. It translates “Let them hate so long as they fear.”

Wizards appear on several patches. The one hurling lightning bolts comes from a secret Air Force base at Groom Lake, northwest of Las Vegas in a secluded valley. Mr. Paglen identifies its five clustered stars and one separate star as a veiled reference to Area 51, where the government tests advanced aircraft and, U.F.O. buffs say, captured alien spaceships."

Catherine Austin Fitts served as managing director and member of the board of directors of the Wall Street investment bank Dillon, Read & Co. Inc., as Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development in the first Bush Administration, and was the president of Hamilton Securities Group, Inc., an investment bank and financial software developer.

Fitts turned whistleblower, and she continues to speak out, documenting how trillions of dollars went missing from government coffers in the 90’s and how she was personally targeted for exposing the fraud.  

Fitts was fired by the Bush administration in 1990 after only 18 months on the job.

A COMPUTER PROGRAM THAT COULD FOLLOW THE FLOW OF FEDERAL MONEY

In 1999, under the direction of HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, HUD's Inspector General refused to certify its own financial statements as required by law, while admitting that $59 billion somehow disappeared.
The explanation given was accounting systems failure, and the matter was dropped without investigation.

"In 2000 I visited with a senior staff assistant to [Senator] Kit Bond, the chairman of one of the appropriations committees for HUD," remembers Fitts. "I asked her what she thought was going on at HUD, and she said, 'HUD is being run as a criminal enterprise.'
Then Bond, the committee, and my congressional delegation, all Republicans, all voted a $1.7 billion increase in HUD's appropriation."

Starting in 1994, Hamilton Securities Group began building an easy-to-operate computer software system to track the money flows in any given region.
The program, Community Wizard, provided the kind of transparency needed to expose cooked books.

Former Hamilton employee Carolyn Betts remembers the power of Community Wizard, even in its infancy.

"It was in the beta stage, so it was not complete, but with each piece of information it became more and more powerful," recalls Betts. "The HUD field office people went absolutely crazy when they saw it. You could go in with a pointer on a map and get to information on expenditures by each HUD program. It was a pretty beautiful program and would have become unbelievably powerful."

To imagine the Wizard at work, Betts says, picture a place-based website with modules. For each place, you could pull up a map, like on Mapquest, and see information such as the socioeconomic characteristics of the residents or the amounts of revenue generated by private companies.

The developers at Hamilton got geocoded information from EVERY government agency and private contractor they could, including information on all payments made by the federal government to contractors. 

Depending on which side of the law you sit, Community Wizard could be either a godsend or a threat.

In the fall of 1996, Hamilton became the target of nightmarish covert operations, smear campaigns, harassment, and criminal investigations.

A qui tam (whistleblower) suit was brought against her firm by a rival HUD contractor John Ervin who alleged Fitts committed fraud against HUD. 

According to the Federal False Claims Act, a qui tam suit has 60 days to be investigated before a federal judge has to reach a conclusion on the substance of the suit and unseal the qui tam so that the defendant can respond to the allegations. 

Instead, the HUD Inspector General together with the federal judge in charge of the case took four years before another judge decided the allegations lacked substance, unsealed the qui tam in July 2000, and the government decided to end its role in the case.

In the meantime, Fitts  firm was subjected to 18 audits and investigations, multiple subpoenas for thousands of documents, not paid money owed to it by HUD while the  investigation  was underway, subjected to media leaks and a smear campaign that frightened away potential investors, and ultimately raided by Department of Justice agents in 1998. 

That's when the Community Wizard technology was ultimately destroyed, in 1998, when Department of Justice agents stormed in and wrecked Hamilton's office. 

WHAT SECRETS WERE WITHIN THE COLLECTED DATA?

WE WON'T EVER KNOW.

SINCE HER ORDEAL, FITTS HAS SPOKEN OFTEN AND LOUDLY ABOUT THE BLACK BUDGET, GOVERNMENT COVER-UPS AND THE BACKROOM WHEELING AND DEALING UP ON CAPITOL HILL.

THERE HAS BEEN NO WHISTLEBLOWER WHO HAS GONE UNPUNISHED BY OUR GOVERNMENT, WHETHER DRAGGED THROUGH COURTS, CRUCIFIED IN THE MEDIA, THROWN IN JAIL, OR, LIKE SNOWDEN, SCARED OUT OF THE COUNTRY OR IN DEEP HIDING WITHIN OR NEAR OUR BORDERS.

Allegations of links between the CIA and the drug trade first came to public attention in the 1970s when a number of public officials came forward with evidence of such links. 

One of these was a former police officer in the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), Michael Ruppert. 

In 1977, as a result of his official investigation into the drug trade in Los Angeles, Rupert uncovered evidence that the CIA was playing an active role in bringing drugs into New Orleans and Los Angeles. 

When Rupert disclosed this information to his superiors in the LAPD, he became a target for surveillance, harassment and burglaries that eventually led to his resignation.

Another key official is a retired Drug Enforcement Agency agent, Celerino Castillo III, who was the lead DEA agent in Guatemala and discovered that the CIA was involved in the drug trade to raise finances for its covert operations. 

In a written statement to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Castillo gave detailed information on a number of drug-running operations that involved cooperation between the CIA and organized crime cartels.

IN THAT STATEMENT, HE SAID:
"The key to understanding the "crack cocaine" epidemic, which exploded on our streets in 1984, lies in understanding the effect of congressional oversight on covert operations. In this case the Boland amendment(s) of the era, while intending to restrict covert operations as intended by the will of the People, only served to encourage C.I.A., the military and elements of the national intelligence community to completely bypass the Congress and the Constitution in an eager and often used covert policy of funding prohibited operations with drug money."  

[SEE: Written Statement of Celerino Castillo III (D.E.A., Retired) to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,  April 27, 1998.] 

Another prominent official was Marine Colonel James Sebow, the third in command of the El Toro Airbase, California, who discovered evidence that C-130 cargo flights coming into the airbase from Central America were filled with drugs. 

Sebow communicated his finding to the base commander, Col. Joseph Underwood, and then found himself along with Col. Underwood, subject to investigations for minor offenses, relieved of command and threatened with Court Martial if he did not cooperate with the investigation. 

On January 22, 1991, Sebow was found dead, apparently by suicide, but an investigation by family members and supporters revealed evidence that he in fact was murdered.

The best known case of an alleged link between the CIA and the drug trade emerged from the pioneering investigative journalism of Gary Webb in 1996 who published the 'Dark Alliance' series in the San Jose Mercury during Summer 1996.
Webb presented a compelling case that the CIA played a role in allowing drug money to be used to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. 

While Webb's series was focused on the proceeds of drug activities going to the Contras, his conclusion that the CIA colluded in this endeavor supported broader allegations of the CIA using the drug trade to finance covert operations.

The New York Times and Los Angeles Times followed up on October 20 with equally critical articles.

"[T]he deputy IG [Inspector General] at the Pentagon read an eight-page summary of DOD fiduciary failures. He admitted that $4.4 trillion in adjustments to the Pentagon's books had to be cooked to compile the required financial statements and that $1.1 trillion of that amount could not be supported by reliable information. In other words, at the end of the last full year on Bill Clinton's watch, more than $1 trillion was simply gone and no one can be sure of when, where or to whom the money went.

According to the Office of the Inspector General, the accounting irregularities for fiscal year 1999 were even larger and added up to 2.3 trillion dollars; and for fiscal year 1998, these irregularities were 1.7 trillion "

[ SEE: Bush plan targets Pentagon accounting, San Francisco Chronicle (May 18, 2003, AND ALSO 

Office of the Inspector General, Compilation of the FY 2000 DoD Agency-Wide Financial Statements -- Report No. D-2001-181(PDF)-Project No. D2001FI-0018.003, AND FURTHER, Testimony: Statement of Eleanor Hill, Inspector General, Department of Defense, Before the Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support Senate Armed Services Committee, United States Senate on Defense Financial Management (04/14/99) ]  

The Inspector General reports are important evidence that trillions of dollars were siphoned through the Department of Defense (DoD) for the fiscal years 1998-2002.

'DOCUMENTATION OF FACTS' DOESN'T GET MUCH BETTER THAN THAT.

The sheer size of the black budget, and the CIA activities already uncovered that are used to generate funds for it, point to a vast secret network of projects that is funded outside of the normal Congressional appropriation process.
It is worth repeating that the CIA is legally authorized by Congress to transfer, without regard to any provisions of law, funds from other government agencies for the generation of a black budget.

There is strong evidence that the CIA uses this power to disregard law to complement whatever funds it can generate through Congressional appropriations, with funds gained through the drugs trade and organized crime that is laundered through different government agencies.

CAN WE SAY ANY LESS OF THE 'DIA'?
DARE WE THINK THAT AGENCY DIFFERENT FROM ITS 'SISTER AGENCY"?

"The total ANNUAL sum of the black budget is best estimated in the form of accounting anomalies in the main departmental recipient of all black budget funds, the DoD, and is in the vicinity of 1.1 trillion dollars "

I STILL THINK THAT IS A VERY LOW ESTIMATE.