WASHINGTON - The Central Intelligence Agency, having given in to legal pressure and disclosing how much money it spends, is making it clear that it's not happy about doing so and will do so in the future only on its own terms. The activists who forced the spy agency's hand, meantime, vowed to continue their fight for fuller disclosure.
Facing a deadline to respond to a May 1997 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Federation of American Scientists, the agency on Wednesday coughed up an annual spending number: US$26.6 billion for fiscal 1997.
Pointedly, though, CIA director George Tenet said in a statement that the agency would make public only the aggregate budget for the year and would refuse to disclose any details on how the money was spent or even acknowledge the existence of specific agencies and programs. Further, Tenet refused to give the aggregate budget for fiscal 1998, which began 1 October.
"Disclosure of future aggregate figures will be considered only after determining whether such disclosures could cause harm to the national security by showing trends over time," Tenet said.
Steven Aftergood, who heads the scientists federation's Secrets in Government Project, said the CIA's disclosures are "by no means the end of the issue."
"The CIA did the absolute minimum they had to do to get our lawsuit off their backs," Aftergood said. "That's progress. Is that the end? No."
He called the agency's refusal to give an aggregate budget figure for the fiscal '98 "absurd."
"The first thing I did" after Tenet made his statement Wednesday, Aftergood said, "was to go out and file a Freedom of Information request for the 1998 budget. If they want to go to court on this again, they can."
Aftergood added that Tenet's real audience was not the public but both houses of Congress, which voted this year to let the agency continue to classify its spending habits.
Last February, Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan) introduced a bill that would require the CIA to disclose all annual budgets. That measure, and a similar one in the Senate, were defeated.
"What we were really challenging was the CIA's ability to classify documents indiscriminately, regardless of whether they are a threat to national security," Aftergood said. Watchdog Snaps at Major Media for CIA-Crack Coverage
18.Dec.96
