Intelligence spending rises to $49.8 billion

U.S. spy agencies spent $49.8 billion in fiscal year 2009, $2 billion more than in 2008 and the second such multibillion-dollar increase in as many years.

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National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair released the aggregate intelligence budget Friday. Congress in 2007 passed a law requiring that overall intelligence spending to be made public, as the 9/11 Commission had recommended.

The budget includes money spent by 16 different intelligence entities, from the CIA to the FBI, the Pentagon to the Homeland Security Department. Around 80 percent of the intelligence budget is consumed by the Pentagon intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

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Item by item details of the budget, however, remain classified.

The spy agencies spent $47.5 billion in 2008, a $4 billion increase over the 2007 budget. The national intelligence budget had until 2007 been classified, although the Clinton administration voluntarily disclosed it in 1997 and 1998. It was then $26.6 billion and $26.7 billion, respectively.