The Pentagon dropped its $533 billion budget this week. Some line items get a thorough public debate — like stealth jet engines and soldier health care. Others have opaque names like “RETRACT MAPLE,” and are totally hush-hush. Welcome to the Defense Department’s classified, or black, budget. It appears to be about $56 billion, the same as last year, less some inflation.
This may only be the tip of an iceberg of secret funds (more about that in a sec). But we’d like your assistance in mapping out that icy tip. So, with help from the Center for New American Security’s Travis Sharp, we’ve put together this spreadsheet. Feel free to add, subtract and edit it — kind of like a classified cash Wiki.
Finding the Pentagon’s secret money in the budget involves a bit of document diving and some back-of-the-envelope calculations. A number of programs labeled “classified” are tucked away into the operations and maintenance, procurement and research development, testing and evaluation budgets. Find each budget’s classified total (about $19 billion each for operations and procurement and $18 billion in research), add them together and you’ve got a ballpark black budget.
And this is only the known unknown, in Rummyspeak. One can only imagine what lies deep in the realm of the unknown unknown. To read the rest of the article, click here.