海角大神

Edward Snowden has struck again, this time via The Washington Post. The former National Security Agency data professional leaked a secret-filled 178-page summary of the US intelligence community budget to Post reporters Barton Gellman and Greg Miller, who , illustrated with great charts and graphics, on Thursday.

The bottom line, or rather the budget top line, is that all US intelligence agencies combined spent $52.6 billion in fiscal year 2013. That鈥檚 about 2.4 percent less than they spent in FY 2012.

That鈥檚 not classified, strictly speaking: The US has released its overall intelligence budget since 2007, as Messrs. Gellman and Miller note. But breakdowns as to which agency gets how much and what the money is spent on have been classified, and the Post reveals those things, too.

Here鈥檚 our quick take on significant things in the story:

The CIA is still first among equals. The nation鈥檚 human-oriented intelligence agency got $14.7 billion for 2013. The eavesdropping NSA, despite its need for expensive electronics, got less: $10.8 billion. The National Reconnaissance Office, which builds and maintains signal and photo intelligence satellites, received almost as much as the NSA, at $10.3 billion. That means those secret eyes and ears in the sky are really, really expensive.

Predicting the future: priceless. OK, maybe 鈥減riceless鈥� isn鈥檛 quite the right word. There is a price tag here, a big one. The biggest single item in the breakdown of the budget by mission objective is 鈥淧rovide Strategic Intelligence and Warning,鈥� which gets 39 percent of intelligence community鈥檚 $52 billion. That means they are putting a lot of effort into the predictions that go into the president鈥檚 morning security briefings.

鈥淐ombat Violent Extremism鈥� is the second-biggest function, with 33 percent of the budget. 鈥淐ounter Weapons Proliferation鈥� is third, with 13 percent.

Will Israel be insulted? The budget summary included discussion of the intelligence community鈥檚 priorities, successes, and failures, as well as numbers. For instance, it noted that the US takes an 鈥渋nterest鈥� in countries that are allies, as well as countries that aren鈥檛. Among the nations listed as counterintelligence 鈥減riority targets鈥� are China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, and ... Israel.

Pakistan, a nominal ally, is also listed as an 鈥渋ntractable target." That鈥檚 not too surprising, is it, given that鈥檚 where Osama bin Laden was hiding in plain sight.

Why so many Spanish-speaking spies? Intelligence agencies pay bonuses to employees who maintain proficiency in foreign languages. The No. 1 bonus language is Spanish, with 2,725 bonuses dispersed. That鈥檚 more than twice as many as were paid out to the second-ranking language, Arabic. Arabic speakers got 1,191 bonuses. Chinese speakers got 903, and Russian speakers got 736.

Did Manning make Snowden possible? Near the end, the Post story notes that the intelligence community had budgeted for a 鈥渕ajor counterintelligence initiative鈥� in 2012 that would have tried to guard against insider threats by reinvestigating the activities of thousands of 鈥渉igh-risk, high-gain applicants and contractors.鈥�

Mr. Snowden himself might well have fallen into that category. But the initiative never got carried out, the Post notes, because those resources were diverted to an all-hands-on-deck response to the leak of thousands of documents by WikiLeaks. Those documents were provided by Bradley Manning (who has recently asked to be known as a transgender woman named Chelsea).聽

鈥淭he government panicked so strongly about the threat caused by leaking documents classified at a lower level than this [budget] document that it diverted resources from the very program that possibly would have exposed Edward Snowden before he could have leaked,鈥� notes national security journalist Joshua Foust .