The U.S. Intelligence Budget: A Basic Overview

The 911 Commission recommended that a new National Intelligence Director NID should have control over the personnel and budgets of all agencies that collect and analyze national foreign intelligence to foster more cooperation. This CRS report describes the intelligence budget and gives rough estimates of amounts for major components of the budget based on unclassified sources. It also reviews current procedures for formulating and executing the budget, and highlights how proposed legislation addresses the issue. Since 1995, the U.S. intelligence budget has been divided into three elements the National Foreign Intelligence Program NFIP, which, in principle, funds all foreign intelligence and counterintelligence activities of the government that respond to national needs, as opposed to the needs of a single department or agency the Joint Military Intelligence Program JMIP, overseen centrally by the Defense Department, which funds programs that respond to defense-wide intelligence requirements as opposed to the needs of a particular military service and Tactical Intelligence and Related Activities TIARA, which is an aggregation of funding for tactical military intelligence programs managed by the individual services. The Commissions recommendation would affect an estimated one-half to two-thirds of the intelligence budget, the portion devoted to the NFIP. For a more extensive description of the Defense Department agencies whose budgets are at issue, and a discussion of the pros and cons of giving greater authority over them to a National Intelligence Director, see CRS Report RL32515, Intelligence Community Reorganization Potential Effects on DOD Intelligence Agencies, by Richard Best. This report will be updated as events warrant.