The Washington Post has published the 56.1 BILLION dollar "Black Budget," which details expenditures by the US "intelligence community" and was included in the documents that whistleblower Edward Snowden released several months ago. The budget summary is here, broken down by agency in a handy-dandy graphic layout. I'll sprinkle some highlights and excerpts here for those who don't like clicking links, however.

The 178-page budget summary for the National Intelligence Program details the successes, failures and objectives of the 16 spy agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, which has 107,035 employees.“The United States has made a considerable investment in the Intelligence Community since the terror attacks of 9/11, a time which includes wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction technology, and asymmetric threats in such areas as cyber-warfare,” Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said in response to inquiries from The Post.

9/11 gave the U.S. government the perfect opportunity to force the terrible Patriot Act upon Americans (which was renewed again in 2011..) based on the fear created from that one day. One of the most rights-infringing, unconstitutional assaults ever perpetrated on the American people. But, crushing the rights of citizens costs money, thus the bloated budget for intelligence and counterintelligence. Naturally, the ill-advised, ongoing, unwinnable "War on Terror" sucks up the most expenses and manpower.

•In words, deeds and dollars, intelligence agencies remain fixed on terrorism as the gravest threat to national security, which is listed first among five “mission objectives.” Counterterrorism programs employ one in four members of the intelligence workforce and account for one-third of all spending.

Quite a few dollars of that 1/3rd of the budget went to creating the network that is used to spy on American online behavior, while another chuck is invested in tracking American conversations via phone, email, text, etc. through the NSA's "3 Hop System." The "3 Hop" is a "Six degrees of Kevin Bacon" for government spooks essentially, where they expand surveillance to connections 3 deep that a suspect has and leaves few people NOT connected in some way to a person under suspicion of being "engaged in combat" as a terrorist. Thus, they are spying on a very large portion of the populace without any of us being the wiser or having done anything wrong.

The document describes a constellation of spy agencies that track millions of individual surveillance targets and carry out operations that include hundreds of lethal strikes. They are organized around five priorities: combating terrorism, stopping the spread of nuclear and other unconventional weapons, warning U.S. leaders about critical events overseas, defending against foreign espionage and conducting cyber operations.

So yes, those drone strikes against American citizens abroad, without habeas corpus were also on this dime!

This year’s budget proposal envisions that spending will remain roughly level through 2017 and amounts to a case against substantial cuts.“Never before has the IC been called upon to master such complexity and so many issues in such a resource-constrained environment,” Clapper wrote.

A "resource-constrained environment?" Is there more government redefinition of the meaning of words going on here? This is a group of agencies that seemingly have endless cash at their disposal, little oversight, and more or less a free pass to do what they like in the name of keeping America safe. The Post pins spending since 9/11 at $500B+ and the spending is currently at the same levels it was during the Cold War. There is also the $23B a year not in this budget for intelligence that directly supports the military.This tidbit about drones will tickle many of your fancies as well.

There is no specific entry for the CIA’s fleet of armed drones in the budget summary, but a broad line item hints at the dimensions of the agency’s expanded paramilitary role, providing more than $2.6 billion for “covert action programs” that would include drone operations in Pakistan and Yemen, payments to militias in Afghanistan and Africa, and attempts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program.

Fantastic. Just fantastic. $2.6B basically allotted to creating animosity towards America, arming militias that will most likely turn on us (as they have virtually every time, historically speaking) and for creating more terrorists via our actions. It's a perpetually renewing cycle! If only we could draw electricity from this, we would solve the world's power issues overnight!The last few pages of the article go into the "intelligence gaps," of which there are many and with little headway made. Despite this massive budget, it seems that our intelligence community can't quite get the job done in many cases. Of course, in many cases there probably shouldn't be a job in the first place.Receive access to ALL of our EXCLUSIVE bonus audio content – including “Conspiracy Corner”, “Degenerate Gamblers” and the “League of Liberty Podcast” by joining the Lions of Liberty Pride and supporting us on Patreon!