Obama Raises Intelligence Budget

President Obama’s fiscal 2010 budget would fund a major new spy satellite proposal, provide $2 billion in additional funding for Department of Defense surveillance efforts and increase spending on drug-related intelligence programs.

Although most specifics of the intelligence budget are classified, budget documents provide hints of some priorities.

The budget would allocate an unspecified amount to the new “Imagery Satellite Way Ahead” program, a joint effort between the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Defense designed to revamp the nation’s constellation of spy satellites.

The mostly classified plan would include new, redesigned “electro-optical” satellites, which collect data from across the electromagnetic spectrum, as well as the expanded use of commercial satellite imagery. Although the cost is secret, most estimates place it in the multibillion-dollar range.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has been at odds with Defense appropriators and intelligence community leaders over spy satellite capabilities.

The top Republican on the Intelligence panel, Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, has pushed for alternative plans to those recommended by intelligence community leaders, contending that his proposals would cost less and perform better.

The Pentagon would get about $2 billion more for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) programs such as unmanned drones and improved software for processing data — all to better combat terrorists and insurgents. The total amount is classified.

According to a Pentagon budget summary, that money would pay for:

• 50 Predator-class unmanned aerial patrols. According to a Defense Department summary, “This capability, which has been in high demand in Iraq and Afghanistan, will now be permanently funded in the base budget.”

• An increase in manned ISR capabilities, “such as the turbo-prop aircraft deployed as part of Task Force Odin in Iraq.”

• “Research and development on a number of ISR enhancements and experimental platforms.”

In addition, the FBI would get a boost of $555.6 million to help pay for an additional 357 agents and 321 intelligence analysts, according to a Department of Justice summary.

The Treasury Department’s counterterror and financial intelligence operations would receive $168 million, or 10 percent more than in fiscal 2009. Some of the funds would go toward supporting a joint program between the Treasury and U.S. Special Operations Command, an Afghanistan Threat Finance Cell designed to disrupt terror financing in that country, with an emphasis on narcotics.

Increased funding through the Drug Enforcement Administration and other Justice Department drug-related programs would pay for 25 new intelligence analysts. Much of their work would focus on interrupting drug flows across the U.S.-Mexico border and aiding law enforcement in combating Mexican drug cartels.

Unlike his predecessor, Obama does not recommend closing the National Drug Intelligence Center, a program that is located in the district of House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John P. Murtha , D-Pa., and has prompted heated partisan floor fights.

Although the request for the National Intelligence Program — which includes all spy agencies except those of the military branches — is classified, recently disclosed figures for fiscal 2008 put the budget total at $47.5 billion.

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