Editorial: Spending in secret

Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2007 | 7:04 a.m.

President Bush's $715 billion defense budget includes a so-called "black budget" of unspecified billions that are set aside for intelligence agencies and programs.

A story by the Las Vegas Sun on Sunday noted that, while itemized expenditures of the black budget are not revealed, experts predict about $45 billion will be funneled into it in 2008 - three times the amount set aside in 2001. Bush's military spending has continued to grow since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and spending among the U.S. intelligence community's 16 agencies also has risen.

But this vast increase in a secretive budget category has occurred during a time when Congress has policed neither itself nor the executive branch very well, and so it is cause for concern, analysts told the Sun's Lisa Mascaro. These suspicions have been compounded by the fact that Republicans, who controlled both the Senate and House until January, rarely questioned the Bush administration's policies, procedures or spending.

So with little or no congressional oversight, the black budget's tens of billions were ripe pickings for those seeking political favors until Democrats took control of Congress. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., was sent to prison last year after it was revealed that he had accepted bribes in exchange for channeling $80 million in such funding to defense contractors.

And, the Sun reports, the black budget is of interest to FBI officials who are conducting a preliminary investigation into allegations that Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons, while serving in Congress, secured Defense Department contracts that used black budget funding for longtime friend Warren Trepp in exchange for such favors as trips and $90,000 in campaign contributions. Gibbons has denied such accusations, saying that he only put Trepp in touch with the Defense Department, where Trepp won a $30 million, five-year contract on his own. The FBI is especially interested in $1.17 million in black budget funds that Gibbons secured and added to an existing Trepp contract in 2005.

The Bush administration has a poor track record in the area of public accountability. And as Steven Aftergood - a black budget expert and director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists - told the Sun, "Secrecy invites corruption."

Certainly, the nation's security must be preserved. But too much secrecy can also allow the waste of taxpayer money and provide fertile ground for corruption. As this black budget continues to grow, Congress must be more aggressive in its oversight to curb wasteful spending and to make sure that there are no more Cunninghams capitalizing on the system's secrecy for personal gain.