Blank Check; The Pentagon's Black Budget

New York: Warner Books, 1990. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 24 cm. ix, [3], 273, [3] pages. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Tim Weiner (born June 20, 1956) is an American reporter and author. He is the author of four books and co-author of a fifth, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. His newest book is One Man Against The World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon. He is a graduate of Columbia College of Columbia University and the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. Weiner worked for the Times from 1993 to 2009 as a foreign correspondent in Mexico, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan and as a national security correspondent in Washington, DC. Weiner won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting as an investigative reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer, for his articles on the black budget spending at the Pentagon and the CIA. His book Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget is based on that newspaper series. He won the National Book Award in Nonfiction for his 2007 book Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. His Enemies: A History of the FBI traces the history of the FBI's secret intelligence operations-from the bureau's creation in the early 20th century through its ongoing role in the war on terrorism. An investigative and in-depth report on the U.S. military's "black budget" or "cache" of funds used to finance a variety of secretive military projects and research, with much information on how the military brass interacts with the U.S. government and Congress. Derived from a Kirkus review: While it's never been much of a secret that appropriations for US intelligence services are not disclosed in federal budgets, this audit offers an informative briefing on how military and civilian agencies invoke security to keep covert policies and programs off the books. Weiner estimates that the so-called black budget peaked at an annual rate of around $36 billion during fiscal 1988 and 1989. Declassification of the outlays for a couple of hitherto hush-hush programs, he believes, will reduce sub-rosa disbursements to about $30 billion in fiscal 1991. Apart from confounding the basic canons of an open society, Weiner points out, clandestine expenditures violate explicit provisions of the Constitution. In addition, he argues, concealment makes the CIA, National Reconnaissance Office, Pentagon, and allied entities essentially unaccountable for certain of their activities. Under some circumstances, Weiner concedes, security considerations justify suppression of detailed financial data, but, unfortunately, all too many government organizations rely on subterfuge to keep dubious enterprises and cost overruns out of the public eye. Among other cases in point, the author probes the Stealth bomber, a Strangelovian satellite system known as MILSTAR, an undercover army that squandered $324 million in unvouchered funds before free-spending commanders were brought to book, and, of course, the aberrant Iran-contra initiative. On the credit side of the ledger, Weiner cites tie surreptitious arming of Afghan rebels during the Soviet occupation. Although generally effective, he cautions, this pipeline did leak badly, supplying modern weapons to Mideast radicals and drug traffickers as well as putative freedom fighters. Even with the Cold War apparently near an armistice if not an end, an eye-opening expose of how rogue operatives can and do obtain money enough to become a law unto themselves.