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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb.8, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Right wingers say "big government" is criminal, corrupt and out of control.
By "big government" they mean social programs won by years of working-class struggle. They want to shrink spending on these programs. This is what they think is out of control; the government itself, of course, is firmly under the control of the ruling class.
But the charges of corrupt, criminal big government do have some merit. They are an utterly appropriate description of the National Reconnaissance Office.
For those who don't remember, the NRO is a super-secret agency charged with launching spy satellites. Set up in 1960 to wage war and espionage, its very name was secret until 1992.
It got into the news again on Jan. 29. Auditors from another spy agency reported that they had found most of $2 billion the NRO had "lost track" of last year.
You might ask how they could possibly misplace $2 billion. How could Congress let them get away with it?
Your normal bookkeeping errors hardly ever add up to $2 billion. The whole State Department budget is less than that.
The NRO is anything but normal. It is financed from a $28- billion budget that is classified above top secret.
Not even Congress, which is supposed to oversee these expenses, knows what the generals and spies do with the money and what businesses profit from it. But you can be sure the money has funded murders of liberation fighters and campaigns to undermine struggles against imperialism--and you can be sure the "defense" industry has profited.
The NRO reportedly gets $5 billion to $6 billion of this money to launch spy satellites.
While Congress watches every penny it allocates to school- lunch programs, it regularly votes the $28 billion for the NRO without question. Once the money goes into the NRO's classified coffers it is beyond public reach.
On Jan. 30 the New York Times reported that a team of auditors sent to check on the NRO by Central Intelligence Director John Deutsch tracked down more than $1 billion last year. The spy officials say the NRO kept getting money allocated for emergencies. It was never spent, and a $2 billion slush fund accumulated, they say.
Whatever the truth as to how it arose, there's a lot this found money could be used for. It could replace some of the cuts to welfare or unemployment programs, for example. But that's not how it will be used.
It will instead help pay for Pentagon programs. This includes $820 million for the U.S.-NATO occupation force in Bosnia. Hundreds of millions of dollars more will finance the B-2 bomber project.
These expenses may have the backing of Congress and the president, but they are as distant from the interests of U.S. working people as the NRO's own projects. This money was allocated to the secret fund only because it was falsely presented as a desperate need. The Pentagon has no right to it.
Both Clinton and the Republicans say no more "big government." This is a cover to target social programs--a ploy to shift more of the national income from the working class to the rich.
But this NRO revelation shows that corruption is rampant in spending for the military, for espionage and imperialist intrigue, and has been for decades. These are also the areas where real cuts can be made--should be made, for the benefit of the vast majority of people.
If Congress and Clinton really wanted to trim big government, they could save at least $28 billion a year by stopping the secret funding altogether. The NRO and whatever other war, spy and corrupt activities feed off this pile will never be missed.
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