Defense Increase Biggest Since ’66

The White House on Monday unveiled a mammoth $379-billion budget for the Pentagon that is expected to provide a bounty of expanded resources for intelligence agencies but otherwise relatively little new funding for the war on terrorism.

The budget calls for a $48-billion overall increase in defense spending, a 14% jump that represents the largest percentage increase since the United States escalated its involvement in the Vietnam War in 1966.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the increase was necessary to put the United States on firm financial footing for its role as global peacekeeper.

“The defense budget is cheap when one compares it to putting our security at risk, our lives at risk, our country at risk,” Rumsfeld said. “The United States of America, at this moment in history, is the country that is capable of contributing to peace and stability on this globe in an enormously important way.”

But less than half of the proposed increase would cover war-related costs. Most is set aside for pay raises for soldiers and an assortment of existing programs that have grown more expensive. Inflation alone would consume $6.7 billion.

At a time when President Bush has stressed that the war on terrorism is only beginning, some in Congress expressed disappointment that more money hadn’t been set aside for that purpose.

Rep. Norman Dicks (D-Wash.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee, complained that the budget doesn’t provide the Pentagon with resources to replace aging equipment. He said he would seek more funding to buy new technology for the war on terrorism.

“If we have to go into Iraq, I don’t think we’re prepared,” Dicks said. “It’s a budget that’s out of whack, and we’re not fixing the major problems.”

The budget does expand funding for high-technology equipment that has proven valuable in Afghanistan. About $1 billion is earmarked for the purchase of additional unmanned planes, such as the Predator and the Globalhawk, and $83 million would fund development of an unmanned submarine.

Government officials also said Monday that the nation’s spy agencies are poised to receive billions of dollars in additional funding for the war on terrorism.

Spending on espionage agencies is classified. Figures are diced and distributed among hundreds of innocuous entries across the Pentagon budget to prevent outsiders from deciphering spending levels and priorities.

But President Bush made it clear in his State of the Union address last week that improved intelligence-gathering would be a top budget priority. And intelligence analysts said there were some indications in the budget that the CIA and other agencies could see record increases.

John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a Virginia-based intelligence research firm, noted that an obscure line item hidden in the Air Force budget calls for an additional $1.9 billion in spending on “selected activities”--language that he said has previously served as budgeting code for the CIA.

Though a significant portion of that money is traditionally earmarked for the National Reconnaissance Office--the agency that operates the nation’s spy satellite network--Pike said the bulk of the new funds is likely to go to the CIA.

“I think that’s basically [CIA Director] George Tenet getting a war chest for covert operations to go hunt terrorists,” Pike said, adding that he expected spending on intelligence to surpass $40 billion in the new budget, up from about $35 billion currently.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment, but congressional sources familiar with the intelligence budget confirmed that the CIA and other agencies were in line for “substantial increases” for the fiscal year that begins in October. Congress recently approved an approximate 8% increase in the intelligence budget for the current fiscal year.

The bulk of the nation’s intelligence budget pays for satellites and other high-tech collections equipment operated by such spy shops as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, which directs imagery satellites, and the National Security Agency, which intercepts all manner of communications signals.

But spending at the CIA--the only agency that deploys human spies around the globe--also has soared since Sept. 11.

“The agency is on a hiring binge,” said one U.S. official, who declined to be identified. The CIA is adding “not only operations officers,” he said, “but analysts and technical people, scientists and engineers.”

The CIA also is spending a great deal of money training and equipping the intelligence agencies of other countries, including Pakistan, that have provided crucial information in Afghanistan, Indonesia and elsewhere.

Spending on intelligence accounts for only a tiny fraction of a Pentagon budget so enormous that the proposed $48-million increase alone outstrips the military spending by any other nation. The next-largest national defense budget, Japan’s, is $45.6 billion.

The budget lists $19.4 billion in war-related costs, including $9.4 billion to replace ammunition and related costs stemming from the war in Afghanistan and a $10-billion contingency fund.

Answering the criticism of military analysts who argue that the budget adds new programs but cuts few, Pentagon officials have taken pains to note their sacrifices. The Navy would build just five ships under the budget, fewer than would be needed to replace those that go out of service. Missile defense remains at its 2002 level.

Congress delayed the next round of base closures from 2003 to 2005.