NSA Whistleblower: NSA Is a Corrupt, Broken Institution

Bill: No, because they're not audited.   They are not audited by the government anywhere.. The government accounting office does not not audit them at all. So, they have no threat of being viewed as to how they spend money. The only thing that can happen is the IG, internally, in NSA has to do something, and get involved to do something there. That's the only way they can get exposed. Otherwise the government doesn't even look at how they spend money.  

Rob: That's insane. How much is the NSA Budget?

Bill: Overall I'd say it's maybe $10 billion a year, but they also have influence on another six maybe billion that are assigned to the SigInt services-- the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines" so the sum total is probably $16 to $18 billion total. 

Rob: Wow. And that's what they admit to, right?

Bill: As far as I know, yes. Or, that's what, to a certain degree, has been exposed by Snowden. He gave the NSA budget-- a little over ten billion-- but he didn't have all the figures there-it's larger, so I'm not sure what he's missing there.

Rob: Are there criminals operating at NSA? 

Bill: I certainly think some of them should be referred to the DOJ for criminal investigation, but I don't have any confidence that anybody at the DOJ would investigate them now. Even if they had clear evidence that they were swindling money out of the government or  corrupting or knowingly committing fraud, I don't think they'd do anything about it. 

Rob: So, what kind of people should be investigated by the DOJ, if you could get them to investigate them? What would they be guilty of or investigated for?

Bill: Well, defrauding the government of money. I mean that's pretty clear. All they'd have to do is look at the financial tracks. But they'd have to do an audit. That's why they feel free, when they're not audited, that's where corruption comes in and it comes in in abundance. And clearly, they don't think anybody is going to do anything about it anyway. And so far, by the way, I would point out, they are right.

Rob: Are there other areas in government that are not audited?

Bill: Yes. Basically, the intelligence community. 

Rob: Wow. And how much is the total budget for the intelligence community?

Bill: Somewhere in the order of $80 to $100 billion a year. Since 911 it's been over half a trillion that the country has invested in the intelligence community. 

There's a lot more in the interview-- almost an hour more. 

But it seems to me that congress has been grossly negligent failing to do its job, or, more likely, intentionally choosing not to do the job, allowing literally billions of dollars of waste, perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars of waste and corruption to go on un-audited, unaccountably, with little risk. 

I talked to Binney about the need for some kind of independent investigation. We agreed that congress should appoint an independent prosecutor. Binney suggested that Bruce Fein would be a good nominee. I agree. It's time that congress begins to aggressively rein in the out of control NSA. 

I want to thank Jana Nestlerode, professor at Westchester University, for helping to connect me with Bill Binney.