"Black," or classified, programs requested in President Bush's 2004 defense budget are at the highest level since 1988, according to a report prepared by the independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
The center concluded that classified spending next fiscal year will reach about $23.2 billion of the Pentagon's total request for procurement and research funding. When adjusted for inflation, that is the largest dollar figure since the peak reached during President Ronald Reagan's defense buildup 16 years ago. The amount in 1988 was $19.7 billion, or $26.7 billion if adjusted for inflation, according to the center.
"It's puzzling. It sets the mind to wondering where the money's going and what sort of politically controversial things the administration is doing because they're not telling anybody," said John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a research group in Alexandria that has been critical of the administration's defense priorities.
[...]
...[Pike] said it is a good bet that some of [the classified money] is going to programs that the administration is known to strongly favor, such as missile defense and the development of hypersonic planes that can fly beyond Earth's atmosphere.
"This is an administration that likes to play I've got a secret," he said. "The growth of the classified budget appears to be part of a larger pattern of this administration being secretive."
There's that old discredited but never-say-die 1980s standby, missile defense. Further proof that Dubya's real father is Ronald Reagan.
