A Multibillion-Dollar Conglomerate

The agency uses about two thirds of its funds and manpower for covert operations and their support. Thus, out of the agency's career workforce of roughly 16,500 people and yearly budget of about $750 million, 11,000 personnel and roughly $550 million are earmarked for the Clandestine Services and those activities of the Directorate of Management Services, such as communications, logistics, and training, which contribute to cover activities. Only about 20 percent of the CIA's career employees (spending less than 10 percent of the budget) work on intelligence analysis and information processing.'

The CIA itself does not know how many people work for it. The 16,500 figure does not reflect the tens of thousands who serve under contract (mercenaries, agents, consultants, etc.) or who work for the CIA's proprietary companies .... CIA headquarters, for instance, has never been able to compute exactly the number of planes flown by the airlines it owns, and personnel figures for the proprietaries are similarly imprecise. An agency holding company, the Pacific Corporation, including Air America and Air Asia, alone accounts for almost 20,000 people, more than the entire workforce of the CIA. . . Well aware that the agency is two or three times as large as it appears to be, the CIA leadership has consistently sought to downplay its size ... Just as the personnel figure is deceptive, so does the budge! figure not account for a great part of the CIA's campaign chest. The agency's proprietaries are often money-making enterprises, and thus provide 'Tree' services to the parent organisation ... The CIA's annual budget does not show the Pentagon's annual contribution to the agency, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, to fund certain major technical espionage programmes and some particularly expensive clandestine activities. . . Fully aware of these additional sources of revenue, the CIA's chief of planning and programming reverently observed a few years ago that the director does not operate a mere multimillion-dollar agency, but actually runs a multibillion-dollar conglomerate.' pp 58-62.

CIA Director William Colby

The surprises do not end here, though: incredible as it may seem, Marchetti and Marks' figures reveal that the CIA is only one of 'ten different components of the federal government which concern themselves with the collection and/or analysis of foreign intelligence', and the CIA, the intelligence community's best-known member, accounts for less than 15 percent of its total funds and personnel. The head of the CIA is also the titular head of the entire intelligence community, but he is unable to exercise control over this 'tribal federation' of 'fiercely independent bureaucratic entities.'