So when I read about stuff like this, all I want to do is laugh/cry at the idea that I'm supposed to be paranoid and afraid. Really, this is our money they're spending, and when they're not sifting through 50,000 of today's phone calls about what to order on the pizza and how Aunt Millie's corns are bothering her again, they're off chasing cheap women in grungy brothels in Central America? I'm supposed to be impressed?

That said, this is bad:

By Drew Brown
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Classified military spending has reached its highest level since 1988, near the end of the Cold War, a new independent analysis has found.

Classified, or "black," programs now appear to account for about $30.1 billion, or 19 percent, of the acquisition money the Defense Department is requesting for fiscal year 2007, according to Steven M. Kosiak, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, an independent policy-research organization.

The figure is more than double the amount the Pentagon requested in 1995, when classified military acquisition spending reached a post-Cold War low. It apparently reflects an increase in intelligence funding and a surge in new weapons research and procurement since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"In terms of where the money is actually going, it's quite speculative. But clearly a lot of space programs, new satellites are funded through this, and other surveillance systems such as UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), things like that," Kosiak said.

His figures were based on publicly available Defense Department budget documents.

The Air Force controls more than 75 percent of the Defense Department's classified acquisition money, the largest share of any service.

My question: what's the percentage of programs and technologies that work, to those that are Star Wars grade performers in which the majority of the money is actually spent on hookers and blow?

NSA types, you have or will be working in this environment, why don't you enlighten us little peons?