Snowden documents reveal US intelligence's multi-million 'snoop-op black budget'

The documents revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden reportedly throw light on the multi-million budget of the US' intelligence agencies and how a large chunk of that expenditure is incurred by the CIA.

The breakdown of the 'black budget' of the US intelligence agencies has never been disclosed publicly before, however, the documents reveal that the CIA's budget is the most expensive, worth 14.7 billion dollars from a total of 52.6 billion dollars of 16 intelligence agencies.

Two of the total 16 intelligence agencies actively engage in secret surveillance of foreign computer networks and the total budget of the CIA alone has grown more than 50 percent since 2004, BBC reports.

According to the revealed documents, after the CIA, the National Security Agency (NSA) comes close second in its expenditure as it requested 10.8 billion dollars in 2013 for its operations.

The report said that nearly 5 billion dollars of the CIA budget is allocated to human intelligence operations while 67 million dollars of the total is reserved for funding the false identities of its overseas spies.