Every year Congress reviews the national budget, takes various bribes (sorry, "campaign contributions") from lobbyists, makes changes to the budget, and then votes on it. After the cut-and-slash fiasco in Congress is over, government then publishes the figures so the public can know how much money is being wasted on which half-assed projects, and which seemingly deserving programs have been cut. However, every year, Congress also reviews and votes on a second, separate, and secret budget: the bill to appropriate funds for various intelligence agencies.

Two weeks ago, the Senate approved a $30 billion budget for intelligence (or stupidity, whichever you prefer). The $30 billion figure is only an estimate, and the actual amount may be higher. Supposedly this money will be used for surveillance and intelligence gathering, but in truth most of it will be used to fund violent covert operations abroad.

The Constitution requires the government to disclose the actual amounts of money paid for various government operations. Every year, there's a push to have the intelligence funding made public so that taxpayers can see how much of the federal deficit is devoted to torture, murder, and the destabilization of foreign governments. The Senate condoned these illegal and immoral abuses again this year, voting down an amendment that would make the intelligence budget figures public.

But here's the funny part (are you laughing yet?). Bill Clinton wants to veto the intelligence spending bill--not because of its unconstitutional secrecy--but because it contains a clause that would allow intelligence employees to blow the whistle on fraud, lying, outright criminal acts, or other abuses perpetrated by the intelligence agencies they work for.

So when the C.I.A. pays somebody to, oh, let's say, kill Castro with an exploding cigar (to pick a completely random, hypothetical example), if a junior C.I.A. agent bypasses his superiors and goes directly to the Senate Intelligence Committee and tells them, it creates a serious problem for Bill Clinton.

The whistle-blower clause would usurp "the President's constitutional authority to protect national security and other privileged information," says the White House (as if any of the pond scum floating around Pennsylvania Avenue has ever read The Constitution). What Bill Clinton and his aides really care about is the President's unfettered ability to (get ready for more hypothetical examples) wage undeclared war against Vietnam, or overthrow the democratically elected government of Chile, or pay death squads or arm militaries to hunt down, detain, torture, and kill unionists, activists, and students in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, Mozambique, Angola, Indonesia, Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Turkey, Zaire, Nigeria, Honduras, Chiapas, Argentina, or the Boeing's Republic of China, all in the name of "national security."

National security, as epitomized by the secret intelligence budget, has nothing to do with whether or not we think Cubans will invade Key West tomorrow...or whether a few dozen starving Iraqis will swim half-way around the world to line up at the local unemployment office with your cousin, Joe. It refers to the security of corporations to shop around the world for the most oppressed population willing to work for the lowest wages under the worst working conditions, so that a handful of corporate officers and shareholders can make enormous profits (and offer Bill Clinton another high-paid consulting job when he leaves the White House). No wonder the public can't be trusted with the details.