How much to the Germans and others?
Exclusive: NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ
The US government has paid at least £100m to the UK spy agency GCHQ over the last three years to secure access to and influence over Britain's intelligence gathering programmes.
The top secret payments are set out in documents which make clear that the Americans expect a return on the investment, and that GCHQ has to work hard to meet their demands. “GCHQ must pull its weight and be seen to pull its weight,” a GCHQ strategy briefing said.
Phi Beta Iota: We are noticing stronger signals that the US — and particularly NSA — has been providing “off-budget” funding to foreign intelligence agencies that agree to do what the US / NSA wants. There is a strong probability that the foreign leaders are not being fully informed about the total value of the funding, or side programs that are created without parliamentary approval — this has been the case in Australia, it is almost certainly the case across Europe. We have also seen in open source literature the strong suggestion that each intelligence service has accepted responsibility for monitoring the politicians of adjacent countries, trading that with collection on their own politicians done in return. In our view, NSA PRISM is the tip of the iceberg — yet to come is full disclosure of what European intelligence organizations have been doing outside the law, with US funding.
