The budget next year for U.S. National Intelligence Director John D. Negroponte's office and the several agencies attached to it may be near 1 billion U.S. dollars or more, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

The exact budget total for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is classified, but the report of the House Intelligence Committee on the fiscal 2007 intelligence authorization contains a figure by the Congressional Budget Office of 900 million dollars for the intelligence community management account that provides the principal funding for the ODNI, the newspaper said.

Negroponte will use that money to coordinate intelligence programs, prepare budgets for the 16 agencies within the intelligence community and pay for the National Counterterrorism Center and other agencies absorbed into the ODNI, the Post reported.

The proposed budget, about one-third the size of all Central Intelligence Agency funding in years before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, is far larger than expected, the Post report said.

A report published by The New York Times last November said the annual budget for the U.S. intelligence community, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was 44 billion dollars.

Source: Xinhua