The United States has many spy agencies, some that just about everyone knows about, such as the FBI, the NSA, and the CIA, as well as other more obscure agencies such as the Army Military Intelligence (MI), in addition to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). In all, as estimated by Wikipedia.org "… in 2001 to 2013, the government has spent more than $500 billion on intelligence," with our latest budgets for these intelligence agencies being over $70 billion dollars per annum. While, there is a real purpose to having a great intelligence capacity for the protection of this nation, the fact, that the oversight of such is not available to the public, and basically our intelligence community has little oversight by the legislative branches of the highest level of federal government in this country is very bad policy for a whole slew of reasons.
In point of fact, when public monies are spent on public institutions, even such institutions which concentrate on intelligent activities, the budgeting of those monies, the expenditure of those public monies, the contracts so initiated, the salaries, the assets, should as far as practical, not only be disclosed, but should be carefully audited by independent agencies that do not answer to the intelligent community. Those that squawk that the issuing of such information would somehow compromise the very intelligence that we utilize or are gathering, are basically utilizing national security as a smokescreen for their inability or non-desire to be transparent with monies spent.
The thing is, when business is done behind closed doors, subject to little or no oversight, those in that business, no matter how honest their intents may have been at one point, will over time degenerate into the type of business in which each side gets a little something extra from the other, because not only do the doors revolve between private contractors and their government overseers on a continual basis, but those that conduct such business, want their budgets and contracts to increase in amount each year, because in governmental "speak" size equates to power, profit, and influence, whereas those that are overly efficient in their usage of their dollars are seen as impediments to realpolitik.
It is quite unfortunate, when governmental agencies hide behind the door of "security this" or "security that" so as to not have to disclose important and pertinent information as to how much of the public's money is being spent and where it is being spent, in addition, the people's representatives, their legislators deserve to know what our intelligent agencies are up to, what they are trying to accomplish, and whether in whole, this is the most appropriate policy for America to take. It is truly a sad day for America, when things are done in secret, that carry the imprint of America, but are inimical to what America should stand for, and it becomes then for present-day as well as future generations of Americans their unfortunate fate to have to deal with the blowback from intelligent operations gone horribly awry.
When these spy agencies do not answer to the public, and do not answer to the legislators, than they are a power onto themselves, bound by no one, subject to no constraints, in which everyone knows, that the dirtiest of deeds are always done where there is no light, but only darkness.