A nation's stature among nations is dependent upon several factors. Nations spend incredible amounts of funding and man-hours on intelligence, translation of that intelligence to something that can be used to develop dependable strategies, employment of those strategies, and military strength to back the strategies. The amount of funding is hidden from the overly curious (other countries and other intelligence operations) by utilizing alternate methods of funding military and intelligence programs and hiding the funding among numerous departmental budgets and operations. This method of concealing funds is known as 'black budget' expenditures. A similar method is used to mask staffing by employing manpower, on paper, in one department and farming out their work to other 'black operations'... Read full article »