Black project

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In the United States a black project is a top-secret military/defense project, unacknowledged by the government, military personnel, and defense contractors. Familiar examples of U.S. military aircraft developed as black projects are the F-117 stealth fighter and B-2 stealth bomber, which were highly classified and denied to exist until ready to be announced to the public.

Black programs have been criticized for violating the Receipts and Expenditures clause of the United States Constitution. Article I, Section 9, clause 7 of the United States Constitution requires the government to publish a "regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money". Because black programs are not disclosed as part of the United States official budget, critics contend that this violates the United States Constitution. Partially to dissuade critics, the United States Department of Defense sets aside a large portion of their annual budget as "the black budget". This money is said to be divided in undisclosed portions among all black projects so that a record of how much public money is expended in undisclosed ways will still be publicly available. There are some that claim not all black projects are funded in this way; for instance, the Montauk Project— regarded by all but diehard conspiracy theorists as fictional—was said to be funded by US$10 billion in confiscated Nazi gold.

An unverified statement is that by law, the nature and extent of all US tax money expenditure must be recorded in the budget. It is further claimed that the black budget can be determined by adding up all US government expenditure listed in the budget, and subtract that amount from the total budget. The inference being the Black Budget is included in the total budget amount, but not listed in the budget break down.