It makes me angry, too. And I'd say the ball is in the legislature's court. They can issue ultimatums, can't they? "'Fess up, or we're cutting your funding."
The system is highly inter-connected when it comes to protecting power. A threat to the NSA is a threat to the CIA and to Homeland Security and the general super state we have. You can't tear one down without vastly reducing the others, as it's all premised on unchecked expansion of government into private lives at every level.
Any member of the House or Senate that attempted to pull the funding for the NSA would either find themselves at the center of a scandal (they know everything about you), or the more powerful politicians on both sides of the aisle that are invested into the super state would go on the attack and bury the person. The NSA is six times the size of the CIA. They own Congress across the board, Hoover would be envious.
This is not a friendly government, they demonstrate that all over the world regularly, it should never be a surprise that it translates domestically.
Not to mention that CIA gets lots of their foundings from drug trafficking and you could cut off 50% of its money/air supply and they would still run on full throttle.
Its an easy Google search so I won't point to sources but at some point I understand CIA owning drug grounds. You see a billion of dollars in profits from something that is illegal on its face: you have too choices: being a good decent human being and shut this entire thing down, or being a greedy evil man and get into the roots of it and run the game getting the biggest cut for yourself.
God only knows how many secret ops / black ops / unknown organisations that even don't have names, the US government (and many others) are running, without other organisations or even the head of organisations knowing. One day we may find out some of those secrets which would be extremely interesting to learn.
Where the heck are our checks and balances?