The big reveal is that Blair, the nominal overall intelligence chief, wants a much bigger role over the CIA’s drone strikes in Pakistan.

Since the CIA’s establishment in 1947, its officers have had a direct line to the National Security Council. No cut-outs, no go-betweens.  Blair and his deputies believed that the CIA’s National Clandestine Service was failing to provide a full picture of several of the agency’s largest covert collection and special activity programs. In particular, the DNI would often find out about CIA-initiated drone strikes in Pakistan well after the fact. The CIA was conscientious about briefing the National Security Council, but did not bother to loop in the DNI.

That won’t happen any longer. The CIA will keep its unfettered access to national security principals, and the DNI still doesn’t have the authority to order covert action programs, but the White House is now requiring the CIA to fully brief the DNI on all covert action programs and will seek from the DNI regular assessments of whether any program fits in with the nation’s intelligence strategy, which is set by Blair. Since Blair briefs Congress more often than Panetta does, it makes sense for Blair to know as much about covert action programs as CIA briefers would.

That might sound like bureaucratic box-checking. But for years, the DNI’s office — long before Blair took over — has quietly absorbed many intelligence analysts who look at long-term geopolitical questions, rather than analyzing the crises of the moment. Since the big question with the drone strikes is whether they ultimately enrage Pashtun Pakistanis by the civilian casualties they create — and therefore raise the question of whether the strikes are counterproductive — it’s not inconceivable that Blair’s office would take a more skeptical view of the program’s value than the CIA does.

But that’s not the only big piece of news Ambinder uncovers. Check this out:

The conflict became public earlier this year, after the CIA protested when the Director of National Intelligence appointed a senior National Security Agency representative to be the DNI’s representative in Kurdistan. Traditionally, the CIA’s chief of station had served as the foreign nation’s principal intelligence representative. But the NSA has a bigger footprint in Kurdistan, and the DNI decided that he would be better served by appointing an NSA officer to be his representative.

The conflict is not new. But the fact that it took place over Iraqi Kurdistan most definitely is. And the additional fact that Kurdistan is home to a National Security Agency presence is big big news. I would bet a lot of money that such a presence is geared toward some serious spying on nearby Iran.

“Due to the high visibility of the issues surrounding the tragic event at Fort Hood, the President has instructed the National Security Council to assume control of all informational briefings. The NSC has directed that the leadership, as well as the chairmen and ranking minority members of the relevant congressional committees receive briefings first.

“I have been told that the Director of National Intelligence is still committed to providing the full membership a briefing on the activities within the jurisdiction of this Committee. I believe that this will occur, and I will push to schedule a briefing before the end of this week.”

Just yesterday, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) postponed the Senate Armed Services Committee’s scheduled briefing on Fort Hood in accordance with President Obama’s request for Congress to await the results of military and law enforcement inquiries.

Well, today is the day! From Blair’s office:

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair released today the fiscal year 2009 budget figure for the National Intelligence Program (NIP).  The Director disclosed that the aggregate amount appropriated to the NIP for fiscal year 2009 was $49.8 Billion.

OK, then, per Blair’s September disclosure, that means the MIP, last year, totaled $25.2 billion. The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder tweeted that he thinks Blair was “lowballing” and the real intel budget is around $130 when you take into account “IT spending, DARPA intel stuff, infrastructure, shared costs” and “half of [the Department of Homeland Security]’s activities (even enforcement ) serve intelligence purposes, domestic or otherwise.”

Vice President Biden

Secretary of State Clinton

Secretary of Defense Gates

Ambassador Susan Rice, Permanent U.S. Representative to the United Nations (via videoconference)

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan

Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

General David Petraeus, U.S. Central Command

General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Commander in Afghanistan (via videoconference)

Admiral Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence

CIA Director Leon Panetta

Karl Eikenberry, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan (via videoconference)

Anne Patterson, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan (via videoconference)

General James Jones, National Security Advisor

Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor

John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security

Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, Special Assistant to the President for Afghanistan and Pakistan

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Vice President Biden

Secretary of State Clinton

Secretary of Defense Gates

Ambassador Susan Rice, Permanent US Representative to the United Nations

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan

Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

General David Petraeus, U.S. Central Command

General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Commander in Afghanistan (via videoconference)

Admiral Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence

CIA Director Leon Panetta

Karl Eikenberry, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan (via videoconference)

Anne Patterson, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan (via videoconference)

General James Jones, National Security Advisor

Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor

John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security

Brennan, one of Obama’s most important advisers, wasn’t in last week’s meeting; neither was Donilon or Rice.

Michael Birmingham, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, clarified that Blair was talking about both figures, together, to make up the $75 billion total. And indeed, on the call in a different context, Blair spoke of no longer bifurcating military intelligence and national intelligence, saying that was no longer an appropriate distinction. Birmingham said that the national intelligence budget had not increased from last year’s $47.5 billion*. If not there has been no NIP increase — and, by law, the director of national intelligence must disclose the budget line in October — that means that the Military Intelligence Program is budgeted at $27.5 billion.

Birmingham emphasized that the MIP total is not a classified number, but ODNI doesn’t put it on its Website, because its not “required by law” to do so. (It does put the national intelligence program figure on the site.) But Steve Aftergood, an intelligence analyst with the Federation of American Scientists who knows more about the intelligence budget than most anyone who isn’t inside the intelligence community, says the MIP number is certainly obscure. There are “no solid numbers on MIP,” Aftergood said in an email. “We knew it was more than $10 [billion] — but not how much more. So the 75B figure is quite interesting.”

Did Blair mess up by implicitly revealing that total? “No, absolutely not,” Birmingham said.

Clarification: Birmingham reiterates that the National Intelligence Program budget line hasn’t increased from $47.5 billion to $75 billion, but the actual total for this year’s NIP won’t be made public until October.

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“We really believe the American people deserve to know about their intelligence enterprise,” said Blair, who is scheduled to speak tonight to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. To that end, he ordered the creation of an unclassified version of his “blueprint to run this 200,000-person, $75 billion national enterprise.”

Blair’s predecessor, Michael McConnell, became the first-ever intelligence community chief to disclose the intelligence budget in accordance with an act of Congress. Back in 2007, that budget totaled $43.5 billion, without the cost of military operations that include intelligence assets. Blair did not expand on his description of the intelligence budget, although a senior intelligence official who fielded reporters’ questions on background said the intelligence community is still struggling to put into place mechanisms for “enhanced auditability [and] tracking resources” of that budget, and revealed that unspecified current practices to manage taxpayer money for intelligence “are not interoperable” across the various intelligence agencies. And this is a budget that has apparently gone up by more than two-thirds in the past two years.

Update: In October, McConnell revealed that the budget for 2008 on intelligence had been $47.5 billion. That was a nine percent increase from the previous year. This is a ginormous one. Thanks to reader TS for jogging my addled memory.

Update II: For an explanation of how the budget got to be $75 billion, see this follow-on post.

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Under the new guidelines, interrogators must stay within the parameters of the Army Field Manual when questioning suspects. The task force concluded — unanimously, officials said — that “the Army Field Manual provides appropriate guidance on interrogation for military interrogators and that no additional or different guidance was necessary for other agencies,” according to a three-page summary of the findings. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters freely.

Using the Army Field Manual means certain techniques in the gray zone between torture and legal questioning — such as playing loud music or depriving prisoners of sleep — will not be allowed. Which tactics are acceptable was an issue “looked at thoroughly,” one senior official said. Obama had already banned certain severe measures that the Bush administration had permitted, such as waterboarding.

Now, it’s important not to make too much of this. For one thing, as blogger Jeff Kaye has assiduously documented, the Army Field Manual has been revised in an appendix to allow some torture techniques into a document almost universally described as Geneva Conventions-compliant. For another, one of the approaches taken by the task force that advised the creation of the teams has been to look beyond specific techniques and focus on interrogation approaches geared around the specific detainee being interrogated. But at the same time, it was widely feared in progressive circles that the task force would ultimately erode President Obama’s January executive order restricting interrogation techniques to the boundaries of the Army Field Manual, and that fear hasn’t come to pass.

Now to learn what it’ll recommend about renditions …

The New York Times reports that a different OPR report, prepared for Attorney General Eric Holder, has advised re-opening investigations of CIA interrogators who tortured detainees. That clears the way for the investigation that Holder is widely expected to announce as early as today. But without the OPR inquiry on the Office of Legal Counsel — which Holder has pledged to declassify — the CIA inspector general report will present stories outside of the context that gave rise to them. The CIA constantly went back and forth with the Justice Department during the Bush administration to ensure that the valued interrogation program had the cover of law. Without that context, it won’t be possible to understand what drove interrogators to enter those interrogation chambers, even if the torture they applied was more severe than what the department’s lawyers specified was acceptable.

All of which leads Marcy Wheeler to conclude:

If it is, indeed, DOJ’s plan to release all the other torture documents save the OPR report, it will have the effect of distracting the media with horrible descriptions of threats with power drills and waterboarding, away from the equally horrible description of lawyers willfully twisting the law to “authorize” some of those actions. It will shift focus away from those that set up a regime of torture and towards those who free-lanced within that regime in spectacularly horrible ways. It will hide the degree to which torture was a conscious plan, and the degree to which the oral authorizations for torture may well have authorized some of what we’ll see in the IG Report tomorrow.

If it is, indeed, DOJ’s plan to release the IG Report and announce an investigation without, at the same time, releasing the OPR report, it will serve the goal of exposing the Lynndie England’s of the torture regime while still protecting those who instituted that regime.

MR. GREGORY:  Is it still your belief that Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan?

GEN.  JONES:  That one’s a little bit more elusive.  We are still very much on the hunt.  We think that he’s still in that general region.  But that’s a, that’s a tougher nut to crack.

And yet this was the unambiguous judgment of Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, in the annual threat briefing (PDF) he gave the Senate intelligence committee in February:

Under the strategic direction of Usama Bin Ladin and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qa’ida remains intent on attacking US interests worldwide, including the US Homeland.  Although al-Qa’ida’s core organization in the tribal areas of Pakistan is under greater pressure now than it was a year ago, we assess that it remains the most dangerous component of the larger al-Qa’ida network.

Is Jones adding a degree of caution to these assessments, or has something changed?