A year later, the report is complete, and I’ve just gotten a copy of it. What does it say? I’m still reading it, but one thing it says is that the CIA’s involvement in the program is deeper than has been reported. And one interesting bonus fact: the report calls the program the “President’s Surveillance Program,” rather than the manipulative “Terrorist Surveillance Program” handle the Bush administration gave the program when it became public in order to put critics in a tight spot. (”What? You oppose surveillance for dangerous terrorists who want to kill your grandchildren????”)

More as I read the report.

Update: Here’s the basis for switching up the nomenclature, and it comes with a point of pride. Two years ago, in July 2007, Paul Kiel and I tried to make sense of then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ congressional testimony about the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” and concluded that there must have been more than one secret surveillance program authorized by President Bush beginning in 2001. Today the IGs’ report bears us out:

The specific intelligence activities that were permitted by the Presidential Authorizations remain highly classified, except that beginning in December 2005 the President and other Administration officials acknowledged that these activities included the interception without a court order of certain international communications where there is “a reasonable basis to conclude that one party to the communication is a member of al-Qai’da, affiliated with al-Qai’da, or a member of an organization affiliated with al-Qai’da.” The President and other Administration officials referred to this publicly disclosed activity as the “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” a convention we follow in this unclassified report. We refer to other intelligence activities under the Presidential Authorizations as the “Other Intelligence Activities.” The specific details of the Other Intelligence Activities remain highly classified, although the Attorney General publicly acknowledged the existence of such activities in August 2007. Together, the Terrorist Surveillance Program and the Other Intelligence Activities comprise the PSP.

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Yes, this is taxpayer money, but the thinking went that if the figure became public, the Soviet Union or the Chinese or Al Qaeda or Cobra Commander could nefariously infer how much money we spent on the CIA station in Sao Tome or something. Congress appropriated the money in secret. I’m not making this up. It went on for decades.

But then Michael McConnell became director of national intelligence! And he came up with a fairly smart strategy. McConnell could blatantly misrepresent the importance of the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program; demagogue the congressional debate about the program, and belittle the severity of waterboarding. But if he just declassified things that don’t really matter but are treated as if they possess Utmost National Importance, he’ll come out of the administration looking like a paragon of openness.

All of that is preamble and context for telling you that McConnell just sent me and all the other reporters on his press release a notice informing us that Congress devoted $47.5 billion to intelligence matters in fiscal 2008. But wait! There’s a caveat!

Any and all subsidiary information concerning the intelligence budget, whether the information concerns particular intelligence agencies or particular intelligence programs, will not be disclosed. Beyond the disclosure of the top-line figure, there will be no other disclosures of currently classified budget information because such disclosures could harm national security. The only exceptions to the foregoing are for unclassified appropriations, primarily for the Community Management Account.

That’s bureaucratese for “Don’t think this means I’m going to tell you how much money we spent on any particular program. The cost of my allergist’s Lexus is no more your business than is the price tag on our Death Ray.” Plus ca change.