The invaluable Secrecy News reports a disconcerting confusion in the Administration's national security secrecy rulings:The decision last week by the Director of National Intelligence to declassify the FY2009 budget for the National Intelligence Program is inconsistent with other ODNI classification actions and highlights the confusion over the proper scope of national security secrecy that prevails in the U.S. intelligence community today.On October 30, DNI Dennis C. Blair announced that the total appropriation for the National Intelligence Program (NIP) in FY 2009 was $49.8 billion.  (Under the terms of a 1997 law, the President could have withheld the FY 2009 budget figure if he filed a statement with Congress declaring that revelation of the number "would damage national security."  But he did not do so.) Yet at the same time, the Office of the DNI refuses to reveal the NIP budget figure from FY 2006 -- three years earlier -- on grounds (pdf) that its...(Read Full Post)