There was a bright spot this week in the drive to clear up the mess of what national security information can be declassified and what should remain secret. And with that bright spot, blurred vision too.

The fiscal 2009 budget for the National Intelligence Program (NIP), a number previously kept classified, was revealed by the Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair last week to be $49.8 billion. 

“I’m hopeful that this information will give the American people a better understanding of how their tax dollars are being used to help protect the country and keep Americans safe,” DNI Blair said.

But his statement confuses the matter, because the dollar figure represents only one part of the total intelligence budget. Excluded is the Military Intelligence Program (MIP). The Secrecy News blog helpfully notes that the budget of the National Security Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and others, comes from a combination of both the NIP and the MIP. So the American people still don't know what is being spent.

Nor do they have a better understanding, since disclosure of "any and all subsidiary information" about the NIP could harm national security, the office of the DNI said.

The last year for which the combined intelligence budget has been declassified is 1998, not a proud year in intelligence annals incidentally. And while the NIP portion of the intel budget has been declassified for 2008 ($47.5 billion) and 2007 ($43.5 billion), the figure for 2006 apparently remains too dangerous to reveal.

What's evident is a "wide variance in application of classification levels,” as the office of the DNI noted itself in an internal January 2008 study (pdf) obtained by the Secrecy News blog. “The definitions of ‘national security’ and what constitutes ‘intelligence’ — and thus what must be classified — are unclear,” the study found. 

In all the hubbub to open up government data, let's not forget that reforming the practices around classification and declassification of intelligence is a key part of government transparency. Time to get it right.