Want some amazing summer reading? Check out the Unclassified Report on the President's Surveillance Program.

The title may not be a grabber. But this report, which was produced by the inspectors general of the Defense Department, the CIA, the Justice Department, the National Security Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is a scorcher. It covers how the Bush administration went about implementing its warrantless wiretapping program--which, the report makes clear, was just one of several new and top secret intelligence programs initiated after 9/11 that were legally dicey.

The report was released on Friday--the day of choice for government spinners trying to draw as little attention as possible to information. (Saturday newspapers--especially during the summer--are the least read editions of the week.) The report did get full write-ups in the major papers, and these reports focused on the obvious point: the warrantless wiretapping was of limited value and did not, as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have claimed, lead to counterterrorism operations that saved countless lives. The news stories also zeroed in on another key element: that the legal analysis supporting the warrantless wiretapping program and the other hush-hush intelligence programs (which the report does not identify) was of questionable merit.

But to get a full view of how far off the tracks the Bush-Cheney administration went, you have to read the full 36 pages. They detail how one mid-level attorney in the Justice Department--the infamous John Yoo--was able to cook up for the White House legal justification for these intelligence operations without any oversight from others at Justice. it's hard to consider this part of the report without coming to a harsh legal conclusion: this was nuts. Completely nuts.

The report also notes that because the White House--at Cheney's insistence--wanted to keep information about the warrantless wiretapping restricted to a small circle, this data could not be put to good use. The IGs also reveal that after senior Justice Department officials and FBI director Robert Mueller raised questions about all these programs, the White House modified or nixed some of them. Ponder that for a moment: the Bush administration ended anti-terrorism intelligence programs because of legal objections. If the Democrats ever suggest or do anything like this, Cheney and other GOPers go ballistic. More rank hypocrisy.

So put down that thriller or romance novel, and grab a copy of this report--a compilation of five separate classified reports--and read all about Bush era hijinks. You'll laugh. You'll cry.

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Dick Cheney is just going to keep on spinning his way out the door.

In an exit interview with ABC News, he was asked if he agreed with Karl Rove's recent statement that had there been better prewar intelligence the Bush administration would not have invaded Iraq. (In the months before the war, George W. Bush and others in the White House had plenty of reason to know the WMD intelligence was iffy; still, they overplayed it for public consumption--but that's another story.) Cheney shot back:

I disagree with that. I think the--as I look at the intelligence with respect to Iraq, what they got wrong was that there weren't any stockpiles. What we found in the after-action reports after the intelligence report was done and then various special groups went and looked at the intelligence and what its validity was, what they found was that Saddam Hussein still had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction. He had the technology, he had the people, he had the basic feedstocks. They also found he had every intention of resuming production once the international sanctions were lifted.

Well--how to put this?--no. Not at all. That's not true.