Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On The Presidents Book Of Secrets 20160731

S. [inaudible] ultimately what hope for the book is that young man gets a sense of what it takes herself interrogation, to ask questions of oneself and ones identity and position in the world. I think that theres a pretty establish narrative for what it is to be a young black man and experience racism and White Supremacy of what that looks light. We have a body of literature that deals with that. We have the folklore. We have the oral history of what that looks like but i dont think weve worked on enough is for young black men and thinking through what it means to experience that but also be in a position in which your identity may be denying someone else humanity, to be a heterosexual black man that exist within the context of the patriarchy and homophobia and all these other things. How is it that youre wrestling with your position within that come. Implicit within that come and to say, my friend, its easy recognize whose boot is on your neck. Its much harder to recognize whose neck your boot is on. End into question that i to say how do i do that myself from that when my identity, like william at my core, we shipped but all of these experiences and by the systems. How can i truly fight for equality, justice and liberation for all people, not just those who experiences the same position and identity as i do. So hopefully thats what it starts to get young black men thinking about. I guess with that, thank you so much. [applause] thank you again. We have books in the lobby for sale so please go out and purchase this thoughtprovoking book. I begin, thank you, mychal, for your wonderful presentation. And thank all of you for coming. And he will be signed by here at this table. So books are for sale. [inaudible conversations] when they tune in on the weekends usually its authors sharing their new releases. Watching the nonfiction authors on booktv is the best television for serious readers. They can have a longer conversation and delve into their subject. Booktv weekends, they bring you author after author after author. I love booktv and im a cspan fan. Hello, everyone. For those of you who were this morning, welcome back. For those of you who are new the session, welcome to the 2016 roosevelt reading festival. We are glad to have here today. I think you know the format. We will talk for about a half an hour and then it will be about 10 minutes of question and answer, and i will go back and they will set up and you will be able to get signed copies of the book which are pretty wonderful. We are very excited about this year to at the library. This will be our 75th anniversary at the end of june and we are celebrating in many ways and this reading fussell is one of the ways we think both franklin and eleanor was a would be happy about because this is exactly how they wanted the site to be is, as a search for people to talk about presidency, about the air and to bring people together to the meaningful conversation. To support programs like this, we have our membership table. We would strongly encourage and we appreciate. The challenge we face with someone like david is that he is highly accomplished. I could spend the next half hour talk about his background. He served during both the clinton and the george w. Bush administration as an Intelligence Officer. And daily intelligence brie brir from the ca which is of course wakeup the idea for the book. It was a desk officer at the state department as well. He consults and trains and offers advice to Government Agencies and cooperation. He received his ph. D in Political Science from duke. Those of you who are basketball fans, we can talk about that later. He has published a wide range of articles, security studies, houston chronicles, appears a National Media regulate a special on fox news channel, fox and friends. This book is a fascinating book and it goes right to one of these key transitional moment in the presidency from roosevelt to today which is the date intelligence briefing. His book is called the president s book of secrets the untold story of Intelligence Briefings to americas president s from kennedy to obama. Of course, there was no daily intelligence briefing at the default as the cold war came. What they did have was a map room. If you go to the museum youll see a my replicate. We dont have a lot of great photographs of the but roosevelt wanted and bathroom because churchill had one. So he wanted one. Churchill also had a great Intelligence Agency which the the states did not so roosevelt wanted one of them as well. I think dave will talk about some of the. I would like you to welcome tried one and i hope we will have a great session welcome david priess. [applause] thank you, paul. And thank you to everyone here at the Roosevelt Library involved with the reading festival. Thank you all for coming. Im learning a bit about our shared history. Im here to talk about the president s book of secrets, a colloquial term for the daily intelligence that the president has received for decades in various forms. The presidency in the modern era is so different than what it was 200 years ago, but theres a few key inflection points along the way. Im going to talk about some of those inflection points focusing of both president roosevelt, looking before him, looking after them. It centers around what we take for granted today which is that the president of the United States received top secret intelligence delivered to him personally, tailored to them personally to allow them to dissipate threats to National Security and hopefully to identify Foreign Policy opportunities and act ahead of them. The Presidency Daily brief, or an pbd come is that every document on top secret intelligence including reporting and assessments from gaza and outside sources alike the cia spies, the National Security agencys listening posts, the nations reconnaissance satellites all gather information and then export take that information in paint a picture about whats going on in a Certain International environment based on the limited information and their own knowledge and expertise of a foreign culture of the foreign leaders they are studying. For this book i did have a chance to get direct input from all of the living expresident s and Vice President s from most of the living cia directors, National Security advisers, white house chiefs of staff, secretaries of state and defense. This story is their story. I found in doing the research what we take for granted today about the president getting this kind of intelligence simply wasnt true a long time ago. Let me watch you do a bit of epic is alleged to do with talk about folks here today, Franklin Roosevelt, and how we planted the seeds for will be noted is the modern delivery of intelligence to the president of the United States. First i will walk back a little bit to give a sense of what fdr faced with come into office relating to the top secret intelligence and can talk about what happening during his administration if they want to briefly through what his successors did with the foundation that he played before i take your questions. Go back to george washington. George washington came into office as president. There was no Intelligence Community but he was no stranger to intelligence. He had been his own spymaster. Once in office he did that anyone accessing International Developments for him and his successors did i the. They face the same hurdles. Seems strange to think about today but if you think about the five successors to george washington, people who lead the nation for the 40 years after his death, they had Extensive International experience for that time. All five had been ambassadors, in some cases to more than one country or secretary of state come often do not all of those things and occasionally acting secretary for. Governor of virginia or author of declaration of independence. Theres a lot of expertise. And yet they didn didnt anyboo open interview was going on around the world. They had to do that all themselves. Over the next several decades Going Forward over 100 years in fact. That didnt change. During the civil war lincoln did walk across to go to get some telegraphs. During the spanishamerican war mckinley could have a small war room set a. President wilson during the First World War did get some assessment. They were from the british who was getting them from the british in washington, not from United States Intelligence Service which did not exist as such. So when fdr enters office thats what he is facing. But he had a dual challenge. The nazi aggression in europe and get the rights of the japanese empire across the pacific. He needed more information and more assessment of that information that he was getting through other means. He started reading the institutions that were lacking. He tapped wild bill donovan to become the head of what became the oss, originally the office of the coordinator of information from a Great Washington bureaucratic title if ever there was one. The coordinator of information becoming the director of the office of Strategic Services. Most stories about office of Strategic Services focus on the cool stuff they did. They focus on the collection of human intelligence, the propaganda efforts around the world. They focus on the sabotage the oss operatives did and they did throughout world war ii. But it was another unprecedented effort in world war ii with the oss. I was in office called the office of research and analysis, or became known rna. Are in a was the analytic effort. Rna was a group that donovan called his professors. These are the people that the oss recruited from some the nations top universities, harvard, yale, princeton, other top universities to assess what was going on around the world to serve the president and top military leaders. They ended up at the peak of oss, and it upholding an almost 1000 political scientists, economists, historians, cartographers, geographers and others to write thousands of memos, handbooks and other information for political and military leaders of the time. Their job was to collate information from their sources at the time the sources they had included diplomatic cables from the state department overseas, they had interNational Media available to them. They had military reporting available. If theres one thing they did not have, they did not have direct access to intercept foreign communications. The kindest of the masses could agency collects now. It was there but they didnt have access to it. The information they were providing used meanings but not all means that the United States had at the time. The leaders of the research and Analysis Division in the oss really struggled with how to make this relevant to the president. They had no trouble getting this information to military leaders in the field who needed it. Network it reports being produced but they did have the good sense of what roosevelt needed. They didnt get a lot of feedback. This is essentially a one way street. Reports were being set up that not a lot of feedback was coming back. Hard to tell of the product in a kind of environment. What the r a leaders did is they tried to make these academically interesting reports that all these professors were producing and turn it into something that could be actionable intelligence but they did struggle with that. Donovan innovated something to try to get around this. He would send some of these are day reports to the president through the president s secretary, and he started putting cover memos on top of them. The cover memos at first were administrative, descriptive. But over time donovans personnel he started to shine through in his memo started including some of the juiciest tidbits of the spy reports that were included in the reading stack underneath him. They start including some of donovans own language putting a spin on the dense academic prose appearing within the report. Don evans language certainly embrace the nonacademic phrases but he was getting roosevelt things like that old fox, and this one, contortions of the putrefying nazi diplomacy. Cia and retrospective published several years ago called the r a effort topped by this colorful memos from donovan one of the few original contributions to the craft of intelligence by the United States throughout its history. This was unique to develop intelligence analysis of this sort for the president. But as i mentioned it was a one way street. Fdr was i getting a lot of feedback certainly to analysts writing these reports not even to the Senior Leadership of oss about what kind of interpretation and assistance he needed to help them prosecute the war effort. So they into providing much more Background Information and insights personally directed for the president. You the end of the war in 1945, os as to its on a bridge produced a Civil Affairs handbook on germany that reached a whopping 2000 pages. Franklin roosevelt like to read. Nobody likes to read that much. [laughter] and yet the foundation for the moderate Intelligence System was laid. For the first time the was an Intelligence Service in the United States which had as one of its objectives serving the president of the United States. Harry truman picked up on that very soon the oss was disbanded quickly after the war but in early 1946, it was back. And adding your name, a new had called the director of Central Intelligence and yet it was called the Central Intelligence group which eventually became the central Intelligence Agency your harry truman started getting what he called a daily summary and this was the document that analysts at cia pulled together based on classified information but this one was more directed at truman did so. That is, they thought about what does truman need and what does he not need. He picked up on what roosevelt had build and get something more focused on him. But even then they were not getting tons of feedback and overtime they didnt get the kind of response they were looking for. Under the next president Dwight Eisenhower to change even more because he was used to a steady profession of briefings. He used a National Security Council System very well. With topics planned out weeks, sometimes months in advance. He was not getting a daily intelligence briefing personalized the he receipts and documents produced by the current Intelligence Office in what was not the cia but those to a close relationship to the intelligence he was receiving. That would only happen under john f. Kennedy but a very different personalities eyes out and get the way of absorbing information. Delight to talk to people. He liked ad hoc meetings about various issues that came a. He could not sit there still for hours for the long meetings that eisenhower was used to. One day as military aid by the challenge of trying to ride him all these documents from the pentagon, the cia, the state department and get it to what the president needed, he called in analyst and so what i needed your help. I need you to they come up with something that i can give the president that will give them everything he needs to know and nothing that he doesnt. That will take this huge stack of reports and boil it down to the essential elements. I would really like it if you put icould put it into a formatt the default input into his suit pocket. We cant seem to keep his attention for more than a few minutes. That way they can read it, put it away from the apple out again between meetings and get through it during the day. One of the office of look at the apple and smiled because you can talk about just such a product anticipating kennedys personnel at the change. He had something in mind. So much so that within 24 hours they had a dry run of new product something unheard of in bureaucracy since. Less than 24 hours they had a new product designed for the president in the hands of military aid sing what you think . He liked it. He liked it so much that the brain next day he took the inaugural copy of what became known as the president intelligence checklist to john f. Kennedy out at the least care the estate of glendora in virginia. Kennedy was sittin was sitting s wimple bodyboard between laps. People do not come look at it, seem to like the short document. True to form, put it down so he could keep swimming. He was hooked. For the rest of the short presidency jfk seemed appreciate the president intelligence checklist, reading it, reacting to it, asking simmons leading officers deduce things based on the items into. He led into the circle of president ial intelligence the secretary of state and defense. One person he did not le look io the inner circle was Vice President Lyndon Johnson. No love off between the two but it was quite a surprise after that day in dallas when the tim johnson smu president and the director of Central Intelligence briefs in the next and chosen the president intelligence checklist giving no indication that this is a new product designed for him. Lyndon johnson was not a statement the figure out he was excluded perhaps white thats why he never took to this document. This leads to the birth of the document window today. It has continued for more than 50 years. December 1954, cia taking out this was a working for johnson, they retitled it, reformatted it and they gave johnson somethingg they could cost me his own, the president s daily brief. At this time into most of history the daily brief has been all through those things. It has been the president s, that is, indirectly at the president , aimed at the person of john f. Kennedy but they continued it with Lyndon Johnson delivering it to at night and because he liked to his reading in bed late at night. Its the president s daily brief, daily, produced every working day for more than 50 years. Its also briefed. In some cases michigan find one page, just a few short some respect of the cases it could stretch to dozens of pages but usually somewhere in between. Richard nixon also received the president s daily brief everyday. To the state with all the research i did including talking to dr. Kissingers National Security advisor, we cant be sure to actually read it. Nixon did not love the cia. He felt he was parties more on Foreign Policy and International Affairs already the most sources indicate that he did read it at least to be aware of what the Intelligence Community wasnt saying. But he did not have a rich dialogue with its producers. But even there, it was tailored to the president picked a changed its format to look more like a legal brief thinking makes it as a lawyer, he will appreciate that format. He ended up having a short presidency. But before the end there was a new Vice President , gerald ford the gerald ford came in office. Had some limited experts with intelligence but he came out to the headquarters to get a tour. During that tour the director of Central Intelligence happened to walk into the office of current intelligence, the officer produce the david rivkin other high level intelligence and elses but intelligence announces the setting of hiphop to be a copy of the dailies brief which it of the dailies briefly kidnapping senior because president nixon and dr. Kissinger had been limiting its distribution to them. The Vice President sees it and says whats that . Thats the president s daily brief. This is what the president of the National Study by the to every day. Would you like to see that . Yes, i would. And thus was born the first close briefing relationship with depression. They offered not only the presence daily brief, they offered him a personal briefer who everyday would bring the product, not to drop off and pick up later, but to sit with gerald ford and talk to its content come to brief them come to answer questions on the spot after doc whistlestop does look on the cutting room floor when its printed, some of the richest behind the analysis. They love. He hosted a briefer in his own or the car ride downtown. Not too long from then, Richard Nixon resigned. Gerald ford becomes president. The real estate for the briefer change from the Kitchen Table in alexandria to the oval office in the white house. Gerald ford was a first prize and received only the president in delivery but a daily brief cia working level analytic briefer while in office. He continued his first virtue in office. Before you decide he understood this was not that he could just read the book. Jimmy carter came book. Jimmy carter to patrick also did not take a briefer but the format changed as well. A dedicated team in the book to the president jimmy carter from his time as governor loved to ride on any document, any memo he received. He would write instructions. Sometimes things were and remember but usually instructions to his staff very clearly written, this is what i want done. He wanted the pdb in the same format and he wrote all over those things to the cia, craig a lot of white space a lot of room for carter to write in the president s daily brief as well. His successor Ronald Reagan has reputation, the conventional wisdom is a good read much at all, not top secret intelligence reports. The truth is a little more nuanced than that. With several reasons to believe Ronald Reagan to take his presidency brief series of. First of all of you and to work closely with them has attested to the fact that if you do something and something to him to read, he granted. They had to limit what they gave to them because if they put in front of him he thought he had to read it. They would sometimes highlight certain parts saying just read todays. It would come back and he had read all of it. The second when windows because what he wrote about it. If you go through Ronald Reagans diaries and a fulllength, which i have last night you will find references to daily intelligence and, somes he writes in his diary referring to the president s daily brief or the pdb and reacting to things he saw within and. A third way you can tell, a safest when you can go into the vaults where the old pdb circuit, still classified not released, but its a historian did that it is able to publish results of what is a pretty what is the first 1000 copies of the pdb during reagans administration and he found in reagans and markings, not on all of them but a significant number of them. Things like underlines, brackets around things, question marks when he wasnt sure. In monkeys riding on a page but thats not what you said before that it is circled on the previous page how does the difference between something being said on the same topic. These are not the signs of someone whos not reading the document. It does appear he took it is usually. Something happened in his administration that had a major factor that is the pdb was getting passed around a little bit especially within the white house. Traditionally the pdb has been limited to a handful of people, the president and whomever the president designates we see the. During reagans heir it started getting photocopied at the white house chief of staff, National Security advisor, had other people looking at it. It was often passed through the situation room and people would look at it. Theres a story one of the senior officials at the white house was making a copy of the pdb, taking a dump and storing it in his garage at them. Remember this is top secret intelligence with sources and methods information in every sense of the that was discovered and they got those copies that can destroy the person was to upset by all this end of the Vice President george h. W. Bush. He was the first thing to be Vice President who attended director of the cia. He knew what it took to get the information that got into this very sensitive book. He told me he was very upset when he found out about this. Maybe thats why when he became president the institute of practice for the pdb that there to the security of the book. He insisted that he get a copy of the book from a cia briefer. Sure enough, bush 41 did it for four years to get a briefer in rome with them in the oval Office Briefing them would ever use in washington on which of advisors. When they were done talking about the pdb, the briefer to the pdb with them and left. Bush told the other recipients of the pdb, the secretary of state, defense and others, you will do the same thing. You can read the book if you want. You dont have to have the briefer we see what you read in the presence of the briefer in the briefer is going to take it away when youre done. Guaranteeing the sanctity of this product and along the most Sensitive Information to get inside of it. The book chains although that under president clinton. President clinton had ebb and flow relationship at the start getting some briefings but his personality was different. He liked to have long meetings about things where discussion would go one forever and it was very hard to schedule a set time for a pdb briefing. Overtime briefers would wait and wait Comp Committee would never and wait Comp Committee would have happened or advocate short but sometimes they just dropped it off. But he still read it and took ititshould easily. He told me something that he used to make decisions almost everyday bigger something in there he said that he found useful. In fact, he even tells a story which i detail in the book about how would help avoid Nuclear Armageddon when india and pakistan were going to war with each other and something you read in the pdb help them diffuse that situation. Folly that was george w. Bush. George w. Bush did what his father had done, take a briefing every day with an intelligence briefer but he took the process up to notches. One, he decides the beginning would have a briefer not only present when news in washington but where ever he was in the world. He had a cia briefer travel with him on domestic and foreign trips. Number two, he decided to supplement the pdb process to in his second ter second term he at were called deep dies where in addition to getting the daily document everything they needed to know he brought in analysts, worldclass experts, primarily from cia and other intelligence agencies to talk with an in depth about the crisis of the day. In the first 18 months after they did as he had over 200 analysts coming to talk with and in some cases for up to an hour in depth about one particular country or issue. That brings us to our current president , barack obama. I told you the pdb has been personalized for every president. That was the obvious one day when white has publicized a photo of the president leading his Presidency Daily brief on an ipad. The president s daily brief dustup electronic on the screen. Still assessments of World Affairs by the presented in a way that can allow video to be played, things like that. Its easy to see this as a modern invention because its now on an ipad but isnt the same intelligence assessments that started really with Franklin Roosevelt back in world war ii when he was getting information from the First Analytics service that the United States government created the office of research and analysis. I be interested to hear what you think about this topic come interested in answering any questions you have. Thank you for your attention. [applause] please come up to the microphone if you have any questions. We can record for cspan, and i will start with a question for you. When the material goes back to the cia, what happens to it at what point is it ever a declassified . Let me start with the backend of that. We do something revolutionary in history of the president s daily brief, it is happening right now. Traditionally defensive has been off limits to declassification efforts, apart from a virtue for select historical reasons like what was told to the president by before he was assassinated in the 1960s . What was told to Lyndon Johnson right after the assassination . Other than that, pdbs traditionally have been kept walled off from investigation and from research. That changed last year. The decision was made that nothing stays classified for ever. Going back 40 years that started declassifying the president s daily brief and before that the president s intelligence checklist. Last fall the kennedy era and johnson air daily intelligence documents were declassified with some redaction. Something stem class of because some of those people that are being referred to are still around today and the public a want of that information outcome for some of the sources and methods are still being used today. It would jpardize National Security. Its amazing going through them and are available on the website up i believe both the central Intelligence Agency and perhaps a kennedy and johnson libraries at least have links to them. You can see what john kennedy was reading everyday. Whats most surprising about that is the colloquial language used back then. Now its a little more. Craddick, a little more intense in terms of the level of assessment. Back then there were pieces in the president s daily book of secrets like president noss or egypt is considering a reform program. We doubt it will amount to much. That was the whole peace. That was it. A lot simpler than the things we see now. And nixon and ford era president s daily briefs are going to be coming out later this year and declassified. Historians are going to love this because they will get to see what did nixon, at least theoretically, and kissinger shortly see everyday regarding vietnam, regarding the 1973 war, things like that. That is a process going on to the rest of the pdbs are kept locked up. Some of their consider president ial record because the president made markings on them and those are kept secure. Cia has all the copies of the pdbs ever produced. With time we would get to see most or all of them. I guess my question is, has politics taken a backseat to these briefings . Can you explain what you mean by that . Old gleanings . Thank you. The objective of the Intelligence Analysis Service is objectivity, it is the prime ethos of the intelligence business, calling it like you see, telling it like it is from the perspective. The primary set of intelligence analysts is doing the analysis based on feelings about the policy are based on your feelings about the person reading the intelligence assessment. At its best the president s daily brief and all of the intelligence analysis is timely. That is, its delivered at a time that somebody can do something about the information within it. Its objective, it is not slanted or biased and hopefully it is accurate. You cant always hit all three but the goal is to hit all three. I have not found in my research any cases of information in the president s intelligence reports in deliberately slanted. To have been perception of such because imagine youre the president , youve made a difficult decision about a Foreign Policy, trusting a decision gets to the president s desk if its easy. It is a tough decision if it gets there. You make a decision. You have invested the u. S. Government and perhaps your political career and youre getting assessments telling of the situation overseas is a disaster. It easy for you to read that and say why do they hate me politically . Why are they telling me this . Are they not americas . Its easy to understand that but the president s who got it the worst, thinking of cases like Lyndon Johnson in vietnam, getting things that vietnam they did not want to see. Things like george w. Bush on iraq. They did not stop getting president s daily brief reports but they kept reading it. In georg george w. Bushs case s when you start to get more intelligence reports. He invited them in more often to tell him more bad news. Thats probably a good thing, ensuring that intelligence train keeps on running. Can you hear me . When Winston Churchill and parke broke the enigma code, given how close torture was to roosevelt, did you know theyve done it and did they for intelligence during world war ii that was helpful to the United States or not . I dont know because i didnt investigate the british relationship with the is the under the analyst did not have access the United States signals intercept. Thats the committee geisha for intercept. That were developed during the Truman Administration that have that the intelligence analysts writing for the price into the fold of this information. That has continued from this day forward. The relationship with the british over all, however, does have a role with the pdb because the president s daily brief does include information from any source of able to intelligence and was picked if it means the British Government passing through normal channels gives information, theres no reason that couldnt appear in the report for the president. I do about the specific meetings between the two. Does the republican and democratic nominees receive the same president s daily brief, and how long has that pakistan on . This goes back quite a ways. The back story to the candidates briefing truly begins with harry truman. Remember, harry truman becomes president. He doesnt even know about the manhattan project. He did not want people coming into the presidency like he did unaware of something very important. In 1952 he offered to both candidates the president s daily brief. Let me correct that the it wasnt the president s daily brief at that point the it was just an intelligence briefing and it did cover top secret information to go to the same as the president s daily brief which didnt even exist yet but that tradition is carried forward. All president ial candidates since that time are offered a top secret intelligence briefing after the nomination. One historical Work Together in 1980 jimmy carter, it was obvious is going to be the nominee but he was not yet the nominee. He got a message through to president ford, can i get an intelligence briefing . President ford agreed to do any give instructions to the director of Central Intelligence to go talk to president carter but the purpose was to talk about the logistics and Intelligence Briefings that would follow the nomination. The director at the time, george h. W. Bush, exceeded its mandate and they ended up having a full intelligence discussion even before he was technically the nominee but that is the historical aberration. Most nominees have chosen to receive these briefings. One who did not, Walter Mondale with the against Ronald Reagan. He declined to take it. Is reasoning which he said some years later, his reasoning was, it was already obvious i was going to lose the election, so what was the point . [laughter] one key distinction, after the nomination, candidates are offered an intelligence briefing. This is a tour of the international environment. This is whats going on in various countries, what we think is happening. It is not an instruction to covert action, not an introduction to intelligence operations. It does not include very Sensitive Information. That is saved for after that as the president elect at that point traditionally, the sitting president has authorized the president elect to start receiving the same daily intelligence report, the pdb, that he receives. Historically this is going pretty well over the years. One major exception. The year 2000. It was an election and we didnt know who one. There was a problem on the democratic side. The candidate, al gore, was the Vice President. He had been receiving the president s daily brief every day for the last eight years budget also governor bush in austin at the time kept going by, people started to get nervous but they felt it was a right to give them the most sensitive intelligence product if he wasnt going to be the president. On the other hand, they did what the president to come at office with only few weeks have seen this intelligence is not prepared to use it. So ever historical decision was made to the Clinton Administration decided to give george w. Bush the pdb before the florida recount had been resolved so that they would be prepared. What are the Major Players in the drama it turned out was a soviet agent. President truman found out and he was shocked to learn if the u. S. Treasury and state department have been riddled with soviet agents. After he learned about this did anything change fundamentally in the way the president was briefed on intelligence . When it comes to the president s briefings, and the briefings of those withi with we president has destiny to all so received the pdb is such a small group that even in a horrible case like that, it was only the second a state of the of defense usually, occasionally a deputy would also get it. Who would receive the president s daily brief. Changing the document because of espionage or other issues, no evidence of that happening. I couldnt find the evidence of the president s daily brief being violated in any way. Theres a chance of that, though, because he thought the president s daily brief to be useful, if you are the president you could decide im the only person getting it. You can put anything in there you want because im the top of the system. But then who are you going to talk to about it . Really useful for you but as president you are not implement in Foreign Policy. You need a lot of people to do the you have to other people reading this top secret intelligence seek and debate any so what are we going to do. If you disseminate your book of secrets to hundreds of people, the chances of Something Like that, that would be a disaster. This has been an ebb and flow throughout the history of the president. The president s. Some have restricted to just one or two people. In this administration is going to dozens of people. It also way too many people during the Clinton Administration as well. Thats a decision each present estimate based on his or her leadership style and the crisis of the day. Since the cia is sort of the editoeditorinchief and owner e briefing, can you comment on whatever coordination or lack of coordination that might be with intelligence that comes from nsa, fbi if it its domestic a s out of . Up until about 10 years ago, you nailed it, the cia on the president s daily brief, produced, edited, delivered it. The cia got the feedback on it and then rinse and repeat into the same thing every day. That was up until 10 years ago in the aftermath of 9 11 and the iraq wmd issues. The office of the director of National Intelligence was created. The pdb was handed to that new organization and is under the control of the director of National Intelligence now. Cia is still heavily involved in it but the book is not open the office of any Intelligence Agency. Idiot coordinated around the Intelligence Community. Getting more people chance to get input to the president. Theyre still editing and bureaucracy but that is at the level of the director of National Intelligence and his senior officers. I did ask george w. Bush in his administration this change happened, i said, what did you see when suddenly this thing that had been going on for decades in this institution is transferred to a new organization . What did you notice . He said, i didnt notice any difference. Most that it was still being written by cia and my briefer was still the same briefing, cia officer, there is nothing that much different for me. It didnt really change for the president of the United States who after all is the first customer of the product. Spirit we were talking earlier and i read kates book, the residents. One thing i didnt mention earlier we were