I would bet that 99% of the time there is nothing of significance in this brief that you couldn't get from reading the Times/Post/WSJ.
THE BATTLE OF THE PDB
By Larry Johnson
What to do about the PBD? This is but one of a number of significant challenges for John Negroponte when he takes the helm as the National Intelligence Director. The Presidential Daily Brief aka PDB has been the flagship publication of the Central Intelligence Agency. Its purpose is to present the President with up to the minute intelligence developments as well as pithy analysis on salient policy issues. There are three major questions that will have to be solved:
Who will write the brief?
Should the President receive a single intelligence brief that represents all relevant developments, foreign and domestic?
Who should actually do the brief?
WRITING THE BRIEF
As Walter Pincus writes in the Saturday Washington Post,
The PDB is put together nightly by a relatively small staff of CIA senior analysts, drawing on materials prepared by the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence staff of several thousand analysts. This is supplemented by some operational material, often electronic intercepts, imagery or reports from human agents that come in each day, according to a senior intelligence official.
The process of assembling the PDB starts every morning when analysts comb thru the latest intel take, meet with their Branch Chief, and suggest possible “stories” that could or should be written. The Branch Chief in turn carries the proposal up the line where the potential stories are discussed and prioritized. By 9:30am an analyst who will be writing a piece to be submitted to the PDB is working frantically in their cubicle crafting the article.
Once the article is written, edited and approved by at least three other levels of managers, the piece is taken (or sent electronically) to the PDB staff. (During my time at the CIA the PDB staff was comprised of senior analysts who normally had at least ten years under their belt.) The staff’s mission—put together a daily magazine for the President that is punchy, pithy, and relevant. Invariably prose I had sweated over would disappear into the trash can to be replaced by words the PDB staff thought more appropriate for a President.
What has set the PDB process apart is that analysts have not been required to secure the clearance (i.e., approval) of analysts from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or the National Security Agency. If you are an analyst this is nirvana--not having to vet your piece with some other opinionated analyst outside of your organization.
As we enter the new era of the National Intelligence Director, John Negroponte will have to sort out several issues. For starters who will do the actual writing of the PDB? Will the process be expanded to allow analysts at DIA, INR, NSA, FBI, and Homeland Security to propose and craft articles? Thanks to the growth of secure intranets this task is less daunting and more feasible. At a minimum John Negroponte will be presiding over a super group of senior analysts drawn from multiple agencies who will have or should have the task of putting the brief together.
ALL INTEL FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC
In the past the wall between foreign and domestic was tall and thick. Prior to 9-11 there was no such thing as “domestic” intelligence analysis. While CIA analysts were poring over reams of daily intel to winnow out nuggets to be given to the President, the analysts at FBI and DEA where reviewing “evidence” (aka intel) to determine what was relevant for putting together a prosecutable case. There was not standard vehicle or process for sharing this information regularly with the President.
After 9-11 that system disappeared and the FBI started showing up at morning briefs for the President to present domestic threat developments. We still do not have a domestic intelligence agency along the lines of the CIA, where reports from local, state, and federal police are assembled and reviewed by an experienced analyst. However, Homeland Security is trying to put together an analytical capability like the CIA but up to this point has not had the vehicle of the PDB to present its view.
This is an essential point—analysts with raw intel are useless unless they have a vehicle for publishing or briefing their findings. In many aspects intel analysts are like newspaper beat reporters. Your career as a reporter is pretty meaningless unless you get published and read. Even today there is no single vehicle for the analysts that comprise the intelligence community as a whole to access to present vital information to the President. This has been particularly true with debates over what constitutes domestic intelligence and what can be legitimately collected and analyzed.
As John Negroponte puts together the staff of the National Intelligence Director he should strongly consider assembling the ultimate interagency team of senior analysts from all relevant intelligence and law enforcement organizations. CIA and DEA should be in the room as well as FBI and DIA. These senior analysts should be the conduits back into their respective agencies for identifying and highlighting critical analysis that should be in front of the President and his senior advisors.
We can no longer afford the meaningless distinction of foreign versus domestic. Instead, intelligence relevant to threats should be presented as part of an integrated briefing.
GETTING FACE TIME
The practice of the CIA Director getting face time with the President is a sad legacy of George Tenet. Unfortunately Porter Goss is continuing with the practice of presenting the brief daily to the President. I say sad because the DCI lacks the depth and experience to handle these issues effectively. Prior to George Tenet becoming the Briefer in Chief, the duty was left to senior CIA officers who had served in the trenches of the intelligence community. The briefers should be individuals who have nothing else to worry about than the substance of what they are presenting. The Director of the CIA, in this case Goss, has too many other responsibilities to handle that preclude him from the time required to sit down and review the intelligence that underpins the briefing.
Hopefully John Negroponte will use his new power as an opportunity to institute the old practice of having senior, experienced intelligence officers do the briefing. Instead of relying only on CIA officers, however, the new briefing crew should be comprised of military officers, intelligence officers from other agencies (e.g., State, DIA), and law enforcement (e.g., FBI, DEA, HAS) personnel. The team who put together the daily intel and security brief for the President could become the de facto coordination mechanism for identifying threats and issues that have fallen between the cracks of the bureaucracy or should receive the focused attention of the US Government as a whole.
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