Podcasts Other The Inquiry What Does the President Need to Know?

What Does the President Need to Know?

Published: Oct. 6, 2015, 1 a.m.

The CIA has just released 2,500 top secret presidential briefings from the 1960s. The President\u2019s Daily Brief \u2013 or PDB \u2013 is the US intelligence agencies\u2019 best assessment of global threats, delivered directly to the president every morning. The CIA\u2019s director, John Brennan, has described the PDB as \u201camong the most sensitive and classified documents in all of our government\u201d.

The decision to release some PDBs, even documents relating to events many decades ago, was not taken lightly. And, the briefings highlight an almost impossible dilemma \u2013 one still faced today by every Director of National Intelligence - what should, and should not, be said? The president cannot absorb everything - there has to be a choice. We explore the relationship between the intelligence, the advisers and the president. What does the president need to know?

(Photo: President Lyndon B. Johnson (seated, foreground) working with (background L-R): Marvin Watson, J. Edgar Hoover, Sec. Robert McNamara, Gen. Harold Johnson, Joe Califano, Sec. of the Army Stanley Resor. Credit: LBJ Library)