michelle obama. sunday 8:00 eastern. american history tv on c-span3. >> they were wives and mothers. some have children and grandchildren who became president and politicians. they dealt with the joys and the trials of motherhood. the pleasure and sometimes chaos of raising small children. and the tragedy of loss. first ladies but that the personal lives of every first lady in american history. many of whom raise families in the white house. lively stories of fascinating women and eliminating, entertaining, and inspiring reads based on original interviews from the c-span "first ladies" series. is available as a hardcover or as an e-book from your favorite bookstore or online bookseller.

up next, cia director john brennan discusses the history of the president's daily brief. following his remarks the panel of former intelligence officers and giving brief offers discuss the documents importance. the cia, lyndon b. johnson presidential library, and the university of texas at austin cohosted this event as part of a symposium entitled "the president's daily brief, delivering intelligence to the first customer." is about two hours and 15 minutes. >> good afternoon. growth, director of the lbj president delivery. on behalf of the cia, the national record archives and records administration, and university of texas, it is my

great privilege to welcome you to the president's daily brief, delivering intelligence to the first customer. 50 years ago president johnson in an address to the american business leaders said "a long axiom in my political thinking has been a man's judgment is no better than this information on any given subject." since its creation, the president's daily brief excerpt provide our commanders in chief with the intelligence that informs vital decisions related to all foreign and national security policy. in short these classified documents after presidents the tools they need to render their best judgment. first known as the president's intelligence checklist, or the pickle when it was introduced in june 1961, the document became known as the president stevie brief. -- daily brief in 1964.

represents the dissolution this relation of intelligence material deemed worthy of a president's attention. providing not just news, but importantly, context and analysis. oury's program includes nation's top intelligence officials will shed light on the intelligence apparatus and how it is used to ensure that the first and most important customer, the president of the united states, is armed with the information he needs on matters of state. dvdses as the cia releases from the kennedy and johnson administrations. from june 1961 through january 1969. marking the first time the cia has through its historical review board declassified pdb's and make them available to the public. as of today, as of about five minutes ago, they will be posted on the cia website.

it is now my great privilege to welcome to the stage the head of the national archives and records minister asian, the archivist of the united states, ferriero.ble david when we will open our doors in the 1935, the mission was to collect, protect, and encourage the use of the records of united states government. most importantly to make them available to the american public could hold his government accountable for its actions and to learn from the past. with the final destination of the most important record in the government, the to prevent-3% of records deemed by department and agencies to be important enough for person could -- permanent preservation, the archive is possible for the records of 275 executive branch agencies and

departments, the white house, and the spring court. we provide courtesy storage for the rest of congress. our records start with the oath of allegiance signed by george washington and his troops at valley forge in 1775 and go up to the tweets that are being created as i'm speaking in the white house. it's a collection of about 12 billion pieces of paper, 42 million photographs, miles of film and video, and 5 billion electronic records. 13 of the 46 facilities that make up the national archives and -- are presidential libraries. when frank and roosevelt created the national archives in 1934 he also created the presidential library system. the libraries start with herbert hoover. bushgo to the george w. library in dallas, texas. --y contain more than 700

780 million pages of material, thousands of museum objects and electronic records. we started collecting electronic records during the reagan administration. about 2.5 million enough messages. 20 million in the clinton white house, 210 million and the bush administration and we recently passed the one billion mark for the obama white house. on his first day in office, president barack obama issued an open government directive which declared that my administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government. we will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. this idea of open government was embedded in the mission of the national archives. our work is built on the belief that citizens have the right to see, examine, and learn from those records. five years ago president obama signed executive order entitled

"classified national security information." it was intended to overhaul the way documents are assigned classification codes. secret, top secret. the executive order creating a national declassification center within the national archives with a mandate to review for declassification some 400 million pages of classified records going back to world war i. to do that by the end of 2013. we successfully met that goal and declassification process emphasizing risk management strategies and expanding capture efforts here at we are proud report that the six oldest documents were released. they are classified by the cia. day of leonhis last panetta -- time in office. -- secret ink.

we coordinated multiagency activity across government to answer white house request for declassified records responsive to the brazilian national true commission. the desire for records related to human rights abuses during 96 24. vice president joe biden provided the first of several cd collections to the brazilian government's last summer. we are including this review in 2015 with a web release that describes the impacts on americans abroad. the motto of the national declassification center is "releasing all we can, protecting that we must." in that spirit me tell you that the work of the national declassification center goes on so we avoid those backlogs that

they were originally settled with. -- saddled with. the release of the checklist and the presidential daily briefings will had meeting will -- meaningful context to other documents in how the president has used intelligence briefings to do their jobs. we are thrilled the cia is releasing these documents from the kennedy and johnson administrations. we look forward to more presidential daily briefings from the nixon and ford libraries after the cia completes its review. a special shout out from the archivist united states digital river for making this work a priority. rampert for making the severity. >> it is now my pleasure danger -- to welcome the dominant who david just shouted out. the david -- the manager responsible for the release of

these and this conference today. this cia director of information, joe lambert. mr. lambert: thank you mark and david. on behalf of my colleagues back at langley eligible you to the cia's latest declassification release event. at the cia we are proud that this is our 24th major release event in the last seven years. the first occurred in 2008 at georgetown university and it focused on the tenure of richard helms as director of central intelligence. since that time we filled events at the presidential libraries and major universities all of the country. highlighting the release of significant link -- historically significant documents such as dallas,ica, or the ut air america helicopter pilots were in touch of the first time with the air force pilots they had rescued.

we contributed thousands of documents on air america to the archives at ut. we filled events on the 92-95 bosnian war with president clinton is the keynote speaker at his library in little rock. we held an event on the campaign accords with president kenny carter as the keynote -- jimmy carter as the keynote in atlanta. in washington we held an event on the declaration of polish martial law was focused on the life of a kernel of the polish general staff who was one of the cia's most important cold war assets. we held their first germanic event is have college. that was entitled "tempest to trail blazer and a focus on women in the cia workforce. we've held a number of smaller ones, like will be held in d.c. highly the cia's involvement in the publication of the russian leg which version of "doctor zhivago." this marks the second time in mark insure work with

austin. in 20 can be released documents on the 1960's soviet invasion of czechoslovakia. that was one of the most numeral events for me. not because will release the for the day after the film -- the phone call i received. the event had made the media and was picked up by an outlet in california in los angeles. my son called and said that, here the cia is talking about an invasion. do any to be worried? i said did you read the article? he said no/ i second to take a minute and go little further south? [laughter] waited about 5920 seconds and heard a big side for live by, dad, 1968? really? [laughter] public releases of his story significant doctrine senses happen. they require a tremendous amount

of behind-the-scenes collaboration. regretfully knowledge the appreciation and support of both lbj and the library here at the university of texas for making this wonderful venue available to showcase this document release. in addition to the cia, there are 13 other intelligence and government agencies that were involved in one way or another with a review of these documents. i want to offer a special thanks to the national security agency for their efforts. i would like to thank the cia's director -- professional back in washington will be diligently reviewing these for the last two years to enable the release today to the american people. in thek is often unsung lesson they have taught me of the past five years is that deciding when a secret developer secret can sometimes be a very difficult task. i have the pleasure of introducing our keynote speaker for today. we are pleased that we have the director of the cia, john brennan with us today. he joined the cia in 1980 as an art director since march of

2013. he's uniquely qualified to give the keynote address. he is now both sides of the pdp process as both a briefer and is a recipient when he was assistant to the president for all my security and counterterrorism. please join me in welcoming john brennan. [laughter] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] mr. brennan: thank you very much and thank you for your outstanding work that has brought us to this event. good afternoon, everyone. having spent some wonderful greatat ut, it is my very pleasure to be back in austin. >> [applause] mr. brennan: i want to thank mark and his excellent staff for hosting this event.

and president johnson said, it is all here, the story of our time with the bark off. you can get much further below the bark than top-secret intelligence reports, so i think president johnson would approve of today's proceedings. i want to thank my good friend, admiral william a craven, chancellor of the university of texas system, for speaking this afternoon. it is highly appropriate for bill to help celebrate the history of the presidents daily -- president's daily brief because for a number of years, he helped fill the book with some of -- with some of the very best intelligence. gossr cia director porter for lendingman their insights and expertise to the panel discussion coming up next. and finally, i want to thank by -- my very good friend and

, whoague, james copper knows more about this business than i would argue anyone else. president johnson admitted point of keeping most of his speeches to a 400 word limit. and i may be dangerously close to hitting that already, but i plan to hold onto this podium for a while so i can offer a few words on today's release and the challenge of preserving our nation's security. on his first full day in office, president obama called on the heads of executive departments and agencies to build an unprecedented level of openness in our government. he made it known that giving the american people a clear picture of the work done on their behalf consistent with common sense and those requirements of national security would be a touchstone of his administration. in light of this new approach, and pursuant to an executive order, cia information management officers worked with

their counterparts at the national security council and the office of the director of national intelligence to start the review and declassification of documents that were more than 40 years old. ever, for the first time the central intelligence agency is releasing an mass declassified copies and its predecessor complications -- publications. from the documents kennedy and johnson administrations. some 2000 additional classified documents from the nixon and ford administrations will be released next year. and the process will continue. is among the most highly classified and sensitive documents and all our government. it represents the daily dialogue with the president addressing the challenges and seizing the opportunities related to our national security. and for students of history, the declassified briefs will allow

insights into why the president chooses one path over another. the release of these documents confirms that the world's greatest democracy does not keep secrets merely for secrecy sake. whenever we can shed light on work of our government without harming national security -- let me repeat that caveat -- without harming national security -- we will do so. the story of the pbd begins more than 50 years ago at president kennedy's retreat it was june 17, 1961. an eight had just arrived from washington -- aide had just arrived from washington carrying a document. the document was seven pages long and printed on short square blocks of paper with spiral binding along the top. inside were two maps, a few moats -- notes, and intelligence

briefs. on topics ranging from laos to cuba. after reading the document, the president sent word that he was pleased with the contents. the aide contacted the offices at cia and said, so far, so good. [laughter] this was the very first issue of what would become the pbd. the publication quickly became a must-read for president kennedy and that set in motion a routine for delivering intelligence to the oval office that has been at the heart of the mission ever since. the idea behind the pbd was developed quickly in a matter of days to meet a very specific need. since taking office, president kennedy had been frustrated with the way intelligence was being delivered to him. reports were long, dense, and abstracts. and they would come in haphazardly throughout the day, making hard for him and his staff -- making it hard for him

and his staff. the president was making policy decisions without the benefit of the intelligence our government had collected for him. a few months into the term, after he was caught offguard by several development, his brother went into the president's staff. the cia soon got a phone call demanding the agency find a better way to give the president informed. a team of agency officers decided to produce a daily digest delivered each morning to the white house that was summarize in a few pages of the intelligence that deserved the president's attention. they called it "the pickle." the forerunner of the pbd. the idea was so successful that it has endured under 10 presidents, and today, it is such a vital part of how the white house operates that one can hardly imagine the modern

presidency without it. throughout its history, the pdb has helped the president confront the greatest challenges. issues like terrorism and famine and war. but as you will see in the documents we are releasing today, the pdb history includes more than coverage of crisis and conflict. you will find offbeat items, like russian reaction to a performance by the new york city ballet and commentary on a decision by the new york yankees to fire yogi berra. [laughter] an awful decision. [laughter] you will encounter a host of lively characters, such as a political leader in latin america described as a high living fifth of scotch a demand. you will also find occasional doses of humor and a fair number of off-color remarks in an entire issue comprising little more than a phone. today, the pdb is the most abundantly staffed, most deeply

sourced information service in the world. it provides the president with a wealth of insight and analysis on virtually every issue on his foreign policy agenda. but when the idea was first conceived, the plans were not nearly so ambitious. the document was envisioned as more of a straightforward news bulletin, summarizing the latest developments rather than in-depth analysis. there was very little in the way of rigorous forecasting in the early years. all disciplines that are integral to the intelligence business were largely left out. director john mccone, who was appointed by president hannity, thought that some subjects -- president kennedy, thought that some subjects were too personal to be related in the document. so he delivered to -- deliver them to him in person. today, the pdb is unrecognizable to what it was in the kennedy and johnson years. back then, the articles were

full of colorful language and personal asides that would never make it past a pdb editor today. consider this report from 1967 about the harassment of diplomats in china. it said, a mob kept one ambassador in his car for 10 hours, causing him to run both his closing -- clothing and the upholstery. [laughter] or this assessment of a fact-finding team in yemen in 1867. the team left yesterday with more haste and dignity after six gunfire ridden days spent mostly locked in hotel rooms and, presumably, under the beds. it gets more colorful, but i think you have the idea. having been a pdb briefer myself, i can assure you that the commentary in the oval office is, at times, quite sporty when the pdb is discussed. beyond the writing style, the pdb has evolved in countless ways.

it has grown in length and specification, adding features like graphics and imagery. now, more comprehensive and the analysis is far more vigorous. perhaps most important like, it has gone from a document written by handful of people at the cia to one written by officers at an array -- representing an array of offices and agencies. many of the changes have been driven by technology and a more integrated intelligence community. but above all, the publication has changed the response to the habits of these president. kennedy president -- president kennedy wanted a checklist. it should be small enough to fit into a breast pocket so that the president could carry it around with him and read it at his convenience. that it beo insisted written in plain conversational english, stripped of the jargon

that characterized most intelligence writing at the time. no gobbledygook, the white house said. over time, the checklist began to reflect kennedy's pet peeves in language and usage. one word that are tim was "boondocks." he found it too colloquial and told the writers that it was not an acceptable word. but he was not an overly fast it is editor, and his writers clearly relished the freedom they gave him. sprinkling with words like effervescence and cuckoo. classification markings were another petty. regardless of the content, each document was to carry a single marking, top-secret, stamped at the bottom of the page. this was true even if the information was based on diplomatic reporting or on unclassified news accounts. so while you see a lot of what can rightfully be described as overclassification in today's

release, the reason was to streamline the production of processes back then and make the document easier on the eyes. the good old days. in both content and style, the checklists also testified to president kennedy's breath of expertise. since kennedy was so well-versed on intelligence issues, each item in this checklist was fair and direct. without much background or explanatory information. the authors focused only on what the president did not already know, meaning that a lot of important intelligence was left out of the document. during the cuban missile crisis, photographs and other pieces of intelligence that were passed to the president were often a mid -- omitted from the checklist. why summarize what the president already knows jekyll after only a few -- knows? the authors had gotten so much feedback from kennedy they were able to anticipate his

intelligence needs and draft a document to need -- meet them. they understand the issues that matter to him and how he wanted them explained. a bond of trust had formed between them and the president that would last throughout his time in office. one senior officer later said the relationship was going so well that it seems like heaven on earth. but one of the internal challenges -- eternal challenges is what works for one president really works for the next one. you almost have to start from scratch each time. that is certainly what happened when president johnson took office. during the kennedy administration, the checklist was not disseminate a very widely. at first, it only went to the president and the director of the central intelligence. but one of kennedy's aides told the agency that under no circumstances should the checklist to johnson. so when johnson took office, agency editors had no idea how familiar he was with the

subjects they had been writing about in a chair it was clear that he needed more background information than kennedy did, but how much more. the editors wanted to give the appropriate context, but they worried that if they went too far, it would appear condescending and might alienate the new president. deliver theefforts, day after president kennedy's assassination, included five items and several notes. it did not seem to hit the mark, though it was hard to tell. when the president was briefed on it in the morning, he did not say much in response. he seemed mostly relieved that nothing in the documents required his immediate attention , understandable in light of the chama that our nation was experiencing. -- the trauma that our nation was experiencing. part of the problem was that early on, at least, he preferred to get his intelligence and formally in meetings and in

conversations, instead of from written products. johnson may have also harbored a built-in bias against the checklist, since it had been delivered the withheld from him. but the main problem was the format. the checklist had been committed for president kennedy. in many respects, it was still his products. designed to match his preferences and work habits. so the editors of the checklist decided to change course. they gave the document a new name, the president's daily brief, and repackaged it, adding longer articles that supplied greater detail, as well as thoughts on future trends. and they delivered it in the afternoon, not the morning, since johnson like to do his reading at the end of the day, often in his pajamas while lying in bed. after several test runs, the first official pdb was published on december 1, 1964. one senior aide returned it with a handwritten note of a same day

the president likes this very much. as with kennedy, johnson's pdb did not include material that he had already received through other briefings, or that he was getting from other intelligence products. it is worth emphasizing here that the pdb was never intended to be the only source of intelligence for a president, and it has never been. throughout its existence, presidents have also got an intelligent from the military and other departments or government through briefings, meetings, and informal conversations. and from longer forms of analysis. but to say that presidents get their intelligence from a variety of sources in the way minimizes the importance of the pdb. there is no denying the utility of the product kennedy -- two kennedy paid and as the documents make clear, the pdb divided them with critical insights as they chided our nation's course amid the

challenges of a turbulent decade. looking down from history's summit at the challenges and crisis of the past, it is human nature to see them as less complicated and dangerous than those we face today. the trends have either subsided or disappeared. the standouts have long been resolved. in hindsight, it has showed us all the answers, or at least most of them, to the questions that were so vexing back in the day. so the past does seem a lot simpler than today's world. until, that is, you jump in just about any point in the narrative contained in these documents and start reading and putting yourself in the shoes of the men for whom they were written. i took a couple of hours on a recent evening to do just that. and doing so quickly restores one's sense of perspective. these pages remind us that while president kennedy was deciding how to stop moscow from establishing a nuclear arsenal

in cuba, the rest of the world was not standing still for him. india and china were engaged in a fierce border war. , especiallyconflict the presence of north vietnamese troops in laos, was a consistent concern. civil wars were raging in yemen and the congo. countries that tragically have had their fair share of fighting over the year. countries launched unannounced military exercises in eastern europe, and the east germans resumed work on extending the wall. an fact is america has faced unending series of national security challenges ever since we emerged from the end of the second world war and emerged as the world's preeminent global power. having assumed the duties and obligations that go along with leading the free world, our country's most pressing foreign policies in the postwar era was to not only counter the soviet military, but to obtain timely,

accurate, and insightful information on our adversary's actions and intentions. it took the united states 171 years before it finally did what every other great power had done , establish a comprehensive intelligence service. service, the cia, in 1980. i believed in its mission back then, and i believe in it even more strongly today. we have had great fortune over the past 68 years to play an important role in keeping this nation strong and its people safe from the constantly evolving array of overseas threats. and though we are exceptionally proud of the work we do, we have not been a perfect organization. we have made mistakes. more than a few. we have tried to learn from them before and as a smarter, or capable organization. and ever since the agency's pounding, its single most important mission has been to give each president and his senior advisers the clearest

possible picture of the world as it is, rather than as we would like it to be. endeavors to be a trusted, authoritative source of information and understanding in answering any president's most crucial questions. the cuban missile crisis is and i can example of the agency marshaling its technical, operational strengths to help the commander in chief resolved with delicate standoff. peacefully and successfully. amid the high-stakes possible. in the pages of the president checklist, and infarct greater detail, the cia offered precise up-to-the-minute information tailored to presidential requirements, highlighting its essential role in supporting every president of the modern era. but it doesn't take a nuclear confrontation to demonstrate the utility of the agency's support to the president. the will find reports --

report reflected truly global scope. all the overseas issues that demand the president's time and attention -- during the johnson administration, the pdb was well-received at the white house during the outbreak of the civil in in the dominican republic april 1965. it was a very complex situation in a country that wasn't often in the headlines. lbj's press secretary observed that president johnson read the pbd avidly throughout the crisis. cia was charted as an independent agency unique in government. free of departmental bias and serving as a dependable source of four available information. good news and bad news. it is an in central, albeit a challenging one -- it is a central role, albeit a

challenging one. it requires a proverbial ability to speak truth to power, and that quality shows in the agency's coverage. it is certainly true that the cia missed important calls, most notably before the tet offensive in january 1968 when cia headquarters of the pass along the warning from cia's station in saigon that an unprecedented enemy offensive was at hand. but the fact remains that the cia's estimates were consistently more ominous and, as events would prove, more accurate than those produced elsewhere. senior white house staffers occasionally expressed concern over the pdb's conceived negativism on vietnam. told an agency officer at the time that, you

are going to break the president's heart. he thinks things are much better today, but that is no reason for not writing it as you see it. and covering the world in 2015, we at cia are still writing it as we see it. ,ur contributions to the pdb which today is published under the offices of the office of director of national intelligence at cia headquarters, benefit from the enormous range of talents and disciplines that the cia brings to bear in for filling our global mission. drawing on the intelligence and ground truth by the agencies worldwide network, as well as the expertise and insight of our source analysts at headquarters and overseas, we put together products that enable the president and his senior advisers to see an issue in its entirety with the risks, challenges, and opportunities clearly delineated. like our predecessors who adopted to the needs of the day by developing the pickle and the

pdb, we, too, are taking steps to optimize our relevance and our effectiveness. when the pdb is sent to the oval office today, it arrives on top of a computer, an ipad instead of paper. indeed, the effects of informational technology is the single most decisive factor in setting today's world apart from that of the 1960's. along with the end of the cold war, both the cyber realm and social media have made the planet smaller and dramatically more interconnected. and those developments in turn have had a profound impact on the mission of the central intelligence agency and our partners. to begin with, cyber technology has graded an entirely new domain for human interaction. and though it presents boundless opportunities, it also enables individuals and small groups, not only nationstates, to inflict great harm on our national security. when it comes to intelligence operations, digital fingerprints

might enable less to track down a terrorist, but the digital world makes it harder to maintain cover for a current generation of clandestine officers who, for example, almost certainly have used social media sites before they even began their agency careers. the erosion of boundaries between domestic and foreign communications has raised complicated legal questions for our profession. and president kennedy and johnson day, -- whose communications were largely segregated from those of the free world, carried at little or no legal ambiguity. but the terrorists we face today routinely use the same channels everyone else does, and the public debate rightly continues over how to strike the appropriate balance between the need for security and the importance of privacy. when i to ask a group -- asked a group of senior officers to come back with a strategic

plan for modernizing the agency, they agreed that we had to do a much better job of embracing and leveraging the digital revolution. consequently, under our current program, launched last march, we are adding a fifth directorate to the agency as part of the biggest change to cia structure in five decades. the directorate of digital innovation. when this new directorate is up and running on october 1, it will be the center of the agency's effort to inject digital solutions into every aspect of our work. it will be responsible for accelerating the integration of our digital and cyber capabilities across all of our mission areas: open source intelligence and covert action and more. we arere documents releasing today and show us that the world is hardly unique in its complexity and danger. it harbors a wider variety of threats in the world of the 1960's. these contemporary challenges rapidly,lap, change

and require a multidisciplinary approach. as the intelligence community has learned, integrating disciplines and capabilities is a very powerful way to magnify and optimize our effectiveness. so on october 1, 10 new cia mission centers will cover every issue we face. six focused on regions, and four focused on functional issues. age center will put together the tremendous talent and skills previously stole piped into several groups. these are times of tremendous opportunity for the cia. our plan will bring the same kind of teamwork to cia headquarters that one finds in our stations and bases around the globe, where it has helped us succeed against the toughest of targets. these changes build squarely on our strengths, enabling the

agency to do it even better job of operating in the ever more technical environments that come with our commission today. and that will be even more prevalent in the years ahead. conclude, i want to thank you all to come out for coming out today to mark this occasion -- you all for coming out today to mark this occasion. if any of this kindles are interested in joining the agency, chancellor mccreevy can tell you some pretty good stories of what it is like to work with us. and i hope to see you among the new officers that i swear it every couple weeks or so. i was interviewed for an agency job here at ut when my wife thought i was getting far too comfortable as a graduate student. it has been my deep privilege since then to serve presidents, democrats and republicans alike, who donate -- devote so much of

themselves to the hard and consequential work of leading a republic. each of us who has ever had a hand in producing a pdb or pickle feels deeply honored to have played a role, however small, and helping the president make decisions. every book is written, edited, and delivered not only as a review of intelligence, but as an expression of respect. and that better captures the spirit than the presidents checklist of november 22, 1963. the day we left president kennedy. its pages are largely blank. except for the following word. for this day, the checklist staff can find no words more fitting than a verse quoted by the president to a group of newspaper men the day he learned of the presence of soviet missiles in cuba. crowd thenked in rows enormous plaza, but only one is

there who knows, and he is the man who fights the bowl. -- bull. last night, we received from the white house a letter from president barack obama's address to the dedicated professionals of the united states intelligence community. and it says, our national security depends on protecting the intelligence that saves lives and our democracy depends on transparency for our citizens to make informed judgments and do hold our government accountable. tot is why i have pledged the american people that the united states government will be as open as possible, even as we safeguard the intelligence sources and methods that must remain secret. in keeping with this commitment, i want to thank the men and women of the central intelligence agency and the entire intelligence community for working so diligently to declassify and release an unprecedented number of the world's most sensitive intelligence products, the president's daily brief from

1960 12 next and 69. i also want to think that lyndon b johnson presidential library and the university of texas for supporting this historic release. as your commander in chief, each morning i rely on the expertise of the intelligence community to understand the threats, challenges, and opportunities we face around the world. i depend on your insights and analysis as i make decisions critical to the security of our nation. put simply, i cannot do my job without you. the united states has the most professional and capable intelligence community in the world. and we are going to keep it that way. while most americans will never know the full extent of her success, i hope these declassify documents offer our fellow citizens and people around the world a window into your extraordinary service and indispensable contributions to global security and peace. toyou gather in austin celebrate the culmination of your hard work and success,

please except my deepest appreciation and best wishes, barack obama. thank you. it has been a real pleasure and an honor and a privilege to be here at be part of this release. thank you. >> [applause] [applause] [indistinct chatter] >> good afternoon. we're a player -- very pleased

to have this turnout for an historical event, providing to the american public such a huge number of the presidential eyes only products. director brennan gave an excellent overview, and before we discuss the various perspectives of the practitioners and academics here, i would like to do a little bit of a backdrop to provide you with the sense of how we got to the pickle and the pdb. my name is david robards. -- robarge. and i have been working on an internal history of all the presidential products. and i found it very interesting over the years to track how they have changed, how they have evolved, how they have responded 's various policymaker concerns and such, and we need to take ourselves back to a time that is very different than the

present. so much of what the agency does day-to-day is really focused around providing that daily product for the president. much of the agency constantly spends 24/7 365 practically fed with feeding that president's eyes only product. and we need to understand that back of the founding of the modern u.s. intelligence community in 1946, 1947, it was a very different environment. the whole process was almost laid-back. there were sort of almost a lackadaisical element to it and which briefings may or may not appear. the document may or may not get rich. it was simply not the anxiety and the pace and the drive that went on and goes on daily today. let's take our minds back to roughly the end of 1945, early 1946. president harry truman has just abolished the first national rebel strategically oriented all service intelligence agency and

he finds himself a bit confused about what he is receiving through the intelligence process, if that is the right word. he complains about a lot of random, a coordinated departmental perspectives that don't provide him with an overall insight into what is going on in the world. that thein his memoirs needed intelligent information was not quite invaded in any one place. reports came across my desk on the same subject at different times from various departments, and these reports often conflicted. very much deja vu, if you will. so one of the first things he charged the cia's immediate predecessor, the central intelligence group, with doing was creating a document that correlated, evaluated, and disseminated information from all departments of the u.s. intelligence community provided to him in a concise fashion.

one that he could receive every day and sort of get a classified news bulletin to so the first director of central intelligence leads the way in creating this new document, which was referred to as the daily summary. almost all of them have been totally if not almost completely declassified and are available out of the truman library. it is a very interesting document because it looks actually nothing like any of the documents you will see in that release today. it was a two-page mimeographed document. those of office was enough to remember mimeographed documents in grade school, it really did look like that. printed on a roller after somebody typed it in on a stencil. very, very crude by modern standards. had no visuals, no pictorials. very, very short. it had only six items at the time.

it was organized a kind of a geographic fashion, but what is interesting is to kind of look at these early documents and see what people really thought were important at the time. for example, in the very first daily summary, the most important item was a piece concerning alleged secret agreements between the united states and the soviet union that agents of some russian in switzerland were offering up for sale in paris. thought that was important for the president to know. by the end of 1946, the daily summary writers are starting to include little tidbits of analysis, but it is really not intended to be an analytic document. it is a classified news bulletin. it never runs for much more than four pages. by february 1948, about two dozen individuals in offices inside the u.s. government are receiving it. it is not nearly as closely held as the early pickle was.

there was no briefing. and the delivery and communication process involving the summary was almost haphazard. it was prepared every day, but it might or might not be read by the president. it was always given to the senior military aid why some prominent white house associate. sometimes it was used in the morning reefing, sometimes it was not. but one key was that no one from cig or from cia after it took on responsibility was present. truman liked the publication. give a good, positive feedback. and when cia is created, it inherits the responsibility from cig. even though the feedback from the white house was generally positive, other people were questioning the utility of the daily summary. for example, important of the evaluations of the new cia by the dulles jackson committee

that came out and i could 49 that some significant -- came out in 1949 made some significant analyses. they said it might even be misleading to its consumers because it is based on limited information from certain department. it lacks historical perspective and does not follow stories through to their and get the writers don't know everything -- to their and. the writers don't know everything about what they are writing about. and as a result, the agency decides to change course and come up with a different product. much of this is done under the supervision of the new dci, smith, who comes in in late 1950. one of the things he does is carry out one of the big organizations -- reorganizations of the agency, where he consolidates the various

agencies into one office, and uses the new office to create a different product called the current intelligence bulletin. and that premieres at the end of february 1951. it looks pretty much like the daily summary and content, short items, same regional categorization, but technology moves ahead at this time and do not have offset printing being used -- and you now have offset printing being used instead of marriott graffiti. and they can start including graphics in the document. truman is very, very pleased with this. he writes to director smith, i have been reading the intelligence bulletin and i'm highly impressed with it. you have really hit the jackpot with this the document may have been improved, but the briefing process was not. truman's senior military aids continues the practice of meeting with him in the morning,

sometimes using the documents, sometimes not. after the korean war actions, the president meets with the nsc every thursday morning and gets intelligence updates. this was really the principal vehicle for communicating intelligence to the president, was the weekly national security council meeting. and this is a situation that pertains when the new president takes office in 1953, dwight eisenhower. being a military man by career, he organizes a national security apparatus quite differently. how the president chooses to run his national security process, whether the agency or the dni is prominent, or whether the national security advisor is pretty much running the show. eisenhower makes it clear right at the start that he is suspicious of any product that comes directly from a department. by that, he includes cia, although it is an inter-agency

national level organization. he does not read it and makes it clear he doesn't want to have morning briefings as his principal information into intelligence. instead, he is also getting most of his intel from weekly meetings, from his directors, alan douglas. the cid does not figure in those presentations, and this process continues throughout his presidency. in the six year of the as i sayion, various -- kind of work their way through the history of the president's -- [indiscernible] articles are only based on material that comes in every day. the flipside of that is once the peg is gone, there is no continuity from day-to-day to

follow up with a story, so developing situations after the big news main at get you attention. and not enough top officials are reading the current intelligence bulletins because they have their own sources of intelligence through the department channels or through conversations. they also complained topics important to them, covered in the document, and the articles are either too detailed and complex or they are too superficial or they don't contain warning or orders. so the agency response again andoactively, reactively, creates a document called the central intelligence bulletin, which premieres in january 1958. it has a new name. it has a slick new cover. it has enhanced graphics. and that sort of looks like a classified magazine. and sometimes runs 10 to 20 pages, but even though it has a dissemination of upwards of 100 individuals and offices, it is

simply not a significant element in the daily intelligence process. this is one of the reasons why president kennedy, as director brennan noted, is dissatisfied when he takes office. he simply does not like the central intelligence bulletin, and because of his disillusionment with the agency after the bay of pigs operation, agency leaders decide they need to reconnect with the president. and has always been a case, one of the key ways to do that is by tailoring the daily products to the presidents needs and preferences. and i will leave it at that because the director did such a fine job in presenting the history. and we will move on to our discussion with our very, very distinguished and illustrious panel of practitioners and experts. we will leadoff with former director of cia, porter goss.

he has the unique situation of being the only individual to be both dci and director of the central intelligence agency because he was there when the intelligence reform and terrorism prevention act was passed, abolishing the dci position and creating the dci a position. goss to that, director spent many years in the house of representatives. he was chairman of the house oversight committee. so he sees the intelligent theess from two sides of consumer and the producer, and has some interesting thoughts about the prominent that the president's daily product has during his experience. mr. goss: thank you, david, they might. i would like to say thank you all for the extraordinary hospitality. enjoyed it very much. library,time in the and i hope to come back and take advantage of all it has to offer besides events like this. i want to start out by echoing a

little bit what director brendan said about the amazing capabilities we have an intelligence in a very dangerous world. it is truly amazing how far ahead we are and the things we can do and find out. parsley that is because we have such extraordinary men and women in our intelligence services doing extraordinary work. all this comes together for the consumer in chief. the president of the united states. the point of delivery for all this information actually is the pdb. there are other ways the president gets information, but this is the vehicle that we look at as a way to get the stuff he needs to know to him for the things you need to think about. or the things he needs to think about to him. it takes a next ordinary amount of effort to get stuff to him. you want to give him what he needs, not what he doesn't need,

say don't want to give him a lot of fluff. and he needs to know, therefore, what he is to know, that means you need to know something about what it is about and what his policies are and what his daily schedule might be. not only do you need to know the man, you need to know the things in the world that are going on to you can connect those two in a meaningful way to him. that is an extraordinary challenge, analytical challenge, and writing challenge for the people involved. and i congratulate them very much. thank you. i seem to be tilted to the left. >> [applause] repeating that verbatim -- >> [laughter] mr. goss: i think the most important thing i can offer is how much times have changed from the days of the history that david and director brendan have referred to. it is extraordinary. presidents, of course, are different, but the evolution of how information flows, how much

information is out there, and how much is known is really extraordinary. if you just think back in the media, years of social all the ways we are subjected to information flow in our daily lives. weeding through that giant his back for the negative is, therefore, gotten a lot harder. on the subject of transparency, we need to have the citizens of the united states of america comfortable with how we run our intelligence community in understanding the value of it, and that does require a lot of transparency. unfortunately, when you speak now to an audience that you think might be your national security team, you've got to remember your settings very well because with the flow of information, often the audience of your -- the audience you are addressing is the whole world. and it is very hard sometimes to remember which means you are addressing. and if you notice our politicians these days are having more and more trouble

trying to figure out what they want to say for that group and not have it spillover to the other group that is also listening to want to hear something else. this process is very important to understand because you don't want to get the president of the united states subject to it or in it. you want to give him what he needs, the right stuff at the right time. and not waste his time, either. thatld suggest right now the question of secrecy of the pdd is a very important subject because of the audience problem. i think there is a lot in the pdb that could be shared with the american public, but i would not want to share with people overseas who have a different view of the united states and a different plan for the united states of america and its well-being. so i think that the need for secrecy needs to be fully understood, but when there is no secrecy required, then

transparency is the order of the to giverder to continue the confidence and of the confidence of the people of our country that our leadership is doing the right, the best they can in a difficult situation with the information that is available. keeping that trust and confidence up there is a major effort. dci intook over as the 2004, times, of course, were extraordinarily different than they had been in the 1960's. we still have many challenges. i started my day -- my responsibilities into five categories. the first and most important was fighting the war. the 2004, we weren't quite sure whether we were going to get hit again and who the bad guys were into this al qaeda group were anyway. so that was job one every day, making sure that we do not have another terrible tragedy on our doorstep.

job too, of course, was being the dci, which fortunately now has evolved a new architectural form, and we have with us today, we are honored to have director copper, our chief intelligence officer in the community, who has taken over the coronation integration management -- courted nation integration management, which is 16, 17 agencies or more who are doing different things in different ways, but other team that brings all this extraordinary stuff together. that in those days we did not have, so the dci had that job. we didn't have the money because the defense department had the money. so i was accountable for a bunch of stuff i couldn't control. it wasn't a good condition. fortunately, he has come to the rescue and we now have the dni. and the third job ahead was the director of cia, which was managing cia at a time of great

transition from what we call conventional activities overseas ,o very unconventional dangerous, asymmetric warfare of the time. and we didn't quite know how to handle. those are three big jobs for any individual. the fourth job came along -- well, our system doesn't seem to be working properly. congressional reports are saying we need to make some change, so we are going to have your architecture. my fourth job with say, porter, you have to help build that new architecture of how we are going to create the dni and remove the dci out of this game. i basically was putting myself out of work in finding somebody else to do a job that i was very happy to get rid of, and i think john, the first dni, for excepting all the fun work. and the last job i had was the .ne that almost killed me

the most time-consuming, the one i took most seriously, kept me up at night literally and figuratively. and that was preparing the pdb. felt that when i i first started reading the pdb as the new director of dci, i was disappointed. i thought that there were things in their that were not relevant to the president's needs. i thought there were things in their that were stated in a way were stated in a way that outlined a worse case scenario rather than a most likely scenario. there were a lot of things i wasn't impressed by. and i also was getting some feedback from the white house that they felt there could be some improvement, but they weren't exactly clear about what those might be. that inappy to say those days, the pdb basically was delivered by professional briefers. so that it was not just a director of cia in the room with

the president and the vice theident, it was also national security adviser, myself, and a professional briefer. and i'm forever grateful for the extraordinary men and women who did that job. my job was to make sure the substance of the book was there to answer the questions and to say yes or no, sir. but the people who had the facts are presented them so well in language that the president understood because they had spent enough time with him to know what his needs and wants would be in the kinds of questions you would ask, that is just an extraordinarily valuable commodity to have. and for all of those men and women, they are truly remarkable and have a wealth of information. they did a fabulous job. i take my hat off to them. that did not mean that my day every day started at 7:00 the previous day. i would at that point get the pdb for the following day.

i would sit in my office on the seventh floor and i would go through it. i would quite often have questions, usually about why is this in here or why is there something in here on this. and i would call various people to come up and explain it to me. about a :00, i generally would get home. -- about non-:00, i generally 9:00, iet home -- about would generally get home, think about it. zero: dark hundred, i would get up and have to digest all of that. then i would go down to my office in the white house complex and my briefer would come in, briefed me on all the change that had come in overnight, and that the president's briefer would come in and tell me the things she was going to say to the president, and then we would all march over to the oval office and talk to the president. it took me about two weeks to understand that about half of

what we are telling the president he had already found out because he got up earlier and got on the phone and talked to people overseas, and we were talking to people to the east of us who had been up for five or six or seven or eight hours earlier and he had been having regular conversations with them. we accommodated those things as best we could. it is that can process that makes this so valuable. and i would say that we got a lot of great questions and a lot of feedback from the president. and that change from day-to-day. some days i was never quite sure. what it was he was going to want. he kept me off balance very, very well. and that kept me doing my job even better. i have never had a harder job in my life than trying to figure out what was with the president of the united states's time that we had. and i must say there were several coveted officers and a

couple of other white house staffers who wondered what we were doing, too. why we were taking so much of his valuable time. but that was the president's decision. he loved the pdb. he couldn't get enough of it. he always asked for more. he was an ideal customer. and i hope that is something that all presidents -- the agency will all do the job so well that all presidents will feel that way about the pdb. i work with great interest on these revelations that are coming out because i was a very junior person on the very front downin the missile crisis in the conflict area and in the dominican republic during these days, and i was wanted what those guys in washington were thinking. so now this is my chance to find out. thank you very much. >> [applause]

mr. robarge: next, we will hear from bobby inman, a professor at the lbj school of public affairs. most pertinently for our event today, we have his extensive background as an intelligence officer at the most senior ranks. director of the national security agency, a major contributor to these products. and deputy director of central intelligence under one of the most interesting characters to ever be dci, william. please. >> [indiscernible] mr. inman: as a career intelligence officer, you realize very quickly how perishable your sources are. how easily they are compromised. beginning, you want to get the information that you

have collected in the hands of those who can use it, but at the same time you want to protect how you know it in the process. pdb was unique about the was that it not only said what we knew, but it also often told how we knew it. when i heard that the pdb was going to be declassified and released, my first alarm was, what are you going to do about all the details of how we knew? and then i heard there was a lot of redaction, and i relaxed. >> [laughter] mr. inman: so my comments here are really for the journalists and the historians. why the redaction? you can often tell it what you know without harming your sources. inferencehe slightest of how you got that information can lead to catastrophic loss,

maybe even impossible to replace. director, looking at what could be declassified, i made the decision to release all of the purple materials of breaking the japanese code during world war ii. huge value to historians. changed a lot of their understanding of how the world was conducted. critical decisions that were made. i was also pressed by the fbi to release the -- [indiscernible] -- materials. this was the decryption of kgb communications. and i declined to declassify them, even though the fbi wanted to document why the rosenbergs had been arrested.

why didn't i release it? kgb was still using that same system all those years later. they would get a new source, they source, they weren't sure it wasn't a plant, they couldn't trust it. upy would use the known until they were confident the source was reliable. go to a much would higher level system. how you collected 40 years ago may still be pertinent further target -- for other targets. it may not be the same countries. what you have to protect is the ability that you can access the critical information of this country's security. and that takes precedence over telling a good story about how you happen to know something. i'm looking forward to seeing

the redacted pvd. [laughter] happyl inman: i'm also that this is wonderfully valuable to historians to look at this period of history. i'm pleased in this location you will get a chance to see that president johnson wasn't just concerned with the vietnam war. all of the things he had on his plate every day for the outside world. this will give a greater understanding, hopefully, to those who would judge him. that his involvement on the international scene was vastly broader than just vietnam. in accomplishing that, we still have to protect sources. thank you. [applause] mr. robarge: we will next year

john helgerson, and he was in many ways responsible for preparing the bbd. distinguished -- tbd. -- pbd. we are discussing his preparation of an unclassified book that talks about how the agency brief presidential candidate and president-elect over the years since eisenhower. this book has been reissued in a second edition and is now available as the u.s. government's first audiobook. you can download it for only $10. you can rush right out after this event and please do so. fascinatingd insights from his research. i.g. helgerson: thank you,

david. i'm delighted to be here at the lbj library and to join in this discussion. since david has raised the subject, i would point out that in addition to paying the government printer $35 for this book, you can get it online for two dollars. i will leave it to you to decide which you prefer. today for theting reason david mentioned, that is onappen to write the book the briefings of president for candidates and president-elect. it seemed appropriate today with the debates tonight and so on that we take a few minutes to focus on that aspect of the issue. community, ince reaching out to brief presidential candidates and president-elect had really to fundamental goals, broadly speaking. one was to ensure that those

individuals of both parties were as adequately briefed as was feasible in the middle of presidential campaigns and all the chaos that goes with that. was not a goal selfish one, but it sounds a bit like that. it was to establish a relationship tween the intelligence community and the next president, whoever it might be. on the one hand, there was the fund of getting to know the president, which was the title of my book. note ine serious aspect, it was to ensure that we didn't understand the person we would be supporting -- did understand the person we would be supporting. and to be sure that they understood and their staff oferstood the kinds information they can reasonably expect to get from the intelligence community, and who they should contact to get that information, so there would be no break from the past to the future.

take just a minute to jump back as others have to the history of this. this all began through the good sense of president harry truman, who came to the presidency obviously when franklin roosevelt died. truman was startled to find it, although he had been vice president and served in many other capacities and government, at how much he did not know about critical national security issues, including, for example, the manhattan project. after freeman had been in office a couple of weeks, the secretary of war henry stimson came to his office and briefed him on the manhattan project trade atomic bomb. truman, in his memoirs, use this is one example of why he wanted to be sure that whoever succeeded him should be as well briefed as possible. after theght outentions in 1952, reached to adlai stevenson, the

democrats, and dwight eisenhower, the republican, and invited them to come the white house so that they could be briefed by the dci, whom david and thed, goodell smith rough group of the cabinet who dealt with national security affairs to get the candidates up to speed. a long story short, and instructive series of events here, stevenson accepted and went ahead with this plan. eisenhower, however, did not. eisenhower later wrote that he thought it would be inappropriate for him to be briefed on information otherwise unavailable to the american public. and he told harry truman this in a handwritten note, seeking to explain his declination. a little bitknow about harry truman, he was powerfully irritated, offended this reply from eisenhower. you will find in a different presidential library a handwritten letter from truman

to eisenhower, which i will take the liberty to quote just a moment. truman said partisan politics should stop at the boundaries of the u.s.. is that not an antiquated thought? been referring to eisenhower staff, truman went on to write i'm extremely sorry that you have allowed a bunch of screwballs to come between us. [laughter] out helgerson: he's writing to dwight eisenhower. he goes on to say you have made a bad mistake and i'm hoping it won't injure this great republic. there has never been one like it, and i want to see it continue, regardless of the man who holds the most important position in the history of the world. may god guide you and give you light. [laughter] i.g. helgerson: well. i know from the records that eisenhower and his staff

deliberated a little and then took the high road, declining to respond in kind. did, andeisenhower this was instructive to those of us in the intelligence community ever sense -- eisenhower wrote a note to be will smith, the dci. keep in mind, eisenhower had just won world war ii in europe, but his chief of staff had been vidal smith, who still wore the uniform as the director of central intelligence. so here's eisenhower got a few days after, writing to smith. he says to smith, to the political mind, it looks like the outgoing administration was canvassing all its resources in order to support stevenson's election. eisenhower went on unbelievably to say -- to describe the importance of doing what is , and wrote of the challenges he and smith had faced in europe. this was a crushing thing for

smith to receive. for us in the intelligence business, and for historians, is that one must be extraordinarily careful that intelligence briefings provided to presidential candidates, residents elect, and certainly to presidents, must not be politicized. nor should they give the impression of being politicized. i don't mean to paint to dreary a picture, because eisenhower of course won the election and was also a very wise man. he did say to smith, he would be happy to accept briefings from mid-level substantive at -- experts from the cia, which he did on a regular basis. but he did not want it done at the political level. a powerful lesson which we have mostly remembered over the years. if i may, let me talk a little the 1960 and 1963

transitions, because they were each tells us -- teaches us a lesson about how to handle candidates and president-elect. kennedy was running against nixon, who was the vice president, and thus received his own intelligence. but kennedy was to be briefed. surprisingly, when kennedy became officially the candidate, the dci, allen dulles, decided that he personally would do all of the briefings of kennedy. senior officers in cia were very concerned that this. it was a little surprising that eisenhower, who had been president for eight years, thinking back to his exchange with smith and truman -- eisenhower sat still for this, despite the reservations in the white house area and so allen dulles to the briefings of kennedy, while he was a candidate, and while he was

president-elect. although they worked reasonably well together, there was never a warm bond, primarily a believe because they were men of different generations, temperaments, and personalities. new most allen dulles everything important, he did not have the expertise that would impress kennedy or his staff. there was one briefing, however, was an exception. and that is the allen dulles took richard bissell, the director of operations to palm beach, where they sat on the patio of the kenne home and briefed john kennedy. this was just after the election , on the array of covert action the cia had underway. most important of which was planning for what became ultimately the bay of pigs operation. but at that stage, was an array of medical and propaganda activities, not the military conception.

kennedy, according to bissell and dulles, listened attentively to the briefing on the cuban subject alone went on for almost an hour. kennedy asked a number of sensible questions, but studiously avoided tipping his hand as to what he thought of the plans underway. the issue for the community, of course, is one must reflect carefully on when and in what way you briefed the president-elect on covert actions or sensitive nsa operations, or sensitive military operations. we have pretty much mastered that over the years. but in its formative stages, it was worked out here with kennedy. the other thing, a little more timely is a lesson from that 1960 transition area it was the president will debates. -- presidential debates. 1960 were the first televised debates.

as we all know, kennedy benefited and was harmed. instant -- interestingly, on the point of view of the intelligence committee, those debates, both candidates mentioned the director of central intelligence, allen dulles, and comments he had made , and he was the expert, on the strength of the soviet economy, with the so-called bomber admit -- and missile gas. to of these things rebounded nixon's disadvantage, and frankly, and it and frankly, nixon held a grudge against the intelligence community. he thought partly responsible for his loss of the election. what i would recommend you take away from this is -- watch carefully, particularly when the debates -- not tonight, but later between the candidates, republican and democrat. the rule of thumb is that if intelligence is mentioned, there's trouble. i mentioned 1960, but just very

briefly. let me mention that as recently was the issue of weapons of mass destruction in iraq, where both candidates were critical of intelligence. was, the issue interrogation, the cia's practices with terror suspects. both candidates attacked the agency. or in 2012 more recently, benghazi was the issue. it never goes away. we are still hearing about benghazi. whatever may be your opinion on these issues, if they come up in the debate, it's going to be an enduring issue, it will be trouble for the intelligence community. now, concerning 1963, the transition to president johnson. others have commented on this. i won't say much. except to say the profound lesson for the intelligence community was, you got to be

good to the vice president. others have mentioned that we did not, we, the community, did not give the pickle to vice president johnson. the reason is the kennedy administration prohibited it. this was a lesson that was by johnovernight mccone, who was then director. without a discussion already today of the day after they returned from texas to washington. initiative took the to have his executive assistant telephone johnson secretary and say tomorrow morning, the dci will be at the vice president's the usualprovide intelligence briefing, as is regularly done. in truth, there was nothing usual or regular about this, as you all now know. in, and wasid get

able, quickly, to recover in terms of providing briefings to johnson. interestingly, the first lesson was take the vice president seriously. the second lesson, however, mccone did not really digest from earlier experience, because johnson appreciated the briefings, but he also, taken with mccone's forceful, direct style, began engaging mccone and seeking his advice on what should be our policy in vietnam? who should be appointed ambassador or to other key positions? needless to say, while this was flattering to mccone, he should not have followed down the track. and within some months, the relationship soured for variety of reasons, primarily vietnam. in the cone of course ended up resigning. i over simple find this a little bit, but the lesson of course is take the vice president

seriously, don't get involved in policy issues or personnel issues. goals as an had two intelligence community, to inform, and to establish a relationship. you will by now be relieved to know i will lead you through all the other transitions in the intervening years. suffice it to say, however, it was a major break between the first four presidents post truman, that is truman through nexen, and the seven -- through on, and those who followed. they did not receive a daily publication at all, they did not receive daily briefings. they did begin to read the daily public once they were president. the follow severing -- the following seven presidents in somewhat different ways already the daily pdb while they were

president-elect, they continue to read it while they were president, and they all had a briefer every day will president-elect, and most withnued -- all continued a briefing, usually from the intelligence community, not infrequently from the national security advisory. the point is, the process has matured over the years, and the last transition or to have been frankly great successes in no small part owing to the initiative of general klapper and his staff. the secret recently has proved to be have not only a director involved to give gravitas to the whole thing, but bring along people at a subordinate level who really know what they are talking about, in detail. that is more useful, and more impressive to knew it administration. with a couple of thoughts. one of them is that all 11 presidents elected since truman

have accepted and taken seriously the intelligence briefings they have been offered. you might be interested to note however there were a handful of candidates who declined the briefings. none of them obviously got elected. [laughter] in the coming: months, you are one of the other candidates to client the briefing, you know who to bet on, election day. make isl point i would in addition to dealing with presidents, presidential candidates, residents elect, it's very important to establish a relationship and support the senior staff. the least successful briefing operation we had was with president nixon, when he was elected, owing to the history i mentioned. the most successful operation, so to speak, we have had with senior support staff was with henry kissinger.

he became national security advisor. during the transition, when nixon did not -- she returned unopened the envelopes with the pbd, kissinger-- opened them, and we provided him with everything from substantive support to secretarial support. in his memoirs, kissinger wrote of richard helms, the dci. keep in mind, this was a guy henry kissinger, who does not dispense praise lightly, shall we say, in his memoirs. --says it is to the director is in the white house years book. it is to the director that the national security assistant first tourists to learn the fact that a crisis. and for analysis of events. and since decisions turn on the perception of the consequences of actions, the intelligence assessment can almost amount to

a policy recommendation. but concerning helms personally, he said disciplined, meticulously fair and discrete, helms performed his duties with a total objectivity essential to an effective intelligence service. i never knew him to misuse is intelligence or his power. he never forgot that his integrity guaranteed his effectiveness, that his best weapon with presidents was a reputation for reliability. the intelligence input was an important element of every policy deliberation. --and large, the president the policy, the practices worked, the presidents have appreciated it, and we need to remember to support also the cabinet level and national security advisers who are also key to the process. thank you. [applause]

mr. robarge: our next commentator is peter clement, currently deputy assistant director of one of the admission centers that deputy brennan mentioned. before that, he had many years as an analyst and senior analyst.nce he supported the vice president and senior staff, mr. clement was a pbd briefer for vice president chairman -- vice president cheney. and he was chief of the cia's presidential transition team in 2008. it's a pleasure to be here. it's ansecond time, incredibly impressive library and the staff are terrific. i had a lot of fun just touring exhibits the second time. they upgraded them, and it's a terrific facility. because i'mored

forally sitting with people whom i've worked pretty directly for a good part of my year, including john brennan. part of the joy of being with the agency for 30 plus years is working with this caliber of intellect, insight, and a lot of fun to work with. i want to thank everybody for having me on the panel as well. i want to talk specifically about my time as a pbd briefer. most of my longtime tenure here at the agency, the pdb has been central to my life. as a contributor, as a writer, as an analyst, as an editor, i'm not the most popular job. --a senior reviewer, why was i was a fairly unpopular job as the final reviewer. smart analysts.

as the delivery person, i got to deliver the book. to the senior policymakers. i spent one year as a pdb briefer. for the first six months, i briefed vice president cheney. the second six months, i briefed condoleezza rice. another security advisor. i would to divide my comments and a two-part. first, the prep part, what my life was like getting ready for the briefing. and also key elements of the job in the room with a policy maker. thrilled when she mentioned it was taking on this job. when i told her i will be going a bit exit clock tonight, i have to get to work by 12:30, i would

to 6:30om 12:30 a.m. a.m. getting ready to be the briefer that day. why do you need six hours to prepare? it's a small book, therefore five pieces. what's the problem? i foundt answer is myself having to brief about nuclear programs, nuclear proliferation, we are goings on in north korea, take your pick of the world and suddenly i had a brief on this. part of my prep was familiarize myself closely with the piece, with the main analytical line, was the basis, where did we get this information? i need to be able to answer those kinds of questions from the recipient. and then figure out if there were any other odds and ends i needed to prepare for. vice president cheney's case,

his book was bigger than the pdb book. a lot of the policymaker recipients would say i got all these articles, i want to see some interest in other things. any interesting memos that relate to issues i'm interested in? potentially any good traffic? we talking about the finished intel products from different agencies, and we call traffic. some interesting intercepts, interesting imagery that might pertain to an item in the book? you are spending some of your time figuring out what's going to be in the past you deliver to the policymaker. the second thing i discovered very quickly was how much i didn't know. it's pretty sobering. you think you're relatively informed until you start reading all these pieces. i quickly realized that in about a day or two, this whole russia thing, it's great that you know a lot about russia. but that's not going to get you too far. i adopted the mentality of my job here is basically i'm going to be a mile wide and an inch

deep. i'm going to be only get through 5, 10, 15 minutes on a particular issue, but i'm never going to be that date. it's important to recognize your limitations. there are some answers you are not going to have, in the right answer is so, i will always get back to. -- get back to you. someone has the answers, it may not be made. you interact with a lot of people. we may still be finishing a particular piece, if there's a change in you want to get updated. the analysts who wrote the pieces will come up pretty early in the morning before you leave to get in the car at 6:30 or 7:00 to update you if there's a new tidbit you need for the piece. or if you ask for pre-brief. sometimes if i were doing a piece on the nuclear fuel cycle, and how many centrifuges were spending in certain countries, and it was some technical issue that i really didn't know much about, i would say i want to have some people from that office, here in update me on how

i can talk about this in case i get questions. there's a lot of support the goes on in getting the briefer's ready in the morning. the other thing the analysts would do, and this is not what was going on in the early days, but as analysts, the job of became muchpb item more intense and demanding over the years because we develop all these background notes. tothe briefer in addition having the briefly have several pages of background, where the analyst would write here the kinds of questions you might anticipate you are going to get, hear the answers. very helpful if you are the person going down there. whenooking at porter goss he talked about his excellent briefers. some of us were more expert than others. all of this prep actually really helped. observations on the actual delivery piece.

about 6:30, i would hop in the car. fortunately we had drivers. i didn't have to worry about the driving, and i would do more cramming in the backseat. as i would go in, i would walk through the pieces, that's job number one. multiple roles to play as the actual briefer that morning. the first is that you are conveying the bottom line of the piece, some particular issue or aspect you may want to sensitize the reader to about the sensitivity of the sources or if it's something new, or perhaps more portly, is there a shift in the analytic line for the analyst who briefed you on this particular piece. we want to make sure that you clarify any ambiguities or uncertainties the reader might have. everyone has a different style. some like to read through the piece and then ask questions,

some look up and say what about this thing? others like you to walk through the piece into a quick summary, bottom line, and interesting data point or two. the other part, to other big parts in the briefer role is you actually are a very important liaison person between the intel community and the policymaker. having that time alone in the office gives you a unique opportunity to judge how well the piece worked, do they have a lot of questions, maybe we should have done things differently in the way we present at the piece to make it more clear? when you go back to headquarters, you can provide really good context and feedback about why things worked or didn't work, or in some cases, why they are generating a lot more questions. here,her role you play you are the actual vehicle to bring back a fair number of questions. sometimes that would not make you so popular. you would get back to the

building, and they would say dr. rice would like this memo by tomorrow morning. this is a question she had, or vice president cheney. you would frequently be the conveyor belt as it were for bringing back feedback. is other thing you would do you would come back after the briefing, you frequently would get people together to talk about the feedback directly, and alert them that he had other questions that are directly related to the piece, but it's something we might think about writing. we use this opportunity to provide insights to some of the issues or concerns that the reader might have that have nothing directly related to a particular piece, but they give you a nice heads up to anticipate that there on their mind. let's plan ahead and think of another piece we might do about xyz. briefed forpeople i dr. rice or deputy had the or

vice president cheney, frequent in a would say i'm really interested, i can't do it today, but i would love to get a deeper look at what's going on in whatever. russia, china. and we would go back and arrange for a deep dive, and let's organize a briefing trade ice president cheney would do this not infrequently. he would want a briefing on a saturday, for maybe a couple of hours. we'll bring out a team of analysts and we do what i would call a serious review of all the issues for a particular country or issue. in that sense, we were really trying to be a full-service liaison rep, both delivering the book, providing some context to the reader, but also bringing back the feedback and conveying to the authors were to the directors. there would be days where they would be particular feedback that was either sensitive or not good news. you would want to be sure to alert your boss and say this piece stirred a lot of interest that you may want to be aware of

so the next time you were in the building down there, you are not blindsided. i'm going to stop there, if you have any other questions, i'm happy to take them on during questions and answers. [applause] mr. robarge: our final commentator today is professor william inboden, as you know from the bio is a professor here in the executive director of the carnegie center and has extensive background on commenting on policy issues. professor inboden. as david inboden: indicated, i want to offer my brief comments today from two different vantage point. first, as an historian and a scholar of the cold war, i will offer some reflections on the significant of these particular documents for the scholarly enterprise and discovery resource.

member is a former staff on the nse at the white house, i will offer some brief reflections on the policymaker's perspective on the pdb. -- tbd. -- pdb. ist of the job historian's to reconstruct the past based on material and archives. these are caps off is addressed questions like how the world look to policymakers and leaders as events unfolded very what policy options were they considering and rejecting what policy options did they embrace, and why. archives are unique in that they give us a snapshot of what was known at the time, as opposed to lateritten memoirs or oral history interviews, which can be very helpful, but they're also invariably subject to the imperfections of personal memory , and sometimes the distortions of personal vanity. in other words, we all want to be her member dwell, and

sometimes we were member ourselves better than the fact may warrant. archival cold war record contains a rich repository of policy memos to and from leaders, correspondence and transcript of discussions, we have a lot of archives some other countries at the end of the cold war, eastern european archives opened up. historians, any disability between the presidents of the united states and his intelligence community. in short, we historians have access to a policy advisers recommended to the president, what decisions were made, what was said in public and presidential speeches. until now, we haven't had access to what the president really new at the time. pdb's why these new answer and a for policy context, a variance of the question from watergate -- what did the president know and when did he know it? eliminate also

question -- what did the president want to know? it's like getting a mirror image of the president's mind at the time. it's been discussed here aspect of the pdb is perhaps not fully appreciated yet is that it's not just developed from a blank slate by the intelligence community based on what the cia wants to tell the president. it's a very interactive process. it's driven largely why customer demand. the president tells the intelligence community what he is interested in and in what format he is interested in. and the icy response. responds. it provides a record like in your image diary of the president's daily concerns and preoccupations. what world leaders interested him, what types of entries -- issued worried him, what regions were on his mind? i had the privilege several days

ago of getting some advanced access to these pdb's. full disclosure, they total 2500 documents, over a thousand pages. i have not read them all. i did read a number of them. a couple of my graduate students and staff read a lot more. special shout out to olivia and anna, thank you. a few highlights and takeaways from what we've seen already, and what all historians and journalists in here should look for. first, the staggering breadth of issues that are president daily confronts, and the multitude of considerations he must juggle. i know this has been a goodbye number of other painless. it's a really important cautionary note for historians who may want to only focus on reconstructing the decision-making process on a single issue. an example, one the director brennan mentioned earlier today. historians who are writing on the johnson administration's troop escalation in vietnam in 1964 and 1965 window, will worse

find much value in these documents, seeing what the cia was telling the president of time about conditions in vietnam. i also hope that historians focusing on phenomenal take notice that while wrestling with the vietnam decision, lbj was simultaneously receiving warnings and alarming assessments about the dominican republic, congo, turbulence in the middle east, soviet and chinese communist adventurism throughout the developing world. political instability among american allies in europe and asia, student unrest around the globe trade is there a bracing reminder that no issue is confronted or decision is made in isolation. the boilingt of cauldron of challenges the president faces every day. and then there are pdb's for some really pivotal moments in history. director brennan reference the kennedy assassination and lbj transition earlier arrested some of the other panelists. it's really chilling to read the pickle at the time from the beverage when a second, 1963.

it's prepared before the assassination. it contained a series of items in the soviet union, china, cambodia, you look, indonesia. into whatque glimpse might have been on president kennedy's mind that fabled in dallas. -- fateful day in dallas. dr. brennan mentioned a poem, once the horrific news from dallas broke, the pickle staff added an amendment. i will read it here. in honor of president kennedy, for whom the president's intelligence checklist was first written on june 17, 1961. for this day, the checklist staff can find words no fitting in a verse quoted by the president to a group of newspaper men the day he learned of the presence of soviet missiles in cuba. bull fight critics ranked in rows, but only one is there knows, and he's the man who fights the bull. alluded, the next day

is pickle, the new president lbj's first encounter with the unfathomable challenges of the office, offered a bracing overview of the world he encountered. reports of ethical and economic tax, the in south vietnam. recurring soviet pressures and west berlin after without that had been settled. iraqical instability in and syria, labour party gains in great britain, one of our main allies. it takes only the briefest stretch of our restorable imaginations to appreciate that this was the new reality the face lbj, and the realization that these were not just academic interests. these are things he faces as being responsible for leadership of the free world. there is much rich material in here for historians. let me shift now and offer a couple of completing thoughts as a recovering policymaker. interaction with the pdb often shaped the policy agenda for those working for him on the staff.

as you picked up, the pdb has such a privileged and close l document that only a small handful of white house after the very senior levels have access to it. the rest of us, directors and senior directors and some dmsa to pdb would be episodic and profit by the president's reactions to a particular topic. i suppose i can say now, one rather delicate one that came up for us in 2005 was president bush got into a fairly stern disagreement with this briefer over a question of historical record in iran, particularly relating to the iranian pressure in the hockey careers 79. i wasn't in the oval at the time, but we got the report that the president really disagree with the briefer, the briefer held her ground, there's a bit of an impasse. the question was kicked over to my office, you need to resolve this. bureaucratic politics 101 is is not have a place to be stuck

between the president and the cia. that's where we found ourselves. when of my more courageous colleagues took the lead on this while i ducked under the desk. is a very honorable and inherently minded political scientist. he did the research and it turns out president bush was right. i don't know if you ever that one. -- remember that one. the next day we got raises. it all worked out. other times, the president might be intrigued by an item in a pdb and ask us, his policy staff, to develop a follow-up initiative on the issue. this sometimes turned into a really full and telogen's and policy feedback loop. one time a pdb item on a large country in east asia interest of the president. he asked me to then develop a major strategic initiative on that country. several months later after we completed the policy initiative and we are waiting to roll it out, we then set it back to the cia, who then adapted that into

a special feature that was a follow-up deep dive pdb. in other words, would be a lot more work for the intelligence committee. you've already heard the confirmation from them. appreciate the significance of the pdb, one really has to consider it from a full spectrum of perspectives. of course, the intelligence committee leadership, which we have here today, but also the scholarly community, the media, i know we have journalists here, and the policymaker and the war fighter as we will soon hear from at home raven. -- admiral the craven. i want to thank and commend president obama and director brennan for their principal leadership in taking what really is an unprecedented step of declassifying and releasing these documents. i think it is a great hallmark of what it means to live in a free society. his prompt a final thought. for all of the criticisms of the criticisms the u.s. intelligence committee has faced in recent years, in comparison with every other major intelligence nervous around the world, the american intelligence committee remains the most transparent intelligence community in the world. and for that, i'm grateful. [applause]

mr. robarge: we have about 15 minutes left in our symposium here to take some questions from the audience. before we do, i would enjoy and anyone who is proposing to advance to the microphone to please keep your question in the form of a question, keep it within one or two sentences, please avoid any long-winded preparatory statements or two yes -- teeups. stick to the contents of the symposium, the details in the publication you received when you arrived, and we -- please stay away from current events or controversies we are in no position to discuss your i will start on the side and move over here if anyone is in line. otherwise, i will stick with the site. withdraw,aid i must

in response to your last restriction. since my question had to do with the intelligence in regard to the emergence and capabilities of isil, in which there seemed to be a contradiction between the directors public testimony as to the agencies briefing of the president on it, and the presidents own statements in march of 2014, which belittled the threat and referred to isil as a junior varsity. exactly -- mr. robarge: you are exactly right. you will need to withdraw. >> i apologize, i will take my seat. mr. robarge: -- >> thank you for being here.

robert moore, austin, texas. director brennan gave us a very interesting nugget a few moments ago, it was the kennedy administration's directive to the cia, saying under no circumstances should the pdb with a pickle the given to johnson. under no circumstances. a few years ago, roger stone wrote a book called the man who killed kennedy, the case against lbj. you gentlemen that there are historians, scholars, men with decades in u.s. intelligence. do any of you believe that lyndon johnson or the cia murder john kennedy? [laughter] >> let me be direct. his total fiction, it has no element of accuracy at all. [applause] >> who do you think killed john

kennedy? admiral inman, who do you think killed john kennedy? admiral inman: we know with certainty that all is well killed him. we will be left with history to , and castro may or may not have been involved in the process. whether efforts to assassinate castro had caused him and turned to inspire it, that is pure speculation. there is no fact support that speculation. that there isinty zero credibility. >> that's a question for the panel. one question. who killed john kennedy? withdraw andplease

allow someone else asked question. thank you. i think bill o'reilly had the last word on that. [laughter] >> you talked about the pressures of protecting your sources in the pressures on the analyst. what is the effect of wikileaks and snowden in terms of how this is done? and what is the correlation between what the president receives daily and what i am going to see in the washington post and new york times? >> let me do quickly the first part. revelations are the leaks fort damaging u.s. intelligence collection capabilities, and our relationship with an analyst that has occurred since world war ii. he is a traitor, not a hero.

wikileaks was not as damaging to intelligence collection as it was to our relationship with other countries. because most of that damage -- the state department would be caught not sharing, has dumped virtually all their secret level cable into a defense intelligence network. that's what manning was able to access. it itmage here is that revealed who was talking to us, what the individuals who were talking to the u.s. representatives saying to other countries. while it may not have compromised in the same sense that we were reading or listening to, but the damage of people being willing to talk. if they are going to show up on wikileaks and the rest of it, and embarrassed in their own countries, it's terribly

damaging to getting the information we need. >> if i may answer the second question, which i think is a perceptive one. it might be good that i answer it. it's been 20 years since i was the deputy director of intelligence and responsible for the production of the pdb. time, because this question has arisen, i had a pretty careful study done. and for some time, frankly forgotten how long, we discovered that something like 60% of the pdb items, the essential substance of the item was not replicated in any way in the press. we talked about the same countries and general issues, but the substance of the information reported was not to be found in the new york times or the washington post. i can't speak to how that ratio may have changed from earlier periods, but i found a striking

at the time. it's a unique publication. >> the other thing that's important to recognize is the pdb is not actually like the newspaper. there are items in the pdb that are not about things that happened yesterday. pieces pretty often about long-term trends, ongoing trends, things that are not in the headlines today or tomorrow, but are nonetheless significant enough that we want to alert the policymakers that this is something that's going to be coming up on your radar. here's a heads up. it's really not just a current intelligence newspaper. i would like to add to that the times may have changed, but there's no question that the media content of the day and the influential media outlets in our country was also a sidebar of the information we had. it didn't necessarily brief it as part of the bb -- tbd, but we quite often got questions

because of that would appear that would tickle and interest in the question would come and we would take it home, research it and come back the next day or whatever it might be with information if there was any. to say there was a correlation would be too strong a word. but to say that interest was iqued sometimes by what the editorial board was saying or another, there's no question that was of interest to the policymakers. if there was a factual aspect about that, it might've gotten to her territory. but we obviously didn't get it to the political aspects of it. mr. robarge: next question. >> november 2014 article in the new york times about how the obama administration a year earlier had asked for a report from the cia about the historical record of the united states supporting through arm supports insurrections of

various groups. the report came out that it was a complete failure. all the cia operations in that regards were failure. the obama administration would ahead and proceeded to go ahead and on the syrian rebels. in full defiance of cia's expert advice. a couple of things follow from this. report isis, this classified, how can anyone in the cia talk about the importance of open government when a report like this based on the open historical record is classified and kept from the american people? areher thing is that there other issues involving past support that presumably should have gone to the white house, and has anybody at the cia ever bothered to task the failure of decapitation strategy in the war on drugs? and it's inapplicability in the current drone wars?

>> let me address that promptly because i want to get into -- >> no, let me -- >> let me answer. i was the leader store -- historian on the matter. the press reports have been distorted. i don't know who is talking to who halfheartedly, but the press accounts based on that very, veryreport are inaccurate. it presents a much more mixed and nuanced picture of the record of success and failure in those regards. however, as i said earlier, we talking about current events. someone ask a question about -- next we please sit down? >> please sit down. >> server you are behaving in an uncivil manner. please retreat to your seat.

>> you have it question about the pickle or the pdb? >> i'm curious to know if the in the history of the pdb, if there has been a case in which an item was not included in the pdb, but it later turned out to be of snafu, and they wish it was included? was anyone finding themselves in hot water with voters as a result of something not be included that should have been? >> how about the practitioners here? fortunately, there is more communication with the president of the united states between the agency and the white house than just the pdb. that would be the main vehicle for dealing with business of the united states as the chief deciding policymaker. but that's not the only way. if something comes up, you could pick up the phone, or if you

miss something or discover that the president's agenda has changed and he suddenly has a visitor from out of town and he needs to know something about, those of the kinds of things of course the agency -- the whole community has capabilities to respond to. >> thank you. hats off and very sincere thanks for all those in the intelligence community and keep our nation safe. [applause] mr. robarge: we have time for your question, very concise. >> this really is about pdb's history. i was curious, given that a lot of credit for the downfall of the soviet union was attributed to an arms race that essentially bankrupted them. that's the way it's been reported lately. howcurious -- if and/or that would have been addressed in the pdb? that was particularly

nonmilitary -- it was military spending but it had more to do with economic issues behind the scenes that it was a militaristic battlefield, so to speak? >> in addressing long-term trends versus daily reporting. that oney not you feel -- why don't you field that one? a.d. clement: there's considerable debate among academics about what was the main driver in the class with the soviet union. these are probably my own personal views. i would say there are variety of factors. the was a huge driver because he tackled issues no one else was prepared to take on because he knew how bad things were. one of those factors clearly was military spending. vietnam,as the war in the war in afghanistan. and then to mystic internal trends with a lot of ethnic tensions in different parts of the former soviet. a number of things he had to

wrestle with, not to mention extreme resistance within the communist party and the soviet union to his major reforms. he had a lot on his plate. i think it's fair that you weren't getting questions from the consumers about the state of the soviet economy. it was ultimately, the state of the economy that couldn't keep up. in my several years of working this process, i never had a policymaker asked me about the state of the soviet economy, except one occasion, caspar weinberger wanted to know how to measure the ruble against the dollar, because he wanted to use some displays in his armed services committee testimony. you get answers to the questions you are asked. there was little interest on the state of the soviet economy, there was no focus on it. so there was indeed some

surprise that it seemed to be so weak, so fragile that it ultimately led to the collapse. mr. robarge: thank you. we are through our appointed time, and will break for now. we will come back at 3:30 when there is a break outside for our view. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] >> you are watching american history tv. 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span 3. follow us on twitter at @cs panhistory to keep up with the latest history news. up next on american history tv, former navy