the p pdb is staff. the pdb is such a privileged document. the rest of us, the directors and senior directors, our exposure to pdb would be episodic. one rather delicate one that came up for us in 2005 was president bush got into a disagreement with his briefer related to the iranian posture and hostage situation at the time. the president disagreed with the briefer. the briefer held her ground. the question was kicked over to my office, the strategy office. you need to resolve this. it's not a happy place to be stuck between the president and the cia. fortunately, one of my more colleagues took the fever. peter is a very honorable political scientist. he did the research. it turns out president bush was right. i don't know if you remember that one. the next day we got raises. all worked out. other times the president might be intrigued by an item in the pdb and ask us to develop a follow-up initiative on the issue. this sometimes turns into a full intelligence and policy feedback loop. so one time pdb item on a large country in east asia int

this was the very first issue of what would become the pdb. the publication quickly became a must-read for president kennedy and set in motion a routine for delivering intelligence to the oval office that has been at the heart of the cia's mission ever since. the idea behind the pdb 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. the reports he was receiving were long, dense, and abstract, and they would come in haphazardly throughout the day. much of what he was being given each day went unread. and the president was making policy decisions without the benefit of the intelligence our government had collected for him. a few months into the president's term, after he was caught offguard by several developments on the intelligence front, his brother robert kennedy lit into the president's staff. cia soon got a call from the white house demanding that the agency find a better way to keep the president informed.

he loved the pdb. he could never get enough information. he was an ideal customer, and i hope that is something that all presidents, that the agency will always do its job so well that all presidents will feel that way about the pdb. to finish on a personal note, i look with great interest on these revelations that are coming out, because i was a very junior person on the very front lines in the missile crisis down in the conflict area. and in the dominican republic during these days, and i always wondered what those guys in washington were thinking. so now it's my chance to find out. thank you very much. [ applause ] >>> next we'll hear from admiral bobby inman, well-known to many of you as a professor at the lbj school of federal affairs. most pertinently, we have his extensive background as an intelligence officer at the most senior ranks, director of the national security agency, and deputy director of central intelligence under one of the most interesting characters to ever be dci, william casey. please. >> the sound is going out? good

. -- 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 disabili

but we've tried to build on the pdb process. tried to build on the foundation of cia's tradition of excellence. i think i can say, and i'm proud to say it, that i believe the intelligence community is living up to the cia legacy. cia continues to be the mainstay of producing pdb articles, but the rest of the ic makes major contributions, as well. all 16 components of the community. every intelligence agency and element has contributed material that has made it to the president. it is truly a community effort. it's been an honor this afternoon to be at this library to talk about the work of our top analysts. president johnson himself once said, quote, a president's hardest task is not to do what is right but to know what is right. having worked closely with him, i can vouch for his words. knowing what is right, deciding what is right, is the president's hardest task. the ic can't decide for him what is right. he wouldn't want to. when it comes to national security, it is our job to give him the intelligence he needs to help make

mainstaynues to be a .f producing pdb articles all 16 components of the community. every can tell -- every intelligence agency has contributed material that has made it to the president. it is truly a community effort. it has been an honor this afternoon to be at this library to talk about the work of our top analysts. president johnson himself once said, "the president's artist tax is not -- hardest task is right, what tois know what is right." i can vouch for president johnson's word. knowing what is right and deciding what is right is the president's hardest task. ic cannot decide for him what is right. we would not want to. it is the intelligence he needs to make the hard decisions. i can vouch that our current president is a faithful and gracious consumer of intelligence and he has been right there with us through the difficulties of the past two years. process, wheree intelligence comes from, and importantly, the men and women who do all that. today as we celebrate the release and publication of the documents that informed ,residents kennedy and johnson i want

and, brianna, this whole back and forth caused me to go back to the infamous pdb of august 6th, 2001, bin laden determined to strike in the united states which sounds awfully compelling, but it really is as president bush described it a general briefing that speaks to bin laden's intentions and i don't think you can say he was ever provided information as far as we know of an impending attack. >> all right. i want to ask you, sara, about something that jeb bush said about donald trump. so before he calls him pathetic today in a tweet, he spoke about trump to cbs and he said something very different. he said he admires bush -- or admires trump that he's way too politically incorrect. does this indicate jeb bush is still struggling to figure out how to handle donald trump? >> i don't think anyone aside from carly fiorina who seems to have figured this out has managed to find a way to handle donald trump. i'm hearing from more and more republicans, especially after our polls from south carolina and nevada that showed trump with such a wide lead saying what are we going to do about this.

. >> i'm suggesting there's substance here that we can hash out, the pdb of august 6th, george tenetmunity was blinking red. many were afraid to go after it. by the way, if it were an issue that could sell to a general election, you think john kerry would have been elected in 2004 and he wasn't. all i'm saying is, i think people tend to conflate whether they like or dislike trump, how they feel about the different issues. i'm suggesting there's a legitimate issue here for discussion that i think is healthy for the country. >> it sounds to me like he is going there. he's going further than what he just said where he was attacking jeb. he was there talking about george tenet and why the warning signs were ignored and how the information was siloed as we know between the cia and other intelligence. also in this interview we just did talked about how it upset the apple cart. the response afterward and going into iraq that george w. bush didn't keep us safe. this is his feeling, because he went into iraq, upset the apple cart and that was the genesis of isis. he just said that. all of tho