the c.i.a. releases pdbs from the june 1961 through january 1969. marking the first time the c.i.a. has through its historical review board declassified pdbs and made them public. they will be posted on the c.i.a.'s website. i would like to welcome to the stage the archivist, the honorable david fario. >> thank you, mark. when we opened our doors in 1935, the mission was to collect, protect and encourage the use of the records of the united states government. most importantly to make the records available so that the american public can hold its government accountable for its actions and to learn from the past. we're the final destination of the most important records of the united states government. 2 to 3% of records deemed to be important enough for permanent preservation. the national archives is responsible for the white house the sprous and we provide courtesy storage for the records of congress. our records start with the allegiance signed by george washington and his troops in 1775 and go all the way up to the tweets that are being created as i am speaking in the white house.

what was unique about the pdb? was it not only what we knew, but it often also told how we knew it in the process. 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 and then i heard there was a lot of redax and i relaxed. so, my comments here from the journalist story. all redaxs. you can often tell what you know without harming your sources of methods. but even the slightest inference of how you get that information can lead to atz traffic loss often. often hard, even impossible to replace. what when i was director of national security agency, looking at what could be decl s declassified for my great holdings, i made the decision to release all of the purple materials breaking the japanese codes during world war ii. huge value to historians. changed a lot of their understanding of how the world was conducting critical decisions that were made. i was also impressed by the fbi to replace the -- materials. this was the dekripgs of kgb

, 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

i believe the pdbs we're releasing today are from an interesting time in our nation's history. i received my commission in the air force when kennedy was president. in fact, in august of 1962, i met president kennedy at rotc summer camp. i was attends in massachusetts. as luck would have it, i was in the front row of the rope line, and president kennedy spoke briefly to each cadet. most of whom he asked were planning to be pilots. he asked what i planned to do in the air force. i said, i wanted to be an intelligence officer. he said, that's good. we need good intelligence offices. never forgot that, obviously. i also served, of course, in air force intelligence through the johnson's -- president johnson's time in office, and served two tours in southeast asia. the first in vietnam in 1965 and '66. all to say, this event has personal significance for me. i think there is a certain relevance and semmatry. under the terrorism prevention act, the management of the pd process moved from the cia,the central intelligence agency, to the office of the director of national intelligence. s

he spoke very eloquently about fromignificance of the pdb the kennedy and johnson years. the cia modernization that john talked about, integrating disciplines and capabilities across the agency, reflects changes that we have been making as an intelligence community. fasterll make the agency and more responsive to world events. john's superb leadership at bringing these changes about has been tremendous. i could talk for hours about how these improvements at the cia will make the entire ic better, but i recognize i'm the last speaker and i'm standing between you and the reception, so i won't. today, we have focused on a single vital daily intelligence product. theare at the apex of intelligence production food chain. i don't think any other nation on the planet will look back open and exposed intelligence works of the significance of what we are declassified. what of my major takeaways from the controversies of the past few years has been that come yes, we have to protect our secrets, our sources, and methods, our tradecraft, but we have to be more transparent about the th

. >> i'm suggesting there's substance here that we can hash out, the pdb of august 6th, george tenet unity 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 thos

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.