Thread by @DavidPriess

THREAD: President Trump reportedly doesn’t read the President’s Daily Brief and sometimes loses patience even for the oral briefings he gets on it only 2-3 times each week.

How unusual is this?

First, tonight’s @gregpmiller and @nakashimae article:

1/16
washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

Here’s the history:

The PDB was founded on the President’s Intelligence Checklist, created for John Kennedy in 1961.

Kennedy usually read it daily. When particularly busy, he caught up on it every few days. But he never had a CIA briefer talk through it with him.

2/16

The President’s Daily Brief started in 1964 for Lyndon Johnson.

He read the book avidly, often late at night while sitting in bed. Sometimes, as shown here, in the morning.

But, like his predecessor, he took no in-person PDB briefings from intelligence community officers.

3/16

Richard Nixon’s experience with the PDB is, like so many things about him, an enigma.

No direct evidence shows he read it while POTUS. He certainly did not read it while president-elect; envelopes with PDB copies delivered to his transition office were returned, unopened.

4/16

Although some National Security Council memos suggest Nixon didn’t read the PDB in office, Kissinger told me he was sure Nixon read it.

I must admit: It would be like Nixon to read the PDB, if only to have a source on national security secrets apart from Kissinger himself.

5/16

Gerald Ford became the first president to not only read his daily book of secrets with interest, but also to take in-person, daily briefings about the PDB from intelligence community officers— though only for his first year in office.

6/16

Jimmy Carter provided ample evidence for history (and to me in interviews) that he read his PDB carefully. He typically marked up his copies, scrawling questions and comments in the margins.

But he did not get briefed on it each day by intelligence community officers.

7/16

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Ronald Reagan seems to have read it, too:

All six of his national security advisors, and others in his White House, told me so. It would fit his pattern of reading what aides gave him, even to Nancy’s annoyance. And his diary cites the PDB.

8/16

And a CIA historian went through the first 1,000 PDB copies that were delivered to Reagan and returned to the Agency for safekeeping; a significant number of those copies had comments/markings in the president’s own handwriting, indicating careful reading by Reagan himself.

9/16

But Reagan also got material from his President’s Daily Brief through daily briefings with his national security advisor.

Although he didn’t get PDB briefings from CIA officers, Reagan clearly was in the intelligence loop.

10/16

George HW Bush read his PDB every working morning as it was delivered to him by a CIA officer—who answered the president’s questions about its content, highlighted parts if they hadn’t grabbed his attention, and brought questions back to be answered in the next day’s book.

11/16

Bill Clinton took in-person briefings, but irregularly over the course of his two terms. Regardless, he had the book delivered every day, for him to read.

He told me that he read it avidly, even if he did not give feedback about it on an average day.

12/16

George W. Bush read his PDB carefully, giving it more time on his schedule than any previous president.

He also was the first POTUS to take in-person briefings from intelligence officers every working day of his presidency, whether he was in DC or overnighting elsewhere.

13/16

Barack Obama settled into a pattern whereby he read the PDB (for him, on a very special iPad) alone and talked about it with senior advisors. And then he invited intelligence community briefers in a few times a week to expand upon its content or walk on new items.

14/16

Ironically for a president who seems to reflexively do the opposite of what his predecessor did, Trump seems to have a PDB pattern closest to Obama.

He certainly gets a PDB every day, whether he chooses to read it or not, and then takes a few in-person briefings a week.

15/16

Interested in these stories of presidents and their relationship with intelligence?

Check out my history of it all, featuring interviews with presidents, vice presidents, CIA directors, and many others:

/end
amazon.com/Presidents-Boo…