Changes that have been made. They also talk about the cia, department of defense, and the white house during the Nixon Administration. It has been closely guarded and in great demand since they were created during the kennedy administration. There were lots of individuals in the chain that made this possible, but i want to publicly joe during his time as an archivist. He truly embodied the slogan, releasing all we can, protecting what we must. Thanks, joe, for making that happen. [applause] with an advance copy of todays release, i had an opportunity to did in and go through the history through the lens of the daily brief. I immediately went to five marks of 1970, the first marine my firstinto nam, and day in the country. Not that i expected to see my name prominently announced in the president ial daily brief, but i was curious about what was going on. Related to vietnam, and the principal developments of that , the middle east policy, which troops are coming back from egypt, and entirely redacted reports on jordan and short notes on guatemala and venezuela, not a mention of vietnam. Or cambodia, for that matter. But enough about me, i now have the honor of introducing todays panel of experts who will address the importance of these records. Your program has detailed biographies. Of theerator is Trevor National intelligence council. The Council Supports director clapper in his role as head of the Intelligence Committee created a nation 79 to serve as a bridge between the created in 1979 to serve as a bridge between intelligence and other communities. A facilitator of Intelligence Community collaboration and outreach. He served as a policy analyst and director of the center for global risk and serve security in the grand publication. He talked about reshaping National Intelligence for an age of information. Our distinctive Panel Includes chiefrobards, the historian of the Central Intelligence agency, publishing classified and unclassified reports on the Reconnaissance Aircraft and intelligence in the american revolution. The chief historian for kennedy and the goal and western europe. Steve randall is the historian for department of state, and author of powerful and brutal ispons, and David Sargent associate professor of history at california berkeley and the author of a superpower transformed, remaking of inrican Foreign Relations the 1970s. In the spirit of true disclosure , steve and erin served on the national archives, which i chair. [applause] thank you, very much, david. It will be a great honor and pleasure to be here as someone who has been outside government and outside intelligence more than i have been inside. This is my fourth time on the inside. That is probably plenty. I am struck by how ungood the Intelligence Community is. We often leave it to the Edward Snowden to do it for us, and that is not good. So i find this welcome, and i want to add my thanks to the archives and the library as well as the cia for making this possible. I had the privilege before i took my current position to speak at an earlier gathering on an earlier release, they released a bunch of documents pertaining to the 1973 war, and that was a wonderful occasion for transparency. I applaud that line with director clappers transparency initiative, the more we can do, the better. The only did we provide too much water for students with phds, we hopefully should provide grit for people that want to understand better what we do. , gave to me the task of introducing the panel, so i wont. Let me say it is wonderful to have a trifecta of distinguished government historians, distinguished academics who have thought about this issue. I want to turn quickly to them. I want to keep this conversational, but i wanted to frame the panel and what i thought was a very interesting conversation between jim and john. We know this has changed a lot over time and could involve in the future. It it could evil in the in the it could evolve future. It began as a pickle, the president checklist. So he would not be confused by reading the same thing twice, not knowing where something would come from. It has gone from that modest beginning to what is now a very substantial operation. That makes us think about how it might evil in the future might evolve in the future. We want to focus on the nixon and Ford Administration. I was struck, i had the opportunity to look for the center of intelligence and how subsequent administrations to these, specifically the three administrations before mr. Obamas, had dealt with the president s daily brief. I had good oral histories of the cia. What struck me about those oral histories is the senior official that testified on the point like bds, but they like to the briefers better. They were an entree to conversation. They could ask russians, it more information. A reminder that when we focus on dbs as documents, it is about process, not points. It is about the process over time. Wonderfule cia has a study of intelligence success. And though in fashion to typical community, it is classified, because it talked about the various intelligence analyses. What it makes clear was the successes resulted not from a sparkling single analysis from a process over time where intelligence analysts could better understand what policy people needed, and policy people could calibrate and direct to some extent with the intelligent analysts work on. It is a process that i think it raises two questions that were themes this morning. One is, you can imagine lots of possible ways that we intelligence can support president s daily. So what is the best way . In particular, how best to manage the balance between immediately tactical, reporting information and more Strategic Thinking . My role at the National Intelligence council is meant to be very strategic. We are dominated by current intelligence. So we are try to think, how do we get the ballots right balance right . I think it raises a second more is,lligent issue, and that what is the future between relations and policy in the digital age . Ipad came upmb seniors but soon policy will not want a dumb ipad but alive ipad so they can have a 24 7 conversation. Already, my australian counterpart said his Prime Minister is disappointed in him because the Prime Minister gets up in the morning, gets on the pda and starts talking to the cabinet ministers, but he cant talk to intelligence. He has to wait and go to some special room. We will think about those future developments in the light of this rich history we are going to discuss right now. I will go in the order of the program. David robards, for cia. David. [applause] john brennan this event david this event mirroring the uss of nixon and ford gives a way to look at the white house , which is that it is entirely up to the president how it is going to be run. There is nothing in the National Security acts of 1947 setting up cia and the National Security council that says the intelligence process will be a certain type. It is up to the president , whether he is interested in intelligence, thinks it is important, wants to use it, advising against us, considers it irrelevant, as other sources, that is up to him. And the agency over the years and now the dni and other elements have try to tailor the daily product to meet the president needs is a fascinating story. You can see by scanning through the documents in todays release how the pdb itself as a product has changed. But behind that is an important , ary as dr. Turgeon says process. How they integrated the pdb into their intelligence below, who managed the intelligence below. More importantly, i think is what the art agency try to do to strike the balance between what the agency thought and needs to tell the president and what the president wants to hear from the agency. They certainly are not the same things by any stretch. Today we have the opportunity to look at two very different president s running to very different two very different administrations. I would refer to gerald ford as an eager consumer. You can hardly take more juxtapositions. Nixons trust is wellestablished. But as a mirror of what the agency was getting into, during the transition would nixon has set up his headquarters in new york city, it was wired intelligence up to the outpost. We called it ddi new york at the time. This includes the pdb, analytic products and so forth. When the operation there close down before the inauguration, all of those items were told returned to us in envelopes and had never been opened before. The point is henry kissinger, as he said, wanted to make sure no agency had particular entree to president elect nixon. He wanted to control all of the intelligence flow, and he didnt want the agency trying to sell itself as the premier actor in the Intelligence Community. He also had a number of complaints about the pdb as a document. Literarily, he thought that the style of it was elliptical, the articles were too brief, the coverage was spotty, it did not it to the key issues. He once referred to in article on panama as a worry for the assistant secretary of state, not the president of the United States. Heels and wanted to change the whole daily process of the pdb arrival. Previously, it would arrive in the morning for a brief time, johnson got in the afternoon, but that he change it to the morning. He wanted to watch it with the tv shows. Kissinger thought he would control everything, said i wanted delivered in the afternoon so i can mix it together with all the other intelligence i collect from the white house situation room and other sources, and then i will put it together into a morning briefing for the president and give it to him myself. So the important point here is we have no morning briefing. We did not have one until general gerald ford, which i will get to in a bit. And kissinger said that nixon wanted the pdb to go to the attorney general. This has nothing to do with Law Enforcement or terrorism because mitchell was a political advisor to nixon, and kissinger thought it would be useful for mitchell to advise him and have political implications for these foreign events. Nixon was a lawyer, and he wants facts and analysis separated. He wants the facts first and then the analysis second. It had been integrated in the structure of the articles. We go through pdbs, you go through them tonight, you see just the facts, and then the analysis. Said wet later on, they should distinguish them typographically. So you have italics for analysis and regular font used for the socalled main facts of the story. Also the pdb is restructured from the one johnson had, and i suggest you go back to the previous release with how the structure changes. It would be divided up into major developments, other important developments and exes in a very important and for became itads, it developed a top binding. You could flip it over like a big legal pad. This is an example of how they have tried to proactively, in a sense, tailor the product itself with president ial needs. The delivery signs, all of that has changed. The circulation itself is up to the president. In the case of johnson, he added delivered to 10 people before he got out of office. Nixon cut that back to six, and then up to nine. So it has done to as many as 2. 5 dozen individuals outside of the immediate circle. In other cases, it has been close, up to the president. The key point from the relationship perspective is that the pdb under nixon lost its standalone quality. It was no longer the thing that went to the president each morning albeit by delivery from between with discussion the president and National Security advisor or just the president reading it himself. The way kissinger ran the process here is he would take that document, let it sit for 12 hours, constantly updating with prepare a then National Security men know. Emo. Ia is out of the picture none of the items were tagged specific to pdb. At the start of the administration, we are out of the process momentarily. We are also out of the process of feedback because there is no continual back and forth between the white house and cia. Kissingers with a said, you are slammed thetyle, door shut, cook up something, and then spring it on the policy community. Cia is not involved, you are not telling them what you want in the book, you are taking it as it comes and going from there. As a result, the pdb is growing ever more useless overtime in the Nixon Administration. S presence is lacking as well. There were National SecurityCouncil Meetings where this was less important over the nixon to terms. He had two terms. He had no relationship with this. It was superseded with the looming impeachment. The agency tried to do in response to a request from bob holman who didnt get involved with the process a bit was dry did get involved with the process of it was dry to precraft this. They came up with the president ial intelligence crafting. You will see some of those in the documents. They were rejected for sensitivity sources, even at this late date. The key was to try to make a document relative, respond to what the president wanted. I did not work. It only lasted about 10 months. Pretty soon, the whole relationship was superseded by the watergate scandala and looming impeachment. Onto the scene comes gerald ford, eager consumer. You have a night and day change. Reset sensitivity, replace hostility. Flowenry kissingers diminishes. This goes back to the time when ford was Vice President. Healing had some working intelligence of cia products, including the pdb, because he was introduced to them when bill colby gave him a tour of cd cia headquarters. He showed it to him, and he said, i want to see this if i become president. Of course, he becomes president , and he says, i want a Daily Briefing. I want the pdb front and center. I want one of your people in my oval office talking to me about the document, having that conversation. Kissinger was not too thrilled about this idea, but he remembered who he works for. Ford said we are going to have the briefing whether you like it or not. Would you find here is an interesting change in the whole atmosphere and process. Nowadays and for many years in the past, including when i started as an analyst over a this wasentury ago, the beall, endall of the agency. Hundreds of people every day would get constantly strong up about putting something in the pdb, responding to president ial again seven it all days a week with one exception not done on sundays. This is so different from what it was back then. When jfk would get the pickle in the morning, maybe look at it, stuff it in his coat pocket, pick it up during the day, glanced through it johnson similarly, you see him reading to his grandchild for bed, it is a very, very different atmosphere. What you suddenly see here with isward is this with ford this tempo change. The rethink at the white house, he is a daily communication with the situation room. He goes to the situation room, tips them off with what the president was interested in so they can watch that over the cia 24 hours and inform the when he is picking up. Meanwhile, cia is taking the tasking to the white house, analysts are getting strong up about it, feeling the book, and it goes back to the white house in this symbiotic relationship. This is unprecedented in the history of the pdb, and is what seated cia likes, because it is Immediate Response to the premier president ial product. As you look to the product, you see the format of the ford book changes a bit. It retains the legal size, but after the initial, there are longer essays, events you may not have been familiar with. It does include explanatory. Nnexes and longer essays it is end in november 1975 when, with the campaign coming up for 1976, the white house staff, now brumfield and cheney, step up on intelligence and winning the election. So they say you should cut back on the Daily Briefing, get the book delivered by brent scowcroft, the person who replaced kissinger as that role. His and her was still secretary of state. He talks to brent about it, he will get back with anything to say, feedback. The dci has not involved. Colby stayed out as well as dci bush, when he becomes dci 1976. This is not good to the agency. We are ultimately dissatisfied with it, but we work for the president , and we have to go by these preferences in this process. But you can see the excellent essay in the back of the book, there is no substitute for direct access. Indirect filtered by others. He will inform and, are you sure. I will turn it over to the subsequent experts, who talked about the content of the pdb itself. John helgeson writes, in a great book, getting to know the president , it would not be until george bush himself within the oval office he is dci at the time, establishes with the a relationship as fruitful as the one during the first half of the ford presidency. Please look through the documents. They are fascinating. Look for them as signals of relationship between cia and the white house, which is one of the most important relationships inside the u. S. Government. I will turn it over to my colleagues now, thank you. Thank you, david. [applause] next is erinrton mahanta, historian of the secretary of defense. Erin good afternoon. I am honored to join this distinguished panel of historians. Provided an excellent overview of how the pdb worked under nixon and ford. In my time, i would like to insightspiration and with the pdb used in intelligence generated in the department of defense with the Nixon Administration. Defenseer secretary of was there all four years during nixons first term. He was only one of four recipients of the pdb outside of the white house. A career would arrive each morning to deliver the current pdb and pick up the previous days edition. His senior military assistant, Lieutenant General rober