The President's Daily Brief (PDB), is a top-secret document produced daily each morning for the President. The PDB is reviewed by a select number of senior officials each approved by the President. The PDB is provided to the president-elect between election day and inauguration.

The PDB is produced by the Director of National Intelligence and involves fusing intelligence from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and any of the other 17 Intelligence Community members.

The PDB is intended to provide the President with new intelligence warranting attention and analysis of sensitive international situations. The prototype of the PDB was termed the President's Intelligence Check List (PICL); the first was produced by CIA officer Richard Lehman at

the direction of Huntington D. Sheldon on June 17, 1961 for John F. Kennedy. The production and coordination of the PDB was a CIA responsibility and other members of the IC reviewed articles (the "coordination" process) and submitted articles for inclusion (I did for a decade).

While the name of the PDB implies exclusivity, it has historically been briefed to other senior officials. The distribution varies as each president selects the officials who may read the PDB, minimally, the secretaries of state and defense, and the national security advisor.

Rarely (I’ve inputed two), the PDB has been "For the President's Eyes Only," with further dissemination of the information restricted. Production of the PDB is associated with another publication known as the National Intelligence Daily (NID). See: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol20no1/html/v20i1a03p_0011.htm

The PDB is an all-source intelligence product summarized from all collecting agencies. The Washington noted a leaked document indicated the PRISM SIGAD (US-984) run by the NSA is "the number one source of raw intelligence used for NSA analytic reports."

The Post reported the PDB cited PRISM data as a source in 1,477 items in the 2012 calendar year. Declassified documents show as of January 2001 over 60% of material in the PDB was sourced from signals intelligence (SIGINT). According to the National Security Archive, the

percentage of SIGINT-sourced material has likely increased since then. Former CIA director George Tenet considered the PDB so sensitive he told the National Archives and Records Administration in July 2000 no PDB could be released for publication "no matter how old or

“historically significant it may be." During a briefing on May 21, 2002, Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary, characterized the PDB as "the most highly sensitized classified document in the government." On September 16, 2015, CIA director John Brennan, ironically,

spoke at the LBJ Presidential Library, at the public release of a total of 2,500 daily briefs and intelligence checklists from the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson presidencies. The release was a reversal of the government's previous stance in legal briefs attempting to keep

the PDB indefinitely classified. On August 24, 2016, the CIA released a further 2,500 briefs from the Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford presidencies at a symposium held at the Nixon Presidential Library. The PDB was scrutinized by news media during testimony to the 9/11 Commission,

which was convened during 2004 to analyze the September 11, 2001 attacks. On April 8, 2004, after a testimony by then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, the commission renewed calls for the declassification of a PDB from August 6, 2001, entitled, “Bin Ladin Determined

“To Strike in US.” Two days later, the White House complied and released the document with redaction. The IC assessed an estimated Bin Laden attack, not on the US, had occurred on September 9, 2001, when Ahmad Shah Massoud, the United Islamic Front leader in Afghanistan, was

assassinated by the Taliban.That assessment proved catastrophically shortsighted two days later. The IC “estimates,” not “concludes. See: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1138978810819297280.html.

Recently, a leak purports President Trump was briefed in one of 1,333 PDBs he read the Russians offered bounties to the Taliban to kill US personnel. I highly doubt the report. The IC uses intelligence fusion cells to provide the military defense forces with analyzed or vetted

all-source information driving effective force protection decisions and operations in CONUS and Combatant Commands. If a report was received the Russians offered or paid bounties on any or all of the 63 US personnel killed in Afghanistan since January 20, 2017 (775 KIA occurred

during the same time during under President Obama) USCENTCOM’s Fusion Cell would receive the raw “bounty offer” intelligence from DIA, then fuse the report by analyzing & vetting all-source Intelligence and then recommend to Commander USCENTCOM measures negating bounty killings.

Bounties are a tactical battalion, not presidential, level of concern. The facts show 775 US personnel were killed under Obama compared to 63 personnel were KIA under Trump for the same period. Of the total 838 KIA, how many were Russian paid bounty killings?

To swell the number of terrorist prisoners, the US offered cash bounties () for members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. In November 2001, Donald Rumsfeld said the leaflets are “dropping like snowflakes in December in Chicago ... wealth and
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1217&context=faculty_scholarship

power beyond your dreams ... enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life.” War is a nasty game played in murky shadows with loose rules. Where else can a US military sniper be pardoned for sniping little girls “for sport?”

So, what if Russia matched our offer. So what if the President knew?

What did Obama, with a 12.3 times higher KIA rate than Trump, do to stop Russian bounties?

War is hate. Stop trying to make it nice. It’s not.

cc: @STUinSD

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