The Counter-deception Blog

USA Today August 25, 2005 Pg.  1

Bush's Daily Intel Briefing Revamped

Flaws leading to faulty WMD reports addressed

By John Diamond and Judy Keen, USA Today

WASHINGTON — The classified intelligence briefings President Bush gets daily have been revamped to include divergent opinions from more sources, incorporate the latest terrorism threats and reduce the role of the CIA.

After the Sept. 11 attacks and the start of the Iraq war, the briefs were criticized for excluding other agencies' views and for overdramatizing Iraq's weapons programs.

A presidential commission that examined flawed intelligence recommended the changes in March.  In its report, the so-called WMD Commission said the brief “often failed to explain, or even signal, the uncertainties underlying” its conclusions.  The commission said alternate views should be included “to the greatest extent feasible.”

The morning update, called the President's Daily Brief, was once written and delivered by the CIA.  The new one includes reports by analysts from the nation's 15 intelligence agencies — eight of them controlled by the Pentagon — and is delivered by John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, or his deputy, Gen.  Michael Hayden.  “This is a product that each day is more and more created by the intelligence community as a community,” Hayden said in late June.

Some of the key changes, according to two intelligence officials with direct knowledge of the preparation and contents of the brief:

• The brief can be a dozen to 30 pages in length and amounts to a classified newspaper.  It includes articles written by analysts with expertise in regions or subject areas such as terrorism or weapons proliferation.  The WMD Commission criticized the CIA for producing a document with “snappy” headlines whose “brevity leaves little room for doubts or nuance.”

• Where there are disagreements among intelligence analysts, they are clearly pointed out.  The WMD Commission said alternate views should be included.  Disagreements were not sufficiently aired in presidential briefs, the commission found.

• The brief includes information from analysts at any U.S. intelligence agency.  Until recently, all the articles were produced by the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence.  The WMD Commission said the old report “left an impression of many corroborating reports where in fact there were few sources.”

• The daily report on terrorism threats, which used to be given to the president separately, is now part of his daily brief.

The intelligence officials, who are not authorized to talk on the record, would not say when the changes took effect.

“I hope the product is being sharpened from what we saw,” said Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, which examined some presidential briefs.  “We saw a lot of things that were unsubstantiated, that were almost in the rumor category.”

Until this year, the CIA director often attended the daily briefing for the president along with a senior intelligence analyst.  It was valuable access for the CIA chief, affording him more frequent contact with the president than just about anyone outside the president's immediate White House staff.

That responsibility now belongs to Negroponte, the first director of national intelligence, a post created by Congress last year.

Hayden testified to a House panel last month that CIA Director Porter Goss no longer attends unless his input is required.  “Unless you've got a question of that nature, ours is the only intelligence voice in the meeting,” Hayden said.