The President's Exclusive Access to Sensitive Intelligence
By Mel Goodman t r u t h o u t Perspective
November 2005
President Bush, in defense of his decision to use force in Iraq, contends that the Congress supported the decision and that it had access to the same intelligence available to the White House. Not true!
The president and his key advisers, usually about five or six principals, receive the CIA's "President's Daily Brief" (PDB) five or six times a week. The PDB contains sensitive intelligence, including raw intelligence, that is not seen anywhere else in the policy community or on Capitol Hill. Most of this intelligence is of the compartmented variety that isn't even available to intelligence analysts working on a particular problem. In addition to the PDB, the briefer usually brings additional intelligence reporting that would be of special interest to the president or the secretaries of state or defense. Again, these items are highly classified and not available to the general community...http://tinyurl.com/ayvj8
*