Robert Greenway
The Problem
Each day, the United States government devotes enormous resources—money, time, personnel hours, information technology infrastructure—and risk to produce one product: the President’s Daily Brief (PDB).REF The PDB should provide the President of the United States with strategic foreign intelligence on issues that (1) already require presidential decisions; (2) will cause escalation in a situation to the point at which it requires a presidential decision; and/or (3) impact existing or future policies, negotiations, or initiatives.
Because the audience for the PDB has expanded beyond the President, it is natural that access to the PDB or its various modified versions is a mark of status among senior Administration personnel. Teams of briefers, analysts, editors, production designers, and others form part of the extensive process that produces this product each day. Because of the status of this flagship product, analysts, national intelligence “managers,” and other mandarins within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) ecosystemREF vie for the inclusion of certain articles and fight over lengths, placements, and what content should be contained within each article and within the PDB as a whole. “Surprise, when it happens to a government,¨ in the words of Thomas Sehelling,” is likely to be a complicated, diffuse, bureaucratic thing. It includes neglect of responsibility but also responsibility so poorly defined or so ambiguously delegated that action gets lost.”REF
The competition for inclusion in the PDB and related products—and for the access that goes with it—has warped the incentive structure, priorities, and value judgments of the Intelligence Community (IC), particularly the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), whose staff still dominates production of the PDB despite not being the intended sole producer; the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI); and related national-level offices. Among ODNI and CIA analysts, placement of PDB articles is a metric for success and promotion; » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/reforming-the-presidents-daily-brief-and-restoring-accountability-the-presentation