What Does the President Need to Know?
The CIA has released 2,500 top secret documents from the 鈥60s. In this edition of The Inquiry we explore the relationship between the intelligence, the advisors and the president.
The CIA has just released 2,500 top secret presidential briefings from the 1960s. The President鈥檚 Daily Brief 鈥 or PDB 鈥 is the US intelligence agencies鈥 best assessment of global threats, delivered directly to the president every morning. The CIA鈥檚 director, John Brennan, has described the PDB as 鈥渁mong the most sensitive and classified documents in all of our government鈥.
The decision to release some PDBs, even documents relating to events many decades ago, was not taken lightly. And, the briefings highlight an almost impossible dilemma 鈥 one still faced today by every Director of National Intelligence - what should, and should not, be said? The president cannot absorb everything - there has to be a choice. We explore the relationship between the intelligence, the advisers and the president. What does the president need to know?
(Photo: President Lyndon B. Johnson (seated, foreground) working with (background L-R): Marvin Watson, J. Edgar Hoover, Sec. Robert McNamara, Gen. Harold Johnson, Joe Califano, Sec. of the Army Stanley Resor. Credit: LBJ Library)
Last on
More episodes
Previous
Broadcasts
- Tue 6 Oct 2015 02:06GMT91热爆 World Service Online & UK DAB/Freeview only
- Tue 6 Oct 2015 03:06GMT91热爆 World Service East Asia & South Asia only
- Tue 6 Oct 2015 04:06GMT91热爆 World Service Americas and the Caribbean
- Tue 6 Oct 2015 05:06GMT91热爆 World Service Australasia
- Tue 6 Oct 2015 06:06GMT91热爆 World Service East and Southern Africa
- Tue 6 Oct 2015 12:06GMT91热爆 World Service except Americas and the Caribbean & Australasia
- Tue 6 Oct 2015 13:06GMT91热爆 World Service Australasia
- Tue 6 Oct 2015 16:06GMT91热爆 World Service except Online, East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa
- Tue 6 Oct 2015 21:06GMT91热爆 World Service
- Sat 10 Oct 2015 23:06GMT91热爆 World Service
- Sun 11 Oct 2015 02:06GMT91热爆 World Service Americas and the Caribbean
- Sun 11 Oct 2015 04:06GMT91热爆 World Service except Americas and the Caribbean
- Sun 11 Oct 2015 13:06GMT91热爆 World Service except East and Southern Africa
Featured in...
American Presidents—The Documentary
An assassination, an impeachment and peacemaking: episodes from US presidential history
Podcast
-
The Inquiry
Getting beyond the headlines to explore the forces and ideas shaping the world