CIA to release declassified President’s Daily Brief articles

Previously classified President’s Daily Brief (PDB) articles from the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations produced by CIA are scheduled to be released on Wednesday, September 16 at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, at a public symposium entitled The President’s Daily Brief: Delivering Intelligence to the First Customer. The event will be live streamed by the LBJ Library via their website http://www.lbjlibrary.org/events/cia-sept16/ .

CIA Director John Brennan will present the event’s keynote speech and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper will deliver closing remarks. In addition, the event will feature a panel discussion and remarks by other leaders from the academic, archivist, and intelligence communities, including William McRaven, Chancellor of the University of Texas System, former CIA Director Porter Goss, former CIA Deputy Director Bobby Inman, and others.

The President’s Daily Brief (PDB) contains intelligence analysis on key national security issues for the President and other senior policymakers. Only the President, the Vice President, and a select group of officials designated by the President receive the briefing, which represents the Intelligence Community’s best insights on issues the President must confront when dealing with threats as well as opportunities related to our national security.

This public release highlights the role of the PDB in foreign and national security policy making. This collection includes the President’s Intelligence Checklists (PICLs) — which preceded the PDB — published from June 1961 to November 1964, and the PDBs published from December 1964 through the end of President Johnson’s term in January 1969. These documents offer insight on intelligence that informed presidential decisions during critical historical events such as: the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and Vietnam.

The documents will be posted on the CIA website the day of the symposium athttp://www.foia.cia.gov. This collection was assembled as part of the CIA’s Historical Review Program, which identifies, reviews, and declassifies documents on historically significant events or topics. Previous releases can be viewed at: http://www.foia.cia.gov/historical-collections.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Members of the public and press who wish to attend this event must register in advance with the LBJ Presidential Library at http://www.lbjlibrary.org/events/cia-sept16. Those who have not registered in advance will not be admitted.

Source: CIA