Joe Biden got his first look as president-elect on Monday in the President’s Daily Summary, a top-secret summary of American intelligence and world events, a document former first lady Michelle Obama has called “The Book of Death, Destruction. and horrible things. ” Biden has already set his eyes on different versions of the so-called PDB, which is tailored to the way each president likes to absorb information.
More than a decade ago, Biden read President George W. Bush’s PDB during Biden’s transition to the vice presidency. After that, he read President Barack Obama’s PDB for eight years. Now, after a four-year hiatus, he’s reading President Donald Trump’s PDB.
“Whistleblowers will almost certainly ask Biden what he prefers in terms of format and style,” said David Priess, author of “The President’s Book of Secrets,” a PDB story.
“At the very least, they see what seems to resonate the most with him, so that when they make the book their book, they can adapt it to him.” Obama’s PDB was a 10-15 page document tucked into a leather folder, which he found waiting for him at the breakfast table. Later in his presidency, he enjoyed reading the top-secret intelligence report on a secure iPad.
“Michelle called it” The Book of Death, Destruction and Horrible Things, “Obama wrote in his recently published book,” A Promised Land. “” On any given day, you could read about terrorist cells in Somalia or riots in Iraq. or the fact that the Chinese or Russians were developing new weapons systems, “Obama wrote.” Almost always, potential terrorist plots, no matter how vague, poorly sourced or inaccessible, were mentioned, a form of due diligence by the intelligence community, aimed at avoiding the kind of guesswork that had occurred after 9/11. ” Between now and Inauguration Day, Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will read the PDB prepared for Trump, who had delayed access to it for Biden and Harris while he challenged the election result.
Trump, who prefers to absorb information visually, likes short texts and graphics.
“Trump himself said during his campaign and during the transition in 2016 that he did not like to read long documents, that he preferred bullets,” said Priess, who has not seen any of Trump’s PDBs. “You probably have charts, tables, graphs, things like that. It’s not the parody that people make that it’s like a cartoon book … but something that’s more visual. But we don’t know for sure. ”The written report, which Trump does not always read, is often followed by a verbal report with an intelligence official, although those oral reports were stopped at least for a time in October. Priess said no He knew why they stopped or if they had been resumed, but that they stopped at a time when Trump was spending much of his time campaigning.
Before Trump authorized Biden to get the PDB as president-elect, Biden received some intelligence briefings as a candidate. But they were more general and did not include the main secrets of the nation.
The other thing a president-elect gets is a briefing “on the covert actions of the CIA,” former acting CIA Director Mike Morell said at an event hosted by the Washington-based Center for Presidential Transition. “It is important that the president-elect receives this report … because on inauguration day, these covert actions will become those of the new president.” In 1961, President John F Kennedy read his first report while sitting on a diving board in a swimming pool in his retirement in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. President Lyndon Johnson liked to read his report in the afternoon. President Richard Nixon relied on his national security adviser Henry Kissinger to review the reports and tell him what he thought the president should know.
As the laborious recount of the ballots dragged on in 2000, President Bill Clinton decided that then-Governor George W. Bush should have access to his PDB should he be the winner. Bush became the first incoming president to read it before he was president-elect.
Biden is receiving the PDB later than usual due to Trump’s ongoing protest over the election results. Trump approved briefings for Biden last Tuesday, a day after his administration approved the formal transition process to his successor.
When Biden enters the Oval Office, he will inherit nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran, change the political dynamics in the Middle East, decrease the US presence in Afghanistan, and increase competition from China.
Biden had access to the PDB in Wilmington, Delaware. Harris met him in a secure room at the Commerce Department, where the presidential transition offices are located.
Even Biden, who has decades of foreign policy experience, could fall victim to an old political adage that no matter how informed you think you are, you could learn the opposite from the AP.
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden wrote in his book that the revelations and new insights found at the PDB are known as “aw s —” moments. As in: “Oh shit,” he wrote, “I wish we hadn’t said that during that campaign stop in Buffalo.”
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