Review of
Instaread Summary of The President’s Book of Secrets The Untold Story of Intelligence
Briefings to America’s Presidents from Kennedy to Obama by David Priess
Five out of five stars
This summary
could function as a stand-alone and sufficient description of the history of
the series of documents known as the President’s Daily Brief (PDB). It is the “paper”
given to the president and a few other highly ranked government officials and
summarizes the current international security situation.
When Franklin
Roosevelt died in office and Harry Truman assumed the presidency, Truman was
largely uninformed over some of the major actions of the government. For
example, Truman knew nothing about the Manhattan Project that was developing
nuclear weapons. In order to recover from this deficiency, Truman requested
daily briefings that evolved over time and presidents to the PDB. John Kennedy
was the first president where the act was formalized into what it is today.
Priess was a
CIA and PDB officer during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, so
he has first-person insight into the process. Due to the extremely sensitive
nature of the material, no secrets are revealed in the book, the primary new
information is how the process has evolved over time and was adapted for each
individual president.
This summary
contains enough information so that many people will read it and conclude that
they now know all they want to know about the PDB. I found it interesting,
illuminating and sufficient.
This book was made available for free for review
purposes.
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