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CIA Releases President's Daily Briefs in Commemoration of 9/11

• jauntywundrkind 23d ago
  Reminder that Trump famously doesn't take Daily Briefs (first term and now) and for a year with Gabbard, she was omitting huge swarths of info from what he did get. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/09/trump-intelligence-briefing-frequency-00338946 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/09/trump-intelligence-... https://www.npr.org/2016/12/13/505348507/what-exactly-is-the-presidents-daily-brief-and-why-is-it-important https://www.npr.org/2016/12/13/505348507/what-exactly-is-the... https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/tulsi-gabbard-reveals-little-intel-185327997.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/tulsi-gabbard-reveals-li...
  • boredatoms 23d ago
    Its harder to ignore reality if you’re being explicitly told about it each day
    • mandeepj 23d ago
      Alternate reality then?
    • cyberax 23d ago
      No, it's not, if you just forget what you were told.
      • SoftTalker 23d ago
        TBH, that was probably Biden, and Reagan at least toward the end of his second term. There really should be an upper age limit on federal offices.
        • tw04 23d ago
          TBH the president should primarily be relying on trusted, competent advisors that they’ve surrounded themselves with. They can’t possibly be experts in enough areas to make unilateral decisions. Which is probably why Biden didn’t attack Iran.
        • peebee67 21d ago
          You're idealising one government rule to stop other government stupidity. The fact is that enforcing that kind of thing is meant to be the electorate's job. Instead of howling these people out of office as the spent, bought-and-paid for geriatrics that they are, they keep electing them instead.
          • cindyllm 21d ago
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      • jauntywundrkind 19d ago
        Roy Cohen School of never hearing never believing anything you don't want to hear, making up what you want to believe in. And never ever ever reassessing or letting anyone else or any other fact impune on your perfect carefully maintained and manicured fantasy.
  • firefax 23d ago
    [flagged]
    • brumbelow 23d ago
      I have lots of questions but am sure you will not answer them.
      • firefax 23d ago
        [flagged]
        • cindyllm 23d ago
          [dead]
  • ck2 23d ago
    he doesn't read, he's literally Biff from Back to the Future also Roy Cohn taught him reality doesn't matter, just make up any lie and repeat it to the very end until that's all people will respond to now he's surrounded by people that only tell him what he wants to hear like his "human printer" with $45,000 "xmas gifts" imagine if there was an actual attack now he'd invade Canada, seriously, wouldn't matter who did it, he'd make up a reason and repeat it constantly until it's the only talking point notice how we're not talking about the Epstein Files anymore? SOB changed the topic enough times to make it slide out of the news
    • jimt1234 23d ago
      Trump is the undisputed champion of creating/influencing the narrative. The mainstream news these days (left and right-leaning) is really nothing more than an amplifier for his various social media accounts. There's so much scandal to this administration - from being named-checked throughout the Epstein files to the billions he and his family have made during this term, yet nothing happens. The media only talks about his latest, dumb-ass Tweets. Trump has tuned 'flood the zone' so well that he can literally do anything he wants without consequence.
    • s5300 23d ago
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  • Animats 23d ago
    The CIA has considered Fox News style reports as a form of the daily brief that Trump might be able to understand.[1] Trump does get regular briefs several times a day, by Natalie Harp. Her job is to find flattering press reports, print them out for Trump, and hand them to him.[2] She has a backpack with a battery-powered printer for this when away from the White House. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/gabbard-considering-ways-revamp-trumps-intelligence-briefing-rcna209805 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/gabbard-c... [2] archive.is/CFCQT
  • fooker 23d ago
    If only the tsar knew ...
  • deleted 23d ago
    [deleted]
• legitster 23d ago
  The thing missing from these briefs is the context. We're not seeing the hundreds or thousands of other daily reports that are mixed in and have to be acted on. It's easy to cherry pick after the fact. Case in point, just going off of the reports here it would have been hard to predict what happened. They were concerned about Bin Laden starting civil wars, taking embassies, launching a biological attack, cells in Europe, etc. And even their preliminary reports about a possible plane hijacking in the US presumed it would be a simple quid pro quo for prisoner releases. I'm worried this release is being thinly veiled as an attack on previous administrations. But it should be pointed out that the current administration eschews intelligence entirely and has no qualms about worsening the country's current security posture.
  • cyberge99 23d ago
    The PDBs are summaries intended for only the President.
    • upboundspiral 23d ago
      Intended only for the President means that only carefully crafted half truths to influence the desired result are present.
      • hunter-gatherer 23d ago
        Not true. The PDB comes from a lot of sources. They are hand picked but are often left pretty raw. I know this because I used to be a HUMINT collector in DIA. They are hand picked, but usually in the sense of "what briefs well". It ends up being more about yearly performance objectives and how it looks on a quad chart than anything agenda related
        • spdustin 23d ago
          Well... were, anyway.
        • Animats 22d ago
• edot 23d ago
  What’s the purpose of publishing these? Why now? Why redacted still? Interesting to read but … why bother?
  • dboreham 23d ago
    [flagged]
    • infamouscow 23d ago
      I don't understand this fascination with Epstein, maybe someone can tell me what I'm missing. It's pretty clear Epstein was in involved with intelligence agencies. Which ones, or if he was acting independent isn't interesting to me. The reality of the world is at a nation-state level, anything outside your borders is anarchy. Intelligence agencies take advantage of that—it why throughout human history the punishment for espionage has been a slow and painful death. Another reality of the world is the panopticon also applies to intelligence agencies, and sometimes they need financial institutions and other transnational corporations to look the other way on things, e.g., there's a lot of civilian ships in shipping lanes comprised entirely of paramilitary folks. Why would intelligence agencies risk uncovering the financial networks necessary to do their job, and why would they implicate many companies and individuals inside those companies for very serious crimes? From an anarchist perspective, the idea that a government can't allow certain companies and individuals managing significant geopolitical and economic interests to break the law is nonsensical. If a government passed a law that required everyone to starve, out of self preservation the government would simply allow everyone to break the law. The real world is no different. If you believe Epstein was some puppet-master of the ruling class for some other ambiguous evil person/group, what do you think you think is going to happen if that were to be made public? Imagine such revelations get 9/11-level media coverage. Do you honestly believe that the ruling class will miraculously step-aside?
      • simoncion 23d ago
        > If you believe Epstein was some puppet-master of the ruling class... Huh? The guy was a fixer for upper-crusters. Think "That sales guy who can -and is willing to- do anything for a client to close a big sale" times a million. The fascination is a combination of 1) How so very many of the "powerful class" went to him to get things. 2) How it's very hard to believe that few of those who went to him to get things weren't even a little bit aware that he could get you anything. 3) How this has gotten approximately zero airtime. There's also the fact that he died in prison. "Kill a guy who has dirt on everyone after he transitions to a position where he might decide to start spreading that dirt around." is a movie plot point, but it also makes a lot of sense to do if you're the sort of person who's willing to kill to keep yourself and your friends from going to jail for the rest of forever. [0] [0] ...and before you dismiss that as baseless conspiracy bait, consider both the fairly-well-substantiated rumors of world leaders like Putin killing those who become political rivals or threats, as well as the callous disregard for human life demonstrated by entering into and engaging in the Vietnam War (knowing what we know that they knew from the Pentagon Papers), Bush starting Gulf War II and the invasion of Afghanistan (and the protracted occupation of both), Trump starting the war in Iran, and many other poorly-justified (or unjustifiable) acts of war. I find it hard to believe that the sort of person who will kill hundreds, hundreds of thousands, or millions of people to enrich themselves and/or their allies will balk at having one man who has dirt on everyone of importance killed to prevent him from ever changing his mind about delivering said dirt.
• pazimzadeh 23d ago
  The absence of Iran in any of this is notable. Almost like there was no reason to include them in the 'Axis of Evil' at a time when the US was providing cover for them in the fight against Taliban.
  • dmix 23d ago
    Only if you ignore the 40+ years Iran has been funding jihadists and terrorist paramilitary groups. Including founding Hezbollah in 1982, the group who pioneered the VBIED car bomb tactic who along with Palestinian groups made plane and bus hijacking part of their brand, both of which Osama himself said heavily influenced Al-Qaeda. Iran also directly funded Shia terrorist groups in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. Al-Qaeda/ISIS were just the local Sunni variety, but with less state-backing and more decentralized.
    • pazimzadeh 23d ago
      Correct me if I'm wrong, but Hezbollah was created after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978, and Hezbollah was not involved in 9/11. By your logic, shouldn't we be enemies with Saudi Arabia and Israel, who have incubated and funded terrorists for much longer than Iran (80 years in the case of Israel)? 'Terror was justified' to establish Israel, Reuter, September 6, 1991 https://www.caymancompass.com/1991/09/06/terror-was-justified-to-establish-israel https://www.caymancompass.com/1991/09/06/terror-was-justifie...
      • deleted 23d ago
        [deleted]
      • pazimzadeh 23d ago
        Here is the comment you just deleted: Of course Saudis have their finger in it too, including pushing radical Wahhabism Islamism that also inspired Osama. Which is also currently one of the major reasons UAE/MBZ is in a proxy fight with Saudis because they think Saudi's continued support of Islamists destabilizes the region (which is true). US-wise, geopolitics aren't as simple there, since Saudi was always a way less blatant offender than Iran and Iran/Saudi both were left untouched because of their oil power. There's a reason neither Bush nor Obama attacked Iran despite having plenty of good reasons. Trump and Israel apparently saw an opportunity to finally take on Iran. But it was always extremely risky, as we've seen... Likewise it would be risky trying to interfere in Saudi politics, especially when they serve as a counterweight to Iran and their proxies. Enemy of my enemy etc. Same deal with Israel..Israel is a complex issue which I'd rather not get into right now. I'm curious why you'd rather not get into it about Israel. Do you not think Iran is a complex issue?
• jijji 23d ago
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• pbhjpbhj 23d ago
  >Under President Trump's leadership, CIA conducted the most thorough declassification effort—unprecedented in size and transparency Oh my, the CIA do comedy now. Seems more like: 'the president said we had to flood the zone with aliens and UFO shit because he was desperate to continue to break the law in order to hide the Trump-Epstein files; if you think the sexual deviancy and assaults he bragged about were bad ...'
• installiskeycon 23d ago
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• e584 22d ago
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• hn_submit 21d ago
  I believe that it's time, a quarter century after 9/11, to abolish the DHS, the department which was created pure out of spite towards the FBI and NSA. It's a service looking for a purpose and in doing so is trampling the rights of Americans and foreigners alike and coming up with crazier and crazier schemes to spend its huge budget. It's creation has also lead to an enormous duplication of work and infighting between the intelligence services.