President's Daily Brief

[4] A prototype of the PDB termed the President's Intelligence Check List (PICL)[5] was first produced by CIA officer Richard Lehman at the direction of Huntington D. Sheldon on June 17, 1961 for John F.

[8] The PDB is intended to provide the president with new intelligence warranting attention and analysis of sensitive international situations.

The distribution list has varied over time but has always or almost always included the vice president, secretaries of State and Defense and the national security advisor.

[12] Declassified documents show that as of January 2001 over 60% of material in the PDB was sourced from signals intelligence (SIGINT).

[13] Former CIA director George Tenet considered the PDB so sensitive that during July 2000 he indicated to the National Archives and Records Administration that none of them could be released for publication "no matter how old or historically significant it may be.

"[14] During a briefing on May 21, 2002, Ari Fleischer, former White House Press Secretary, characterized the PDB as "the most highly sensitized classified document in the government.

[16][17] The release was a reversal of the government's previous stance in legal briefs attempting to keep the PDB indefinitely classified.

On April 8, 2004, after testimony by then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, the commission renewed calls for the declassification of a PDB from August 6, 2001, entitled Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US.