PDB only a page and a half long.

[Robin Hood]

The leader of the most powerfull nation that the Earth has yet to see, gets a daily briefing that's only a page and a half long. What does that take to go through, 10-20 minutes.

BTW, THis PDB proves that Bush knew and when the New York times reported this sometime ago, And Senator CLinton brought it up on the Senate floor, do you remember how outraged the freepers and all the right wing media got over that? Well the Times and Hillary were right.

[DoYouEverWonder]

1. Supposedly the original PDB

was actually eleven pages long.

[Robin Hood]

2. If that's true,

Then that makes more sense. A page and a hlaf for Al Qaeda and 9 1/2 pages for Iraq.

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. I'd guess 2 or 3 pages on Iraq

but the bulk of it was the rest of the history lesson and the CIA recommendations for what action to take.

[ant]

7. no, that can't be right

CIA does not recommend policy. They would not include recommendations for what action to take, and I doubt it would include a history lesson. (Though given the audience, it probably should have.)

If you read the GWU page, it's clear that PDBs are often pretty short.

For instance:
The ten declassified PDBs contain such extraordinarily sensitive items as this one on Egypt: "Nasir, in a speech to the nation on Saturday, outlined a 'program of action' to bring about political reform. We doubt that it will amount to much." That's the whole item. Another supersensitive entry concerns the head of state of Indonesia: "Despite Sukarno's long-standing kidney ailment, for which he delays proper treatment, he has seemed quite chipper lately." Three lines of the item are blacked out since they refer to the sources of intelligence, perhaps Indonesian assets of the CIA, or communications intercepts, or maybe just the British ambassador.

[ant]

6. where'd you read that?

I didn't think PDBs were usually that long. My impression (from friends in the intel community) is that they're usually pretty short, but they may have just been talking about their individual contributions to an overall PDB. Maybe the Bin Laden portion of that PDB was only two pages and the rest dealt with other issues?

[DoYouEverWonder]

8. Whoever leaked the title also leaked

the length of the document.

It was original reported in the German press. Since they got the title right, I would guess the rest of their information was just as accurate.

If you want more info about the source of this info see this thread from last night in GD:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1388317

[Media_Lies_Daily]

9. Clinton's PDBs almost always ran 11-12 pages long because he had the...

...mental capacity to digest even the smallest details.

Junior's PDBs usually ran 1-2 pages...at least that's what we're being told...but the August 6, 2001, PDB was 11 pages long as reported in the German press.

[ant]

10. here we go

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2130-2002May23?language=printer

Under President Bill Clinton, the PDB ran around 12 pages and often included detailed analyses as well as new information that Clinton generally read before the briefing. Indeed, in the early days, he often had little use for the follow-up oral briefings offered by the CIA -- a trait that exacerbated tensions between the White House and Langley.

Under Bush, the PDB has become shorter, a seven-to-10-page document containing "more targeted hard intelligence" items, with few longer than a page, according to a former senior intelligence official who was involved in the process.

So it seems the two pages that were released about Bin Laden are probably one item in a PDB that talks about other issues as well. The pages released are probably not the entire PDB.

[mike_c]

3. bush has a short attention span....

eom

[Thor_MN]

5. They only got that far before the ADD resident started playing Nintendo.

.