I didn't tell you we were going to talk about this. No.

Uh, so if, if it was, if there were some particularly sensitive or it was a particularly rocky session for some reason, so by this time, you know, Jamie Missick was the DDI. And of course, I would see her first just in her office. And I would tell her and say, here's what happened. Right. And, you know, we'd sort of step through what occurred. And then, you know, I would give a version of that to the bigger group so they could get the sense that maybe something didn't work like it should. Yeah. But I was cautious because it's those few people in that room and you don't want that sort of spread everywhere. Right. So there were things that would just only tell her. And then occasionally, and you probably had this experience too, something didn't go particularly well and George Tenet would look at you and say you go tell jamie missick right she works for you not me

exactly exactly um yeah i took i did the same thing with jamie you know even when she was deputy i would i would you know give her the feedback and then i would take my guidance from her right as to how candid to be with the office directors. Um, I was much more careful on their policy discussion than I was on the way they reacted to pieces. Right. Um, because greater risk, right. Of that policy discussion leaking somehow, then quite frankly, you know, whether he liked or didn't like a piece. Right. Um, so I was very careful with the policy discussion, but I ultimately left that up to her as well. Yeah, same. And then you would have a conversation. Once you gave the feedback, you'd have a conversation about the pieces for the next day. Right. Right. How did that work? You know,

that's interesting because, you know, so this is the real value, I think, in having a sort of a line officer as the briefer, because you can come back and do all these things. I mean, if it's just the director in the room or just the DNI in the room, she may have time to do that. But you know how the day goes. You know, they typically don't. But being able to have that time to sort of say, well, you know, I know you want to write this piece on Brazil, but, you know, there's some other issues here that probably, you know, might supersede.

Here's where you're going in that. Here's where you say you're going in the article on Brazil. Here's what his questions are. Here's what his questions will be. Right. Because we've had that we had that conversation last week. So it's incredibly valuable. Yeah.

It's incredibly valuable. And I think you can take pieces that are in the ballpark and get them much more precise. Yeah. Right. Now, one thing that I really admired about Jamie Missick, a lot of things I admired about Jamie, but one of the things that she was particularly good at, she would often pick something for, a piece that I'd be like, why are we doing that? And it would be a home run every time. Yeah, absolutely right. Right? A good sense. Yeah.

And I thought, at the time, I thought she was trying to highlight the work of the directorate, right? And I was wrong, right? She was actually, had her finger on the president's pulse. Yeah. You know, maybe because she attended deputies meetings, maybe she just got a good understanding of him or just good understanding of the issues. But yeah, no, she was almost always right with those pieces.

So following that, let me ask you a question. Yeah. I typically talk to the authors. I'm sure you did too. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, and that could be a great conversation or it could be a, you know, if it didn't work for some reason or another, again, not to like or dislike, but, uh, you know, I found that to be super valuable. And even, you know, the, hey, this piece didn't work, and let's have a talk about why it may not have worked. Yeah. You know, I found a very, you know, no one likes to hear that, but I found a very receptive audience.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. And likewise, after this meeting back at the agency where you give feedback and talk about the next day's book, you would often meet with authors who had a piece the next day or a piece coming in the next few days. Right. And they would want to get your take on what do you think he's interested in? Where do you think his mind is? Where's the policy arc, you know, in your view? So those conversations were incredibly valuable, too.

Yeah. You know, just for our listeners, if you were an author of a piece that was going to run, let's say, tomorrow, even though Michael and I would get in it, I didn't ask you what time you got in. Did

you get in at the same time? Before 9-11, I got up at 3 to get in at 4. After 9-11, I got up at 11.30 to get in at 12.30. What time did you get in?

Yeah, 1 o'clock. 1 o'clock. Because there's just so much to go through. Yeah. I couldn't. But the authors typically also come in very early that morning in many cases. Yes. So they would sort of show up at, I don't know, 3 or 4 in the morning to do pre-briefs to see if you had any questions, see what they could answer, which again was invaluable because you became smart about a lot of stuff pretty quickly. Yeah.

That was one of the nice things about the job was being up on all of these issues and being able to talk about all of these really interesting and important issues. That was fun. So we talked a little bit, Andy, about why these briefings are important to the intelligence community's ability to deliver, you know, a higher quality product. Why is this important to the president, do you think? It's kind of obvious, but not obvious at the same time.

Yeah. Look, I, you know, the intelligence is sort of this very thin, you know, layer of special material that, that I think maybe it's, maybe it's better to describe it as a lens that helps you make, make sense of sometimes a cloudy picture. And so, you know, a president who's getting these briefings, whether they agree or not, realizes that there are multiple views on, you know, maybe he disagrees or she disagrees with what you have. But I think in most cases, they will at least appreciate the argument and look at it from a perspective of, okay, maybe there's more than one way to consider this. Yeah. And now there are some issues where there is no, let's call it, open source because of what the issue is. And the only information on that particular issue, even today, I think, is through clandestine means. For sure. Right? For sure. But today there's so much available more broadly, but I think what we would do in the Oval Office gives the president that little bit of a leg up. Oftentimes he would read something and he would say to me, well, I just talked to this person and that's not what he said. And so you're like, okay, well, maybe he was telling you what you want to hear. So it gives him almost a sixth sense about things.

Yeah. You know, it helps frame their view of the world. Yeah. It helps frame the context in which they make policy decisions. So it's hugely impactful, which creates this sense of responsibility, right, on the part of the organization, you know, the IC, CIA, and on you as a briefer, right, not to screw up. You know, I was his daily intelligence briefer the first year of his presidency, and I was the head of analysis at CIA the last year of his presidency. And I saw two different benefits to him in that first year and that last year. In the first year, you know, he did not know a lot about foreign policy. He would be the first person to tell you that and so we were actually educating him um and and you know sometimes a portion of that book in that first year was educating him on a particular issue i remember a piece on al-qaeda training camps and it was really here's how they work all right here's how many there are it was it was you know kind of a primer on al-qaeda training camps in afghanistan the last year so so so we were really teaching him that last year i think he would tell you that um he saw the briefings as testing what he already knew and as testing what other people were telling him, including the foreign leaders he would talk to. So he saw it as an important input, not the only one, right, but as an important input in how to think about everything else he was hearing. So I think two different values to him at two different times during his presidency, I think.

Well, and as you just sort of said, it's much harder to, uh, put stuff in front of a president that's been in office for seven years, six years, you know, going on, you know, eight, then it is, you

know,

you know, year one. Yeah. Right. Because you're, you're going through a lot of new stuff. Right.

Right. Right. And they've developed relationships with other leaders, right? Sure. And they have their views, yeah. They have their own sources of information, for sure. Toughest day, Andy. We're going to finish here with the toughest day and your fondest memory. Toughest day.

You know, while it wasn't a single day, the toughest, you know, maybe it was a few weeks, was the no

WMD in Iraq discussion.

So this is after we came

to the conclusion that there was none.

Yeah. Yeah. And that was, you know, you felt like the organization had let him down. Yeah. Right. And as the Senate report points out, there's errors that were made and, you know, things that happened that shouldn't have happened for a variety of reasons. But you really felt like, okay, we let

him down. One of the consequences of the fact that he listened to us very closely is that when we make a mistake, it really matters. Right.

So that was a difficult period. I never looked at, I never, he never took it up on any of us personally. Yeah.

Right.

Which, you know, it's like your parents saying they're disappointed in you. You're like, okay, that's worse than, you know, just yell at me. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. You know. And you have that way of motivating people too, right? Right. Absolutely. Yeah. So that was a rough time. Yeah. My toughest day was 9-11 for obvious reasons, you know, both intellectually and emotionally, you know, me as well as him, I think. So that was by far the toughest day. My fondest memory, my fondest memory was when it was not only him you were briefing, but his dad. you know there's probably i don't know five six seven times during my year where where bush 41 would join us um and to be two presidents sitting there and two presidents who understood intelligence and were interested in intelligence and asked questions and um and his dad is obviously a very special person. Those are my fondest memories.

Yeah. So, you know, I

would

have said that one too. I think the other one is it was the last holiday party that we attended. He got all of us together and we had that picture taken. And he was so nice about, you know, I think he said, this is like taking a graduate class in foreign affairs or something like that. And he was very complimentary about us and the work that the organization did and put in front of him. So it just reinforced how important this was to him. Certainly he didn't have to say any of that, right? But he did.