How Trump is (or isn’t) briefed

Were Russia bounty reports in daily digest?

WASHINGTON – A highly classified dossier outlining the most urgent and credible national security threats of the day is suddenly in the spotlight.

The president’s daily intelligence brief, or PDB, is at the center of a firestorm over reports that Russia offered bounties to Taliban militants to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan.

White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said Monday that President Donald Trump was not “personally briefed” on the alleged Russian operation.

McEnany would not say whether the information was relayed to Trump in his daily written intelligence briefing. On Tuesday, McEnany disputed assertions that Trump doesn’t read his daily briefings.

She said there are disagreements among U.S. intelligence officials about the credibility of the Russian bounty reports.

Brief customized for president

According to the CIA, the presidential daily brief has been presented to every president since Feb. 15, 1946, when Harry Truman received what was then known as “the Daily Summary,” chockfull of secret warnings and classified insights about the most urgent threats against the United States.

The format is customized to each president – to match reading preferences and the way information is absorbed.

“Some presidents prefer to have it all told to them, some prefer to read it,” said Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., a former CIA officer. “It’s really an issue of how does the consumer – in this case the president – get the information that’s necessary.”

Presidents are assigned a briefer who becomes accustomed to the desired format and can anticipate what questions the commander in chief might ask.

To produce the PDB, intelligence officials work through the night to sift through a constantly churning stream of information and determine what the president needs to know.

“Then the PDB briefers come in in the very wee hours of the morning to get themselves up to speed on what’s in it” and prepare themselves to present it to the president, said Carol Rollie Flynn, a 30-year CIA veteran. The PDB also usually goes to the president’s top national security advisers, such as his secretaries of defense and state.

President George W. Bush took the printed copy, then had his briefer walk him through it, Flynn said.

“He liked to have his full team there, so it was a real conversation every day,” said Flynn, who is with the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

In 2014, intelligence officials