Morning White House Intel Briefings; “Not What I Signed Up For”

The job of being the chief executive of the intelligence bureaucracy, which also includes the daily White House intelligence briefings, is a dual-hatted role that can challenge even the most hard-working and ambitious DNI. This, according to a recent article in GovtTech (taken from the National Journal), which stated that the first two directors of National Intelligence, John Negroponte and Mike McConnell, did not like doing both jobs; in fact, it exhausted them.

The article suggests — in an imaginary conversation — that both Negroponte and McConnell would say to each other: “This is not what I signed up for.”

Now, back during he Clinton administration, President Clinton delegated the daily briefing task to a senior but lower level CIA official, which freed up the agency director to focus on other business. According to the editorial:

“Many intelligence experts think Obama should return to that model. McConnell will hand his successor a trove of initiatives. And the DNI is the intelligence community’s primary representative to Congress. He’ll have his plate full. Furthermore, the president already has a daily relationship with the intelligence community through his national security adviser, who is supposed to act as a White House conduit to the agencies.”

You may recall our recent post about Obama bumping up the number of days he will be briefed. Not it seems that Obama should have someone lower in the commands do the briefing? What do you all think?

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