07 November 2008

You'd think they'd buy bigger vehicles

The New York Daily News has an article by James Meek about the start of the Obama presidency:
President-elect Barack Obama was briefed Thursday on America's deepest, darkest secrets, just as the Bush White House warned that the U.S. faces a "heightened period" of danger during the transition.
The outgoing President's spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said there are no specific plots, but officials remain "very concerned. We do know that this is just a heightened period of concern," she said.
Obama was whisked into the FBI's Chicago field office to get an 'expanded access' briefing by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, sources said.
FBI field offices are equipped with eavesdropping-proof chambers called SCIFs, or Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facilities, where Obama can get the same secret briefing President Bush receives every day. While Obama probably won't be given nuclear missile launch codes until 20 January, when he's sworn into office, McConnell and his team from the nation's spy agencies gave him a laundry list of foreign threats and details about the National Security Agency's secret surveillance programs.
"He'll get a rundown on countries around the world," said a counterterrorism official who has helped prepare the 'crown jewel' of American intelligence: the President's Daily Briefing book, known as the PDB.
"It's overwhelming what he'll be hit with," the source added, referring to the daily "threat matrix".
It's a sure bet he'll learn where Osama Bin Laden may be hiding and what is being done to kill him and other Al Qaeda leaders. But Iraq and Afghanistan will top the agenda. Nuclear counterproliferation in Russia, China, North Korea and Iran will also be explained to Obama. He'll hear about classified operations in those countries and against terrorists in hot spots like Syria, North Africa and Pakistan - where at least 20 CIA missile strikes by unmanned drones have targeted the Taliban and al-Qaeda in a covert offensive since August.
Bush's briefings typically begin with "an overnight news report" on events public and clandestine, another official said. Craig Schmall, a CIA officer who briefed Vice President Cheney six days a week during 2003, testified last year the briefing book consists of a "series of analytic reports", and that items of special interest are tabbed. Cheney would keep the book for one day before placing it in a "burn bag" and returning it to the briefer, Schmall testified.
U.S. intelligence officials say every "customer" tailors their daily briefing, which "is a dialogue". Bush, for example, likes to see maps of countries he's briefed on and photos of people he's told about, one source said. Cheney likes detailed answers to questions he poses and goes "deep in the weeds", sources say.
Rico says this is when the grey hair starts...

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