On Friday I finished packing my office in the Pentagon, and on Saturday morning, I arrived at my new office at Liberty Crossing in McLean, Virginia, which everyone just calls LX, to find Brigadier General Linda R. Urrutia-Varhall, “General UV,” my senior military assistant at USD(I) and one of just two people I brought along from the Pentagon, already there with her husband, Greg, setting up my new office. The painting of a ship that had hung at my desk when I’d been the military assistant at NSA in 1972 was now behind what would be my desk as DNI. Across an embarrassingly large stretch of carpet, the portrait of General Patton given to me by the USD(I) staff hung beside a small, circular conference table. As I watched UV and Greg lay out my other memorabilia from the past forty-seven years, seeing my stuff in that office suddenly made the job feel very real—much more so than had the anticlimactic confirmation vote.
On Monday, August 9, I first went to see Tish sworn in as NGA director in a big, formal ceremony at the new NGA headquarters building in Springfield, Virginia—the facility I’d fought so hard for in 2005. The building was still a year from being open for business, but the scale and the vision for the campus were evident, and the ceremony that morning was a proud moment for me. After the ceremony, my new security detail drove Sue and me back to Liberty Crossing, where ODNI chief management officer Mark Ewing met us at the office and swore me in at an informal gathering, making me officially the DNI.
I started on the job the next day with what would become my morning ritual. The protective detail picked me up at 5:45, and I began reading the overnight intelligence reporting in the back of the secure, armored SUV. I changed into workout clothes in my office and hit the small but complete gym in the basement of Liberty Crossing. My office had an adjoining shower, and once I was back in a suit, I tried to finish reading the previous night’s reports. Then I met with Pat Rohan, my personal briefer for the President’s Daily Brief. Star analysts normally take one-year tours as briefers, but because Pat, who had been my briefer as USD(I), and I had a terrific rapport, I managed to persuade the PDB staff to let him come to Liberty Crossing. When he completed that assignment, he took a one-year rotation as my executive assistant.
The PDB is the IC’s daily (well, six days a week) dialogue with the president to address global challenges and opportunities related to national security. Its existence dates back to the Kennedy administration, and today it’s among the most highly classified and sensitive documents in all of government, and perhaps one of the most expensive daily publications in the world. Although the CIA still generates the lion’s share of the articles in the PDB, all seventeen intelligence components can and do contribute, and then the PDB staff works with the authors to edit their writing and analysis in a grueling process that can take place over several weeks or several days, depending on the urgency of the subject. Working in shifts, the PDB staff compiles the analytic articles and graphics overnight, sometimes making edits on new information or even switching articles completely in the early morning hours. The PDB briefers assigned to national security Cabinet members and a handful of other senior officials, like USD(I), all come to CIA headquarters in the predawn hours each morning. There they meet with the staff and the articles’ authors, read the PDB, get a briefing on the intelligence sources behind the articles, and ask any questions they think each principal they brief might ask. The process is as much a final check on the soundness of the articles and the validity of sources as a chance for the briefers to prepare. After the prep session, briefers scatter in the dark across Virginia and Washington with the PDBs, which when I became DNI were hard copies in faux leather loose-leaf binders.
On that first Tuesday morning, after briefing with Pat, my detail took me to the White House. I met with Jim Jones, and we went to the Oval for the president’s PDB session. At the time, President Obama had two PDB briefers: Jim Danoy from DIA and an analyst from CIA. Jim was the first non-CIA briefer ever assigned to the president, a distinction that isn’t as curious as it sounds, since the PDB was a CIA-only operation until 2005, and I sat with him on the couch in the Oval as the president and vice president listened to him briefly review each of the articles in that day’s book. The president paid attention and nodded politely, but clearly he had already read and digested its contents. I wasn’t slated to actively participate, but at one point, I interjected on a topic Pat and I had discussed at length that morning. The president and I spoke for maybe four minutes out of a total eight or nine minutes we spent with him, and as we left, Jim told me that was the most conversation he’d ever witnessed at a PDB session with the president. I was amazed and felt we clearly could do better. I wanted to address the situation right then and there, but I was already due to be in a Principals Committee meeting in the Situation Room about Guantanamo Bay detainees. I made a mental note and pressed on with my day, gaining a deeper appreciation of why John Negroponte, Mike McConnell, and Denny Blair felt it was hard to get things done in the post.
For reference, while both the Principals Committee (PC) and National Security Council (NSC) are composed of Cabinet members leading national security–related departments, PC meetings are chaired by the national security adviser, and NSC meetings are chaired by the president. Each took up a huge amount of my time during the next few years, both in preparing for and attending them. The National Security Council staff would typically send over a read book the night before, which I was supposed to digest and be ready to discuss the next day. Meetings almost always started with an intelligence briefing, which I led, or I’d moderate, if CIA, NSA, NCTC, or any other specialized IC entity was there to brief. We’d then discuss a series of questions, always more than we could possibly get through. Early on I grew accustomed to spending long hours with President Obama, Vice President Biden, National Security Adviser Jim Jones, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, Attorney General Eric Holder, Homeland Security Adviser John Brennan, and Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, and their successors, often a few times a week. Over the next six and a half years, the only NSC participants not to change were the president and vice president. I’d see three national security advisers, four defense secretaries, two secretaries of state, two DHS secretaries, and two attorneys general, not to mention three CIA directors, and Michael Morell as acting CIA director—twice.
In Bob Gates’s book, he wrote about friendly, competitive dynamics within NSC meetings, particularly his perceived rivalries with Vice President Biden and Secretary Clinton over policy decisions that affected DOD—a dynamic I can validate. But because of unwritten rule of intelligence number one—leave the policy making to policy makers—I never personally felt that sense of rivalry with any NSC member, including any of the CIA directors. I do think that during President Obama’s second term, John Brennan and I had the model relationship for how a DNI and CIA director should work together, presenting a united front on intelligence issues. Even when briefing covert actions, for which I always deferred to the CIA director, I knew what John was going to say. That was partly preparation together and also decades of experience. What we were able to accomplish reinforces why it’s better to have intelligence professionals in those positions, rather than politicians or military line officers.
I made it a practice to stay out of the policy fray during NSC meetings, although I recall a conversation I had with the president at a PDB session the morning after a particularly contentious NSC meeting on Afghanistan. In the calm of that morning brief time, I told him that I’d served as an intelligence officer in Vietnam early in the war and in headquarters offices as the war progressed and finally concluded. I said that the conversation at the NSC meeting had eerily reminded me of conversations as that war ground on, with the generals arguing that they just needed a few thousand more troops, a few million more dollars, a little more time, and they could win it. I explained that I wasn’t advocating for a particular Afghanistan policy but felt he should know that the language we were using was haunting t
o me. Irritated, he asked why, if I felt this way, I hadn’t spoken up at the NSC meeting. If I’d made that observation during the NSC discussion, I replied, it would have been perceived as my weighing into the debate, and I did not want to compromise my credibility as an impartial, unbiased bearer of intelligence truth. He nodded, agreed, and said that he appreciated my bringing up my observation.
Because of the nature—and unrelenting frequency—of NSC and PC meetings, I never felt I had to take extra steps to cultivate a kinship with the Cabinet secretaries. When Susan Rice became national security adviser, I was one of the few people—perhaps the only person at PC meetings—who could get away with jokes at her expense. (Remember that PC meetings do not include the president.) I recall one Situation Room gathering during which UN ambassador Samantha Power was participating via secure video teleconference from New York. (Hello, JWICS!) That morning, I’d been fitted at Walter Reed military hospital with new hearing aids, which had Bluetooth capability. At the start of the meeting, Samantha complained that she couldn’t hear my intelligence briefing very well. I quipped, loudly, that she should get hearing aids like my new ones and pulled out a remote control to demonstrate. “I can turn the volume down,” I said, pushing a button, and then, “I can turn the volume up,” pushing another. “And finally, there’s a special button here that just says, ‘National Security Adviser—off.’” I pretended to push an imaginary “silence” button reserved for Susan, and then I sat back and smiled, pretending I couldn’t hear Susan—and then everyone else—laughing.
On Wednesday, after working out and discussing the PDB with Pat, I met with the four deputy DNIs, trying to get a sense of their concerns. It was obvious that most of them had genuinely liked and respected Denny Blair, and their biggest apprehension was not knowing what would change—yet again—with their fourth director in five years. Having led DIA and NIMA/NGA during times of transition, I’d developed in my own head a concentric circle approach to prioritizing relationships. I needed to focus first on making ODNI work, then on relationships with IC agency and component leaders, then on the DNI representatives across the world, representatives of foreign intelligence partners, law enforcement and first responders at the federal, state, local, and tribal levels, and finally on the community workforce around DC and deployed around the world. Similarly, in my head, I had organized circles for the world external to intelligence: the White House, then Congress, the media, and finally the US public. Of course, this was simply an organizing approach, and in practice I had to engage all the circles simultaneously. Reflecting back, the only relationship I could never make work consistently was the one with Congress.
On Thursday of my first week as DNI, I flew with DIA director Ron Burgess to Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, where the intelligence staff of US Transportation Command was to dedicate a conference room named for me. More important, it gave me a chance to get out of Washington and talk to intelligence analysts and customers. Over the next six and a half years, my staff consistently expressed concern for my stamina in taking as many trips as I did, but the truth was, the only way for me to recharge was to get out of the capital to meet with intelligence officers in the field, whose sense of mission energized me.
Thinking of my concentric circles approach, I also had an ulterior motive for this trip. On the flight out, I talked with Ron about the organizational change I wanted to make within the ODNI staff, that while the law said the DNI could have four deputy DNIs, IRTPA didn’t say that the DNI had to have that many. I intended to tell the staff that we would have only one, the DDNI for intelligence integration. The collection and analysis organizations within ODNI would merge; integration would be ODNI’s core mission, and all other ODNI components would be integration enablers. I explained that the ideal person to fill this role was Robert Cardillo, the civilian whom Ron had sent to the JCS to fill in as the senior intelligence officer. Robert had replaced Tish Long as Ron’s deputy at DIA only two days earlier, so I understood that moving him wouldn’t be convenient. Ron, to his credit, said, “If you want Robert, you’ve got him.”
A big lesson from my DIA and NGA experience was not to leave the staff in suspense when making changes, so I announced what I called “tweaks” to the organization at the senior staff meeting that first Friday morning. Anticipating resistance, I said that I’d already informed the president of my decision—which was true, as I’d written about reorganizing the ODNI in the letter I’d sent him in May. There were some reservations but no real resistance, and everyone seemed to relax and get on with business.
During my second week on the job I focused on concentric circle number two—the leaders at the IC agencies and their components. Because I already had good relationships with the directors of NSA, NRO, NGA, and DIA, and because Leon Panetta wanted to repair the rift that had recently opened between the CIA and ODNI, I started with the CIA. Leon invited me to lunch with the agency leadership on Wednesday, at which I made it clear that while I did not intend to control their work, I did need to know what was going on in the agency. We talked a lot about presenting a united front to the White House and Congress, and in the media if necessary. This wasn’t a question of “getting our story straight” when in trouble; it was about being on the same page from the start. I repeated the Air Force expression I’d shared with Leon before my confirmation: “If you want me around when the plane crashes, make sure I’m around when the plane takes off.” The agency, to its credit, abided by that rule of thumb for my entire tenure.
My formal swearing-in ceremony took place on August 24. Some of my family had flown in for the event, and a little crowd gathered in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, about a hundred feet west of the White House. Sue and I stood in the hallway, waiting on Vice President Biden to arrive to officiate at the ceremony. When he appeared, I took a couple of steps forward, preparing to shake his hand, but without making eye contact with me, he went straight to Sue, thanking her for the sacrifices she’d made, for her service, and for letting me come back to government. What a classy thing to do! I thought. In that moment I knew that he understood how difficult life can be for families, who also serve, and who often see when we’re frustrated, sad, or angry—or sometimes, elated—but can’t always be told the reason why.
Robert Cardillo became the deputy DNI for intelligence integration about a week later, and we quickly addressed the president’s morning briefings. While the PDB staff had adapted the content for President Obama, we were still conducting Oval briefings modeled for President Bush, who wanted to have the articles briefed in detail, absorb the material, and ask briefers questions at the same session. President Obama preferred to read and digest the material ahead of time. There was almost a mystical aura around the PDB, with people apparently reluctant to make changes to it, but I knew we could make better use of the president’s precious time.
Robert and I explained to him that we wanted to stop sending PDB briefers to review what he’d already read. Instead, we would present what we called “walk-ons,” short briefing items we’d find to supplement what was in the formal PDB book, or new intelligence reporting that had arrived during the night. We would periodically bring in subject-matter expert analysts from throughout the community to discuss specific topics in depth. The president seemed to appreciate that the PDB, with its four to six articles daily, could not address the entire range of issues that confronted him and that our approach would be a valuable supplement. He agreed, saying we needed to “be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.” I proposed that Robert and I rotate attending the briefings, explaining, “This may come as a surprise to you, Mr. President, but I don’t lust for Oval Office rug time.” He laughed and responded, “Me neither!”
Once we set that process in place, we didn’t change it much over the next six years, except that Robert began bringing a secure iPad to play video clips and show imagery. Because President Obama was extremely comfortable with digital technology, we converted the PDB “
book” to a digital form in 2012, after which they were delivered on secure iPads. Being old and old-fashioned, I still liked to bring hard copy of maps, charts, photos, and imagery to the meetings, both to enrich the intelligence picture and show off the capabilities of the IC. Because those sessions normally included the vice president, chief of staff, national security adviser, and deputies, I’d have to bring a stack of copies of anything I wanted to present, each stack held together with a paper clip.
In 2015, when President Obama came to Liberty Crossing to help us celebrate the tenth anniversary of ODNI’s launch, he gave a speech to the staff, telling them with an air of modesty, “I don’t know how astute a consumer of information I am, but I can tell you I sure do rely on it. And those who come and brief me every single morning do an extraordinary job.” Then, with a look of concern, he glanced over at me and continued, “I will say that the only flaw, generally, in what’s called the PDB that I receive is that when Jim provides it, some of you may have heard, he leaves paper clips all over my office.” He smiled, and the staff laughed as he continued. “They’re in the couch, they’re on the floor. He’s shuffling paper.” Another pause, with more laughter. “And so, because I knew I was coming over here, one of the things I did was return them all.” With that line, he pulled out a jar filled with paper clips. The staff roared and applauded. He placed them on the podium and, addressing me, added, “DNI’s budget is always a little tight; we can start recycling these. That’s going to be critical.” That signed jar of paper clips became a treasure of mine, and it sat prominently on my desk for the rest of my tenure.
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