Predilection or Prediction? Country Selection for the President's Daily Intelligence Brief, 1961–1977

A study of the daily briefings of US presidents by the intelligence community offers a useful test of whether governments can surmount intragovernmental influences in the acquisition and processing of information. A finding that the briefs somehow anticipate events would suggest that governments—their leaders and organizations—rise above political incentives and institutional practices to approach the rationality that realist and liberal scholars attribute to states. This study, thus, examines which countries appear in (the now declassified) daily intelligence briefs of the 1961–(January)1977 period, covering the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford years. It not only finds evidence that the selection of countries for the briefs favors countries referenced in prior briefs (per the foreign-policy literature) but also finds significant evidence that the appearance of countries, in the briefs, anticipates their increased activity in the period to follow (per a rational model).

Does Canada have anything in the way of a strategic warning intelligence culture (and does it need one)?

During the Cold War, Strategic Warning Intelligence (SWI) was a necessary and recognized function within the intelligence community given the threats posed by conventional Warsaw Pact forces in Western Europe and Soviet ballistic missiles. With the end of the Cold War, the focus of intelligence shifted to tactical or operational issues against known threats, and the SWI function and expertise atrophied as a result. With today’s expanding and more complex threat environment, this article examines whether SWI capacities should be reintroduced in order to apprise decision makers of trending threats to national security, albeit based on faint signals, so the necessary policy decisions can be made and prioritized to mitigate said threats in a timely manner.