How National Security Intelligence is Provided to the President and Senior Officials

Media commentary about what the intelligence community told or should have told the President about Russian support to the Taliban has presented a distorted and incomplete view of the roles of intelligence and intelligence professionals. FSI Fellow Thomas Fingar will describe how the process of providing intelligence to policy makers is supposed to work and who decides what intelligence is given to which senior officials. As Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis, Fingar was in charge of the President’s Daily Brief from 2005-2008. From 1994 through 2005, he was responsible for providing a variety of analytic products for the Secretary of State. FSI Senior Fellow Amy Zegart will serve as commentator and moderator. Zegart is a professor of political science (by courtesy), and served on the Clinton administration’s National Security Council staff and as a foreign policy adviser to the Bush‑Cheney presidential campaign.