President gets new briefing

WASHINGTON – President Bush’s secret morning intelligence briefing is getting an overhaul, drawing on new sources of information and trimming others, nearly four months after a presidential commission criticized the daily report for being ineffective.

In a rare look at how the president receives his intelligence each day, two senior intelligence officials said Bush is now getting written assessments and verbal briefings that pluck information from across the government’s 15 spy agencies, rather than almost exclusively relying on the CIA.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity at the request of National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.

As soon as next week, Bush will no longer receive a separate report on terrorism prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center, known as the President’s Terrorist Threat Report, or “Putter.” That information instead will be folded into the regular morning briefing so Bush has a single, daily intelligence product, one of the officials said at a briefing Tuesday.

The quality of the President’s Daily Brief – or PDB in Washington-speak – recently came under fire in a scathing 600-page report by a commission Bush formed to examine the quality of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction.