The thing missing from these briefs is the context. We're not seeing the hundreds or thousands of other daily reports that are mixed in and have to be acted on. It's easy to cherry pick after the fact.

Case in point, just going off of the reports here it would have been hard to predict what happened. They were concerned about Bin Laden starting civil wars, taking embassies, launching a biological attack, cells in Europe, etc. And even their preliminary reports about a possible plane hijacking in the US presumed it would be a simple quid pro quo for prisoner releases.

I'm worried this release is being thinly veiled as an attack on previous administrations. But it should be pointed out that the current administration eschews intelligence entirely and has no qualms about worsening the country's current security posture.

The New York Times summary noted that there was a fear of "alert fatigue" coupled with a lack of confidence about the strength of the signals they were getting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/us/politics/cia-sept-11-i... (gift article)

> But it should be pointed out that the current administration eschews intelligence entirely

That's not fair, they happily hand over intelligence briefings to people with no clearances or vetting whatsoever.

Yeah, its a bit like a medical test that promises to detect cancer 100% of the time, but actually just says everyone has cancer.

To be useful, information doesn't just have to have a good false negative rate, it also has to have a good false positive rate, and be specific. Otherwise its useless as you can't persue every possible lead.

It is so funny. If it was Harris who released these, you'd be telling us how these show how inept Bush was. Your second point would be how refreshing it is to have this level of transparency from the government.

The PDBs are summaries intended for only the President.

> just going off of the reports here it would have been hard to predict what happened

You don't have to predict exactly what's gonna happen to surveil or interfere with known terrorists you let into your own country, who you know are engaged in some sort of training having to do with aircraft hijackinng, and keep that from happening.

You should watch the Tucker Carlson 9/11 series. He does a good job picking up where Michal Moore left off in the mid 2000s (though they'd both probably be offended to hear me say that) and does so with the hindsight of 20yr of declassification and general hindsight that hadn't yet happened in the mid 2000s

The various agencies knew something was gonna happen. Nobody knew what or when or where exactly because the pieces hadn't been put together. They were all looking through their own little keyholes. They all should have seen enough to take action. But why didn't they? But it's pretty clear that the CIA and maybe some other intel agencies either through blunder or neglect or hubris had something to do with it.

> We're not seeing the hundreds or thousands of other daily reports that are mixed in and have to be acted on.

There is one PDB per day. One. It is a presentation, not just a sheet of paper. And it's assembled by a team who are producing something for someone who (normally) is the most scheduled person alive save astronauts, who are well aware of that person's fixed resources in terms of time and attention.

Acting like the amount of information presented, especially to someone with extensive executive experience as the governor of Texas, is somehow overwhelming, is beyond disingenuous.

The important context missing here is that Bush was infamous for treating the PDBs like a hassle he didn't want to have to deal with.

The important context missing here is that the terrorists practically put up a neon flashing sign saying "WE WANT TO HIJACK AIRLINERS." They literally told instructors they only cared about specific phases of flight - I think one said "we don't need to know how to land." You know, the hardest part of flying a plane?

The important context missing here is that the WTC attack was used to justify a massive amount of domestic spying.

The last important context missing is that the current president has a very similar attitude toward almost any form of briefing, and entered us into a war largely because he didn't understand nuclear weapons treaties and did not listen to anyone who told him that a weapons treaty having an end date is normal - so the treaty can be revised and renegotiated to meet changes in both countries and the rest of the world. You-know-who thought it was a weakness and the US was getting screwed.