Obama's national security officials, on the night watch

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Washington Post:









By Laura Blumenfeld
Friday, July 2, 2010; 5:13 PM

Dead of night, undisclosed location

Headlights approach on an empty road. A government agent steps out of an armored SUV, carrying a locked, black satchel.


America's guardians: Top security officials work around the clock to protect the nation
With two wars, multiple crises abroad and growing terrorism activity at home, the nation's top security officials do not sleep in peace.


"Here's the bag," the agent says, to the intelligence official. "Here's the key."

The key turns, and out slides a brown leather binder, gold-stamped "TOP SECRET." The President's Daily Brief, perhaps the most secret book on earth.

The PDB hand-off happens in the dead of every night, the time and location withheld, although witnessed. The book distills the nation's greatest threats, intelligence trends and concerns, and is written by a team at CIA headquarters.

"This is the one for the president," the intelligence official says, moving inside a secure building, opening the binder.

As dawn draws near, intelligence briefers distribute more than a dozen locked copies to Washington's nocturnals, a group of top officials charged by the president with guarding the nation's safety: CIA director Leon Panetta, national security adviser Gen. James L. Jones Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen, and FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, among others.

With two wars, multiple crises abroad and growing terrorism activity at home, these national security officials do not sleep in peace. For them, the night is a public vigil. It is also a time of private reckoning with their own tensions and doubts. They read the highest classification of intelligence. They pursue the details of plots that realize the nation's vague, yet primal, fears.

It is all here, inside the brown leather binder. Black typeface on white paper, marked by red tabs and yellow highlighter, an accumulation of all the dangers hidden in the dark. Compiling them is an all-night process, and it begins every day at sundown.

8:40 p.m., on board special air mission, Andrews Air Force Base

There is no sun. The day fades from gray to black, it's raining and the motorcades are late.

"Are they coming soon?" The aircraft commander radios from the cockpit. Jet fumes seep into the government C-40, which was supposed to take off for Islamabad 10 minutes ago.

Leon Panetta boards first, drenched, wearing work boots. "Where do you want me?" he asks, looking around the cramped cabin. He flies to the Middle East so often, he says, "my body is probably somewhere over Ireland."

Cont'd (4 more pages_