Declassifying a PDB is not, and should not be, a trivial event as it is the net summary, what I call a still frame from a motion picture, containing both the donut and the hole (what we are looking at and what we aren't), of the priorities of the day based upon accumulated prior tasking. There is drag-along in these docs above the specifics on content.

Complicate that with political survival and the matter becomes increasingly sticky. As one colleague mentioned offline, the White House "was simply thinking run and they got pass." In the case of this PDB, some of whose particulars were mentioned in newspaper articles in May 2002, a House-Senate inquiry into intelligence failures in July 2003, and has been summarized, still in classified form, for some of the 9/11 commissioners, it may contain both predictive as well as historical (called 'analytic' in this context) information.

As Von Drehle noted in "Zeroing In on One Classified Document" (W Post), "When the Washington investigative machinery gets rolling, it takes a major event to stop it. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice's defense of the Bush anti-terrorism effort at yesterday's hearing before the 9/11 commission was not enough." Von Drehle commented that it was insufficient as it did not quell the second of Clarke's two claims:

(1) Administration ignored of Clarke's plans for disrupting al Qaeda in early 2001
(2) "[Top] officials, including Bush and Rice, were listless in the face of the summertime "threat spike.""

I submit that Rice's testimony, beyond not countering the second claim, raised the bar for an administration that will lose more political capital, as it did in delaying Rice's sworn public testimony, until this PDB is released in full - at least those portions having to do with al Qaeda. Yes, the administration will have the task of managing hindsight analysis in a political year, but only when it is released will we be able to see what material was reasonably predictive and what was analytic -- and from that draw an opinion as to the level of effort being done to obtain predictive information.

I have the rising fear that on this issue, the White House 'might have been thinking time out and they got pass.' I want to see that PDB and I want to hear good intel folks comment on it to put it in the context of the day. I submit that further delay, national security matters aside, is a self-inflicted wound.

Briefing on Al Qaeda Included Specifics
White House Says Declassification of Pre-9/11 Document Will Be Delayed
By Walter Pincus and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 10, 2004; Page A05