Presidents need to rely on a little-known group of intelligence advisers that since the 1950s has helped guide policies and oversee the U.S. intelligence bureaucracy, according to a report by former intelligence officials.
The book-length report to be released today is an exhaustive historical study of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which was created during the Eisenhower administration and has been used by presidents in different capacities ever since.
"In some instances, the Board has played a central role in advising the president and the intelligence community on crucial issues of substance or procedure and has made a significant contribution to the country's national security," the report says.
"In other instances, the Board has been ignored and treated as a dumping ground for rewarding political cronies."
The report, sponsored by the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, a Washington-based research group, represents the first major study of the secretive body that under President Bush has been renamed the President's Intelligence Advisory Board.
Most of the board's work is secret, but one of its most public investigations involved the loss of U.S. nuclear secrets to China from the Los Alamos National Laboratory during the 1990s.