Episode 326 – What kind of intelligence does the US President consume and does it make a difference?
Imagine you are the one on the hotseat who has to tell the President of the US what is happening in the world – on a daily basis. What do you tell him? Where do you get the information from? How does personality enter into the equation? How did different presidents take these briefings? All very good questions and I have just the guy to answer them, an old CIA friend who has written a very interesting book on the topic.
Substack link
Spotify link
About my guest
Dr. David Priess served at the CIA as an intelligence analyst, manager, and daily intelligence briefer; took a policy desk at the State Department; has led intelligence production and training units in the private sector; has worked as publisher and chief operating officer of national security media outlet Lawfare; has taught as an adjunct and visiting professor; and has spoken and written widely about intelligence and national security. He has written two books: The President’s Book of Secrets (2016) — the history of the President’s Daily Brief, for which he interviewed every living former US president, vice president, and CIA director from previous administrations — and How To Get Rid of a President (2018), about how US leaders have left office or been pushed toward the door. He currently works for US corporate risk firm Emergent Risk International; serves as Senior Fellow at George Mason University’s Michael V. Hayden Center of Intelligence, Policy, and International Security as well as the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation Senior Fellow in Political History, the Presidency, and Constitutional Thought at the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon; and a private consultant on the intelligence-policy nexus. His MA and PhD in political science are from Duke University.
Canadian Intelligence Eh
In a world of multiple voices and opinions it can be very hard to know where to turn. One choice is to look to those who actually worked in counter-terrorism in the national security world.
In these half-hour podcasts, 32-year Canadian intelligence veteran Phil Gurski is joined by a fascinating array of individuals with something meaningful to say about these issues as they provide insight into what they mean and what we need to do about them.
About Phil Gurski
Phil worked as a senior strategic analyst at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) from 2001-2015, specializing in violent Islamist-inspired homegrown terrorism and radicalisation. From 1983 to 2001 he was employed as a senior multilingual analyst at Communications Security Establishment (CSE – Canada’s signals intelligence agency), specialising in the Middle East. He also served as senior special advisor in the National Security Directorate at Public Safety Canada from 2013, focusing on community outreach and training on radicalisation to violence, until his retirement from the civil service in May 2015, and as consultant for the Ontario Provincial Police’s Anti-Terrorism Section (PATS) from May to October 2015. He also ran Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting from May 2015 to May 2025.
He was the Director of Security and Intelligence at the SecDev Group from June 2018 to July 2019 and the Director of the National Security Programme at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute from 2020-2022. He has also taught on national security issues at George Brown College, the University of Ottawa and Georgian College. Mr. Gurski has presented on violent Islamist-inspired and other forms of terrorism and radicalisation across Canada and around the world and is actively sought by Canadian and international media on national security and intelligence issues. He has written hundreds of op-eds on these matters for several Canadian media since 2016
He is the author of The Threat from Within: Recognizing Al Qaeda-inspired Radicalization and Terrorism in the West (Rowman and Littlefield 2015) Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security (Rowman and Littlefield 2017), The Lesser Jihads: Taking the Islamist fight to the world (Rowman and Littlefield 2017), An end to the ‘War on Terrorism (Rowman and Littlefield 2018), When Religion Kills: How Extremist Justify Violence Through Faith (Lynne Rienner 2019), The Peaceable Kingdom? A history of terrorism in Canada from Confederation to the present (self-published: 2021, republished by Double Dagger in 2022), and The Fenians: Brotherhood of fools or Canada’s first terrorist threat? (Double Dagger: 2025). He regularly blogs and podcasts (Canadian Intelligence Eh!), and posts on Bluesky (@borealissaves.bsky.social) on terrorism and intelligence matters.
