The PIAB

In 1956 President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the President’s Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities after concluding that he needed an outside body of highly respected and accomplished Americans to give him unfettered and candid appraisals of US intelligence activities.

President John Kennedy later renamed it the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) in 1961, which it remained until 1976 when President Gerald Ford created a separate Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) following a 1975–76 investigation by Congress into domestic spying, assassination operations, and other abuses by intelligence agencies.  By way of background, the Rockefeller Commission had called for a Presidential-level body with specific oversight responsibilities for the legality and propriety of US intelligence activities, and it has served every President since except for President Carter, who abolished both boards in 1977.

In retrospect and considering Carter’s shortcomings on foreign policy matters, i.e., the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, both of which caught the U.S. completely flat-footed, which was followed by the failed attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran during Operation Eagle Claw in April of 1980, perhaps Carter should have kept both the PFIAB and the IOB.

After the Afghan and Iranian debacles President Reagan re-instituted the PFIAB upon taking office in 1981, which it remained until 2008 when President Bush renamed it the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board to reflect the fact that national intelligence doesn’t begin or end at our nation’s borders.  Then in September 1993, President Clinton established the IOB as a standing committee of the PIAB, with the Chairman of the IOB reporting through the Chairman of the PIAB.  Prior to that date, the PIAB and IOB were separate White House entities.

Throughout its history, the Board has closely guarded its special status and tradition of non-partisan independence by making every effort to ensure the strict confidentiality of its deliberations and communications, and the unimpeachable objectivity of its advice. Throughout its fifty-plus year history, the PIAB has had immense and long-lasting impact on the structure, management, and operations of US intelligence.

The Board has access to all information needed to perform its functions and has direct access to the President as it oversees the Intelligence Community’s compliance with the Constitution and all applicable laws, Executive Orders, and Presidential Directives.  It complements and supplements, rather than duplicates the oversight roles of the Director of National Intelligence, Department and Agency Inspectors General and General Counsels, and the Congressional Oversight Committees.

As evinced by the foreign policy disasters during both the Carter and Biden administrations, it should be obvious PIAB hasn’t always provided the president with the objective & expert advice he’s needed – and to give you an idea of just how critical the PIAB is to the security of the nation, take a look at what Joe Biden’s PIAB missed during his term in office.

• That the sudden and complete withdrawal from Afghanistan would be the greatest humiliation of the U.S. military in a half-century, and that abandoning billions in weapons & equipment would surely be appropriated by a reconstituted ISIS and al Qaeda and that a return to Taliban rule would put women back in burkas and take young girls out of schools.
• The surprise attack on Israel perpetrated by Iran’s proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, which came as much of a surprise to Israel and the world as did 9/11 in the U.S.
• After Biden waffled telling the world, “It depends,” regarding Russia’s potential invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin took that as a go signal and invaded with a massive attack on Kyiv on February 24, 2022.
• The Chinese spy balloon that flew over the United States from January 28 to February 4, 2023…and
• Fast-forwarding to 2025, we still have no information whatsoever about what the two assassins were up or who they colluded with in their failed attempts to assassinate Donald Trump during the 2024 election.

As history reveals, an advisory board is only as good as the people a president appoints or doesn’t appoint to it, as was the case with Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter before him.  Meanwhile, Donald Trump has appointed Devin Nunes to become the new chairman of the advisory board, and while only time will tell, I suspect Trump won’t be inclined to make the mistakes of his predecessors because Nunes will ensure Trump receives the information he needs.

Comment for the day: “Nobody called it “Toxic Masculinity” when our soldiers were storming Omaha Beach, or our Marines were raising Old Glory on Mt. Suribachi.”