I occasionally spend some time in a deliberate effort to see the world through the "other" (leftist) point of view. And, sadly, I repeatedly find that view as alien as "they" must find "ours".

While visiting Escaton, I got as far as this before I had to comment:

Look, if you want to shut up liberal conspiracy theorists like us, it's simple - release the damn presidential daily briefings from August. I challenge anyone to give a credible reason why almost 3 years later thet shouldn't be released. "blah blah blah national security blah blah blah" is the only thing they can come up with.

At first blush, it sounds like a valid point.

On the other hand, here's a reason: The PDBs might contain some information which, though not technically sensitive, might embarass our allies. For example, they might contain complaints about "foot dragging" by this or that nation, or admit privately that we don't entirely trust the motives of some politician we officially want to court.

Placing that point entirely aside...

On the third hand, well, hate to say it, but I don't find it unreasonable to think there really could be national security issues within the briefings, and ones which might still have impact. Further, I'm not sure it would be such a great idea to set a precedent of having the CIA chief spend more time worrying about how his PDB's will look to the New York Times than to the sitting President.

This article in Slate, intended to defend the idea of making the PDBs public, has been instrumental in convincing me otherwise. Quotes like this don't help:

According to the CIA's own history of its presidential briefings, roughly 40 percent of what the PDB covers is addressed in the newspapers.

I know this is supposed to convince me otherwise, but: Doesn't that seem to indicate the majority of historical PBD content (60%) is not available to the general public? The article also cites previous PDBs which have been made public as proof they don't generally contain sensitive information, while forgetting that his entire sample is composed only of -- duh -- PDBs which could be released because they didn't contain sensitive information!

Needless to say, I'm not blown away by that kind of circular logic.

Moreover, it would seem that the following quote would strongly indicate that assessments of the (in)sensitivity of past PDBs do not consititute a reasonable means of determining the sensitivity of current ones:

In her speech, Ms. Miscik said the C.I.A. review would compare the approach adopted under President Bush with the one in place until 2000 under President Bill Clinton. An overhaul three years ago "significantly improved the quality of the product we put in front of the president each morning," Ms. Miscik said, but the review would "see if some of the strong points of our earlier approach have been lost."

Ms. Miscik did not publicly describe the nature of the earlier changes. But a senior intelligence official said that under Mr. Bush, the intelligence digest included more operational, real-time information than before, including detail about the sources of intelligence that could not have been shared with a larger audience. [emphasis added]

With the many complaints about the CIA's lack of human intelligence sources, it would seem protecting such sources would, indeed, be an extremely important concern. No offense, but I wouldn't even let a Senator look at such, given how leaky some of them are known to be. We're playing with lives here, folks.

Here's another clueless argument from the same Slate piece, which, again, inadvertantly provides a strong argument for secrecy:

Obviously there is some information that the executive branch has a legitimate interest in withholding from the public: the specifications of a weapon system, the identity of a spy who would be shot, the bottom line of a negotiation in progress, etc. But these real secrets make up only a fraction of what is classified today, and they rarely adorn the PDB. During the Cold War, for example, the code word GAMMA GUPY referred to the National Security Agency's ability to listen in on the radio-telephone conversations of Soviet leaders while they drove around Moscow in their limos. A document that specifically described that capacity would be far more sensitive than a PDB summary item that said Soviet leaders were discussing the failed wheat harvest and planning to fire the Ukraine party secretary.

Utterly clueless! Most the time, it's not the technological details of the interception which need to be protected, but the very fact we know these things at all. Once they know what we know, it's immediately apparent they need to (a) stop using whatever channel that data first appeared on, and (b) start looking in that area, or among those privy, for the leak. It's as if the author knows nothing about how and why the Ultra secret was protected during WWII.

I fear for the safety of any nation whose security policies could be influenced by such deeply ignorant arguments.

So, in the end, I'm not sure what good releasing the unclassified portions of the PDBs would do. Even if in one in ten PDBs during the requested time period contained sensitive information, that gap would still look "guilty" to anyone inclined to view it as such. After all, even the tiniest censored section just might contain the "smoking gun", right? So I doubt that situation would then cause "conspiracy theorists" to rest.

And, indeed, less-secure summaries of the PDBs were released to the 9/11 panel, who, by a majority, found nothing troubling in them.

Last, perhaps I missed it, but I don't recall any hue or cry for Clinton's PDBs from among conservatives. (If I'm wrong here, feel free to point it out.) If not, it seems we're demanding revelations from Bush beyond what any past president has shared.

Atrios asks for any other good reason than national security. But it seems to me that's like asking for another good reason to visit the dentist for a teeth-cleaning, other than good oral hygene. Uh, that's the reason, my friend.

And, until I see something a tad more convincing than the above-mentioned Slate article, I'm afraid that seems a good enough reason, given the purported sensitivity of the materials in question, as verified by the CIA representative quoted above.