President’s Daily Brief Spotlighted Soviet Missile and Space Programs in 1960s and 1970s

Soviet missile and space programs were among the most frequent topics briefed to the president of the United States by  U.S. intelligence during the administrations of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, and Gerald R. Ford, according to a review of recently declassified excerpts of the President’s Daily Brief posted today by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University.  Of all the issues that crossed the president’s desk during this tense period of the Cold War, the USSR’s strategic capabilities and space program represented constant areas of concern because of the threat they posed both to U.S. national security and to American prestige in the propaganda war with its superpower rival.  

Today’s Electronic Briefing Book presents a selection of entries on both programs compiled and introduced by James E. David, curator for national security space programs at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.  In addition to excerpts from 66 PDB entries, the posting provides further background and context. 

After years of legal battles under the Freedom of Information Act, the CIA released significant portions of the PDBs from the Kennedy-Johnson era (in 2015) and the Nixon-Ford period (in 2016).  In late 2016, the National Security Archive published a highly indexed collection of those materials as part of the “Digital National Security Archive” through ProQuest.  The materials in this posting are available through DNSA or by visiting the Archive’s offices in Gelman Library at The George Washington University.