On February 17, our nation and the CIA lost a great talent and unique public servant. Richard “Dick” Lehman invented the President’s Intelligence Checklist (the PICL, pronounced “pickle”) in June 1961 in response to President Kennedy’s request for a manageable summary of the day’s important intelligence matters. The president, according to a senior aide, had been “blind-sided” several times by issues because he was unable to absorb all the intelligence material that flowed to his desk. He wanted one concise summary of all-source intelligence on key issues, in clear language, with no departmental spin.
Dick Lehman quickly put together what he called “a single publication, no sources barred, covering the whole ground, and written as much as possible in the president’s language rather than in officialese.” President Kennedy liked the PICL from the first issue, often asked questions, and made comments about the articles, and requested follow-up material. As one of Dick’s colleagues recalled, “For current intelligence people, this was heaven on earth! A president who read your material thoughtfully and told you what he liked and did not like!” Dick’s creation for the Agency’s top customer would eventually become, under President Johnson, the President’s Daily Brief (PDB). (Since this remembrance was written, CIA has declassified and published the PICLs and PDBs from the Kennedy/Johnson administration. They can be found in the FOIA Electronic Reading Room’s Historical Collections on this site.)
During his remarkable career, Dick briefed every president from Kennedy to Reagan before retiring in 1982. But Dick didn’t just brief presidents: he was regularly consulted by DCis, secretaries of defense, and White House officers on all manner of crises and issues, notably the Cuba Missile Crisis and the long-running issue of the nature of “the Soviet Threat.” Several DDIs relied heavily on his skills, especially R.J. Smith and Edward Proctor. He was a consummate writer and editor, and he drafted or contributed major portions to all manner of special assessments, DCI testimony and speeches, and was for many years the final editor
of the Central Intelligence Bulletin, the Intelligence Community’s pre-eminent daily intelligence summary.
A veteran of World War II, Dick began his 33-year career at CIA in 1949 after he earned his master’s degree in Russian studies from the University of Virginia. He started as a junior analyst puzzling over Soviet industrial ministries and shifted to the Office of Current Intelligence (OCI), where he helped institutionalize the craft of current intelligence. Dick was the director of OCI from 1970 to 1975. He later served as director of the Office of Strategic Research from 1975 to 1976, as deputy to the DCI for national intelligence from 1976 to 1979, and finally as chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 1979 to 1981.
In 1997 Dick was named one of 50 Trailblazers who helped create the CIA as we know it today.