David Priess Email & Phone Number

I'm now Director of Intelligence for Bedrock Knowledge, Inc., a start-up SaaS learning social network including coursework, wargames and simulations, and intelligence streams for U.S. professionals from the armed services, tech, higher education, financial institutions, and corporations with global interests. I remain a senior fellow at the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security at George Mason University in Virginia, and I write and speak about intelligence, national security, and the presidency.Most recently, I spent four and a half years as the chief operating officer of Washington, DC's Lawfare Institute and the publisher of the national security website and podcast publisher Lawfare. Farther back, I served during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush as an intelligence officer, daily briefer, and manager at the Central Intelligence Agency--including delivery of the President’s Daily Brief for more than a year to the Attorney General and the FBI Director and occasionally into the White House itself--and as a desk officer at the State Department.I've written two books about US presidents. The first, “The President’s Book of Secrets,” relates how American intelligence officials for more than fifty years have delivered Top Secret intelligence to commanders in chief on the most sensitive information in the world. The project enabled me to become the first author to interview, for one book, every living former president, vice president, and CIA director from previous administrations. The second book, “How To Get Rid of a President,” covers American political history from the Constitutional Convention through the election of Donald Trump to capture how presidents have left office or been pushed toward the door. My shorter pieces of writing have appeared in War on the Rocks, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, The Bulwark, Foreign Policy, The Daily Beast, Politico, the Cipher Brief, the Houston Chronicle, and Lawfare. I also appear here and there on television, radio, and podcasts to discuss intelligence, national security, and the presidency.