Beth Sanner

Central Intelligence Agency

Sanner held several senior leadership positions in CIA's Directorate of Analysis, including leading the analytic effort on South Asia and serving as the deputy for analysis for Russian and European affairs. She also held analytic leadership roles for the Balkans, Central Europe, and Southeast Asia. Sanner was the Director of the Career Analyst Program, the training program for all new CIA analysts.

Sanner has also served in a wide range of leadership, staff, policy, and analytic positions in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, and the U.S. Department of State.

Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Sanner assumed leadership for the President's Daily Brief in April 2017. Previously she served as the vice chair of the National Intelligence Council. From then on she was Trump's lead intelligence briefer, a CIA officer detailed to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). In 2019 she became deputy director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration, a post that combines the briefer's job with coordinating the work of the 18 intelligence agencies.

In 2020 the White House twice pointed to her briefings. Criticized for his response to the coronavirus, Trump said that his first intelligence briefing on the virus, on January 23, had described it as "not a big deal". A White House official told NPR that Trump was briefed on January 23 and January 28, and that the first briefing said the virus could spread globally but was not deadly for most people. In June, after reports that intelligence about Russian bounties for the killing of American troops in Afghanistan had been included in the President's Daily Brief, the national security adviser, Robert C. O'Brien, said that the president's "career CIA briefer" had decided not to brief him orally because the intelligence was unverified. He called her "an outstanding officer". Current and former officials told NBC News that the briefer did not make such decisions alone, because the CIA director and the director of National Intelligence usually attended the briefings. Sources told Fox News that the briefer could not remove an item from the brief without approval from a more senior official. NPR wrote that the president's briefer is normally not identified in public. Days later Sanner gave rare public remarks at an online event of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, describing how she adapts a briefing to the "customer" without mentioning Trump by name.

The New York Times reported in January 2021 that Sanner had briefed Trump twice a week until the final months before the 2020 election, when he turned more often to the director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, and that her defenders said she answered his questions honestly even when he would not like the answer. After Joe Biden took office, the new director, Avril Haines, chose Morgan Muir, a CIA analyst who had briefed George W. Bush, to replace her as the president's briefer. An ODNI spokesperson said Sanner would complete her tour in May 2021.