Introduction
This interview originally appeared in Studies in 1999.
Dick Lehman developed the President’s Intelligence Check List, or PICL (pronounced “pickle”) for President Kennedy in June 1961. The Kennedy White House had become overwhelmed with publications from the Intelligence Community, many of which were duplicative in nature, and important pieces of information were beginning to fall between the cranks. The President and his advisers wanted one concise summary of important issues that they could rely on, and Lehman provided that summary in the form of the PICL.