CRAWFORD, Texas - George W. Bush got a CIA briefing yesterday. He called it an important part of preparing candidates for the responsibilities of the White House.
Leaning on the rail outside the foreman's house at his ranch in this town near Waco, Bush, the Republican presidential nominee, said he wanted to thank the Clinton administration for ''following the tradition of briefing a candidate who is running for president of the United States about national security issues.''
The briefings have been a tradition for White House candidates since President Harry S. Truman arranged them for his succession candidates.
Bush's chief spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said that the briefing had lasted four hours and that Bush had ''found it very helpful.''
Two aides who were briefed with Bush, Condoleezza Rice, his chief foreign policy adviser, and Paul Wolfowitz, another top foreign affairs aide, sat with him as he answered reporters' questions outside his ranch. Rice worked in the National Security Administration in the administration of Bush's father.
Rice, Wolfowitz and Bush's policy director, Josh Bolten, received security clearances, Bush said, adding: ''My clearance is the clearance from the American people, at least the Republicans.'' It was Bush's first such CIA briefing.
Asked by reporters about the campaign, Bush said: ''I feel I'm right where we need to be going into Labor Day.
Four CIA briefers, led by John E. McLaughlin, acting deputy director of the agency, led the briefing.
The tradition was started by Truman, the vice president who took office in 1945 when Franklin D. Roosevelt died. Truman had been uninformed on intelligence matters and unaware even of the atomic bomb project. He ordered the bomb dropped on Japan later that year.
In 1952, Truman ordered CIA briefings for the two candidates to succeed him, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican who did, and Adlai E. Stevenson, the Democrat who lost.
It has been standard practice since for presidents to offer briefings to the major party nominees, including those challenging them for the White House. Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic nominee, is also entitled to a briefing. There has been no word on whether he has sought one.
It also is standard that nothing is said except that they are being conducted. Briefing data are classified.
Bush talked about shooting doves for dinner last night, although he was not sure he could scare any up from the parched fields of his ranch.
''They don't seem to be flocking in right now,'' he said. ''But it is dove season in Texas. I'm a hunter and if I decide to shoot some dove, I'll shoot 'em and eat 'em.''
Bush spent yesterday and will spend much of today at the ranch before flying to Chicago tonight to resume his campaign tomorrow.
