When George H. W. Bush became the Director of Central Intelligence in 1976, the PFIAB renewed its request for comparative threat assessments. Although his top analysts argued against such an undertaking, Bush checked with the White House, obtained a go-ahead, and by May 26 had signed off on the experiment. A team of 16 "outside experts" were to take an independent look at highly classified data used by the intelligence community to assess Soviet strategic forces in the yearly National Intelligence Estimates.