U.S. President Donald Trump stands with the new CIA Director Gina Haspel during her swearing-in ceremony at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, U.S. May 21, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Time: 'Willful Ignorance.' Inside President Trump's Troubled Intelligence Briefings
In the wake of President Donald Trump’s renewed attacks on the U.S. intelligence community this week, senior intelligence briefers are breaking two years of silence to warn that the President is endangering American security with what they say is a stubborn disregard for their assessments.
Citing multiple in-person episodes, these intelligence officials say Trump displays what one called “willful ignorance” when presented with analyses generated by America’s $81 billion-a-year intelligence services. The officials, who include analysts who prepare Trump’s briefs and the briefers themselves, describe futile attempts to keep his attention by using visual aids, confining some briefing points to two or three sentences, and repeating his name and title as frequently as possible.
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WNU Editor: The intel community's concerns (and criticisms) that a President does not take their intel briefings seriously is nothing new .... Obama has skipped more than HALF of his daily intel briefings – as spies hit back after he blamed them for underestimating ISIS (Daily Mail).
