Handling of intelligence warnings looks worse and worse

[struggle4progress]

March 27, 2020, 4:30 AM EDT
By Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence and NBC News/MSNBC analyst

... Our country's intelligence agencies monitor pandemic preparedness not only because of the possibility that adversaries could weaponize a virus, but also because the impact of such a virus poses a national security threat. A widespread, unchecked illness that affects troop strength, police and rescue staffing, health care workers, critical infrastructure and our economy makes us more vulnerable to both internal and external threats. That's why intelligence agencies assess global response capabilities generally and individual virus outbreaks specifically. Now it appears the president's disdain for unvarnished intelligence may have caused him to disregard their prescient warnings ...

... The president has a well-established record of ignoring his intelligence advisers on even the most serious issues. When Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, our intelligence community concluded that Saudi government operatives, and more precisely the crown prince, were to blame. Trump disputed the findings. When U.S. intelligence agencies found the Russian government responsible for hacking into the Democratic National Committee and for social media propaganda during our 2016 presidential election, the president chose to accept Russian President Vladimir Putin's denial ...

According to The Washington Post, "U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger of the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen." Almost a year before that, an annual threat report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence by Dan Coats, then its director, stated, "The United States will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support." Coats stepped down last year after he was reported to have angered the president with unwelcome intelligence assessments.

The 2020 report, which was supposed to have been released in February, remains mysteriously classified ...

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/coronavirus-deaths-mount-trump-s-handling-intelligence-warnings-looks-worse-ncna1169996

[ZZenith]

1. Mission Accomplished!

“Good boy, Donald!”

“Thanks, Vladdy Daddy.”