Debate surrounds Trump briefing blame
Intelligence officials at odds over analyst’s role in president’s delayed response to virus
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has blamed many others for his administration’s flawed response to the coronavirus: China, governors, the Obama administration, the World Health Organization. In recent weeks, he has also faulted the information he received from an obscure analyst who delivers his intelligence briefings.
Trump has insisted that the intelligence agencies gave him inadequate warnings about the threat of the virus, describing it as “not a big deal.” Intelligence officials have publicly backed him, acknowledging that Beth Sanner, the analyst who regularly briefs the president, underplayed the dangers when she first mentioned the virus to him Jan. 23.
But in blaming Sanner, a CIA analyst with three decades of experience, Trump ignored a host of warnings he received around that time from higher-ranking officials, epidemiologists, scientists, biodefense officials, other national security aides and the news media about the virus’s growing threat. Trump’s own health secretary had alerted him five days earlier to the potential seriousness of the virus.
By the time of the Jan. 23 intelligence briefing, many government officials were already alarmed by the signs of a crisis in China, where the virus first broke out, and of a world on the brink of disaster. Within days, other national security warnings prompted the Trump administration to restrict travel from China. But the United States lost its chance to more effectively mitigate the coronavirus
in the following weeks when Trump balked at further measures that might have slowed its spread.
Trump, who has mounted a yearslong attack on the intelligence agencies, is particularly difficult to brief on critical national security matters, according to interviews with 10 current and former intelligence officials familiar with his intelligence briefings.
The president veers off on tangents, and getting him back on topic is difficult, they said. He has a short attention span and rarely, if ever, reads intelligence reports, relying instead on conservative media and his friends for information. He is unashamed to interrupt intelligence officers and riff based on tips or gossip he hears from former casino magnate Steve Wynn, retired golfer Gary Player or Christopher Ruddy, the conservative media executive.
Trump rarely absorbs information that he disagrees with or that runs counter to his worldview, the officials said. Briefing him has been so great a challenge compared with his predecessors that the intelligence agencies have hired outside consultants to study how better to present information to him.
Working to keep Trump’s interest exhausted and burned out his first briefer, Ted Gistaro, two former officials said. Gistaro did not always know what to expect and would sometimes have to brief an erratic and angry president upset over news reports, the officials said.
Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence, said that the idea that Trump was difficult in intelligence briefings was “flat wrong.”
“When you are there, you see a president questioning the assumptions and using the opportunity to broaden the discussion to include real-world perspectives,” Grenell said.
White House officials disputed the characterization of Trump as inattentive.
“The president is laser-focused on the issues at hand and asks probing questions throughout the briefings — it reminds me of appearing before a well-prepared appellate judge and defending the case,” Robert C. O’Brien, the national security adviser, said in response to a request for comment.
Intelligence briefings are among the most important entries on a president’s calendar. The briefer, always a top CIA analyst, delivers the latest secrets and best insights from the 17 intelligence agencies. The oral briefings to Trump are based on the President’s Daily Brief, which draws from spywork to make sophisticated analytic predictions about long-standing adversaries, unfolding plots and emerging crises around the world.
But getting Trump to remember information, even if he seems to be listening, can be all but impossible, especially if it runs counter to his worldview, former officials said.
When Sanner replaced Gistaro in 2019, she tried a new approach. She gives Trump an agenda to try to keep him on track and deploys a more analytical style than the just-the-facts delivery of Gistaro.
If Trump diverges onto irrelevant topics, she will let him talk before interrupting to confidently ask to move on, said people who have seen Sanner brief the president. Trump, who made his name in real estate, is drawn to subjects like international economic developments. Sanner highlights that material and tells the president what is in the intelligence for him, according to people familiar with her briefing style. She draws from recent intelligence reports, or that day’s edition of the President’s Daily Brief, to lay out a compelling story around a new piece of intelligence. The technique is effective, according to associates of Sanner.
White House aides have also limited the number of people who attend the intelligence briefings. Sanner leads the discussion and is accompanied most days by Grenell and often by Gina Haspel, the CIA director. Typically, O’Brien and the White House chief of staff sit in.
On Thursday, a divided Senate voted, 49-44, to confirm Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, a fierce defender of the president, as the new director of national intelligence.
Sanner has cultivated a close relationship with Trump and has displayed respect for him, former officials said, so some of them were surprised when Trump and intelligence officials pinned blame for the administration’s coronavirus response on one of her briefings.
“On Jan. 23, I was told that there could be a virus coming in but it was of no real import,” Trump said in a recent interview with Fox News. “In other words, it wasn’t, ‘Oh, we’ve got to do something, we’ve got to do something.’ It was a brief conversation and it was only on Jan. 23.”
Sanner did offer limited information in that briefing, an official said, and she compared the virus to SARS, a less contagious coronavirus from China that was more quickly contained. Former officials defended her, saying that the comparison served to help the president understand the threat.
Other intelligence officials also noted that public health officials, not spy agencies, were best positioned to sound early warnings about the pandemic.
By February, the intelligence agency warnings were more in line with the increasingly dire predictions of the National Security Council staff and the public health officials. But unlike his aggressive move in January barring travel from China, Trump later hesitated to act, ignoring increasingly strident warnings from officials who pressed for stronger steps as the threat became clear.