Why Did No One Listen To CIA Predictions Of Disaster In Vietnam

Source: Vanity Fair

James A Warren, Daily Beast: The CIA Predicted Disaster in Vietnam. Why Did No One Listen?

President Trump is famous for ignoring the advice and expertise of advisers who tell him something he doesn’t want to hear. But he is not the first president to spurn good counsel.

No American president—no chief executive of a Western democratic country—has displayed so much open disdain for the professional intelligence services of his own government as Donald J. Trump. He’s repeatedly disparaged authoritative CIA analyses that concluded Russia meddled with the 2016 election. He ignores his own intelligence officials’ assessments of the dangers of global warming. Just last month, when Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told Congress that North Korea shows no signs of dismantling its nukes, and that the Iran nuclear deal was working just fine, Trump struck back, just as he always does when reality intrudes on his dream world. “The intelligence people seem to be extremely passive when it comes to the dangers of Iran,” he tweeted. “They are wrong... Perhaps the intelligence people should go back to school.”

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WNU Editor: I recall seeing years ago a documentary on Russian TV that Soviet intelligence told the Kremlin that their occupation of Afghanistan was going to end up as a disaster, but the leadership chose to ignore them. I think in both cases we had a situation where the leadership of both nations were focused on the "big picture" .... falling dominoes from Washington, and having a critical ally for Moscow in this part of Asia. And while both governments expected a bloody conflict, they calculated that the consequences of not becoming involved would be worse. Both Washington and Moscow were wrong. They miscalculated on the resolve of the people they were fighting, and they certainly miscalculated public support for these wars.



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