According to a new account from the CIA, Donald Trump's fact-free approach to the presidency created unprecedented challenges for intelligence officials who were responsible for briefing him.
The 45th president's chaotic and freewheeling style, coupled with his disinclination to read anything in front of him, resulted in a crucial security update including information about potential threats to the US, which will be delivered more frequently to Vice-President Mike Pence, according to the report.
By the middle of Trump's term in office his briefings were reduced to two weekly sessions of 45 minutes each. After the deadly insurrection of January 6th, the briefings were stopped altogether, and President Trump urged his supporters to march on the US Capitol in a failed attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden.
The analysis came in a 40-sided unclassified update to the CIA's Getting to Know the President, a publication that chronicles efforts to brief presidents-elect through transition periods and office for every administration since 1952.
The Trump transition was the most difficult for the intelligence community IC in its historical experience with briefing new presidents, the new chapter was posted to the CIA website.
Trump was like Nixon, suspicious and insecure about the intelligence process, but unlike Nixon in the way he reacted. Trump attacked the IC publicly instead of shutting it out. Nixon, who resigned after the Watergate scandal, refused to accept any intelligence from the CIA and received briefings from trusted insiders, such as his national security adviser and later secretary of state, Henry Kissinger.
Trump regularly sailed intelligence officials and famously chose to believe the Russian president Vladimir Putin, over agencies including the CIA, which concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 election.
The CIA report's author, retired career intelligence officer John L Helgerson, said briefers had only limited success in their mission to deliver timely and relevant intelligence to Trump and establish a working relationship with him.
Pence was an assiduous six-day a-week reader who tried to keep Trump focused. The vice-president urged briefers to lean forward on maps in graphics-heavy presentations much shorter than those presented to Trump's predecessors, and would sometimes ask leading questions during joint sessions with Trump so that the president would hear his concerns about Pence's efforts were largely unsuccessful, Helgerson suggests. According to the CIA report, James Clapper said Trump was prone to fly off on tangents and that Trump was fact-free evidence doesn't cut it with him. Helgerson writes: Trump preferred to have the briefer take the lead and summarise the key points and important items from the days since they had last had a session. The PDB was published every day but because Trump received a briefing only two or three times a week, he relied on the briefer to summarize the significance of the most important issues. The subjects that Trump paid most attention were China and developments involving Russia and Ukraine. The first of the two administrations impeachments was for pressing Ukraine to investigate Biden, then his likely 2020 election opponent. He was also investigated for colluding with Russia.
The CIA report states that a number of subjects and areas of the world were notable by their relative absence. Concerning Europe, only Nato budget issues, Turkey and approaching elections in France and Germany stimulated a lot of discussion. Almost all of the Latin America, Africa and south-east Asia were not given attention. He publicly criticised the outgoing directors of national intelligence and the CIA, and disparaged the substantive work and integrity of the intelligence agencies. The IC was in for a difficult time from the outset.