Sunday, June 11, 2017

Do those who prepare the PDBs, labor in vain, to penetrate the Presidential bubble?


Some Presidents (like Obama) have been very open to detailed factual analysis from the diplomatic corps and the  IC, whereas others (like Clinton) pretty much blew them off.

As to the current situation -- I have nothing to say.  But again, a niblet of history.  The time is October, 1961:

[The US ambassador to Vietnam] concluded that Kennedy relied much more on news reports  and the impressions of intimates, than he did on the yards of cables he sent from the embassy  each day.
-- Richard Reeves, President Kennedy:  Profile of Power (1993), p. 240

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