John A. Gentry

Well, it turned out that was not true.

It turned out within about three days, the head of the military element of the Defense Intelligence Agency at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the people who follow intelligence reports that could affect troops deployed.

So the commander there, a medical doctor, colonel,

went public and he said that, no, this never happened.

We in the intelligence community did not brief the president on this.

That was confirmed by the Pentagon.

And so now Bob Woodward got involved in this.

And it turns out, according to Woodward,

That, in fact, what the briefers had done was actually tell President Trump that the story about this new emerging virus from China was really not very significant at all.

Don't worry about it.

So here you had a dual disinformation operation.

On the one hand, Trump allegedly had blood on his hands that he should not have been blamed for.

And secondly, the intelligence community claimed much better performance than it actually delivered.

That was the allegation in this one case.

My own view is, and I think the record is strong, that the PDB briefers generally, and these go back to the Kennedy administration,

these people generally have been pretty good.

But something has happened.

This is 2020, and it's Trump.

So what had been a very, really a fine organization, a fine effort, suddenly changed.

So again, another question, why in the world, why and how did this change in collective attitudes occur?