AFGHANISTAN/FOREIGN POLICY/INTELLIGENCE/NORTH KOREA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “President Trump lashed out at the nation’s intelligence agencies on Wednesday [1-30-19], accusing them of being ‘passive and naive’ about the dangers posed by Iran, and defending his handling of Afghanistan, North Korea and the Islamic State. A day after the agencies issued their annual assessment of global threats — warning of malefactors like China and the Islamic State — Mr. Trump reignited a long-simmering feud with his own government, reacting as if the report was a threat to him personally…Normally, the ‘Worldwide Threat Assessment’ is an annual bureaucratic exercise, a dispassionate survey of the threats facing the United States — some longstanding, some new — that the White House accepts without much comment.”
–Mark Landler, “An Angry Trump Pushes Back Against His Own ‘Naive’ Intelligence Officials,” The New York Times online, January 30, 2019