This is a tale of two intelligence failures. The first: in hostile, unforgiving Afghanistan, a failure to foresee what would unfold when US-led forces began to leave. It’s been much commented on.
The second failure, just as huge, gets less coverage because it involves spies who mark their own homework. America’s mighty civilian army of political pundits, suave in the studio, ruthless in the restaurant, utterly lost the plot when it came to a relatively simple piece of need-to-know Humint, to use a term they might in their breathless reportage. They failed to notice that Joe Biden is, for better or worse, his own man.
More than that: a man with a history, a character, an entire political demeanour that leads to August 31 and