Ken Klippenstein, a Washington correspondent for The Nation, elaborated on an article he wrote that was published Monday saying U.S. military and intelligence were keenly aware of the consequences of the coronavirus months before the administration took action.
“It described a novel influenza pandemic, but it also anticipated a lot of the problems we’re seeing now in terms of the response as well,” Klippenstein said on Hill TV’s Rising on Tuesday.
“For example, lack of ventilators, lack of facial mask, problems with response generally and I was just really amazed at how granular the intelligence community and the military’s understanding of what would come to pass would be and how that contrasts with the president’s repeated assertions that this is a black swan event.”
Klippenstein said that medical staff in U.S. military and defense agencies are often overridden when they produce reports such as those he obtained for his article.
He said those officials told him the current administration and previous ones have a history of “putting this issues on the backburner and not give them the same urgency they might give to threats coming from foreign adversaries.”
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