If reports are true, president Donald Trump had notoriously little interest in either intelligence or briefings. Beth Sanner is the former senior Central Intelligence Agency officer whose job between 2017 and 2019 was to daily provide him with both.

I had expected to meet someone trained to resist interrogation. But I don’t get that far. “Ground rules are, no Trump.” She looks at me rather gravely. “It’s for something more important than either of us, and that’s the relationship between the president and their briefer in the future.”