“People don’t like to tell him bad news"

This much is clear, after speaking with both past and present senior administration officials: no one was really in charge, so no one knew for sure how bad the overall picture was. What’s more, and—perhaps most telling—no one wanted to even hint to the president that this techno-savvy administration possibly had a website stuck in, say, 1995. “People don’t like to tell him bad news,” says an ex-White House staffer. “Part of it is the no-drama culture.”

Oh, that. The infamous no-drama Obama credo: no panic, no drama. “No drama is attractive to people, except there are times when people actually should light their hair on fire,” says one former senior administration official. “That would have been a very good thing.”

Indeed. People who have served in top jobs at the White House seem to agree on one thing: a president who wants to get at the truth has to understand the extent of his own isolation. And then establish a zone of immunity for truth-tellers.

That, of course, presumes that the top staff inside the White House knew the full truth. And that probably wasn’t the case. Again, you ask, how can that be? Answer: the operation resembled the proverbial blind-man-and-the-elephant parable: everyone seemed to touch a part of it, but no one could really see the whole picture, or disaster coming right at them.