Trump, for example, asserted in June that because of his administration's negotiations with Pyongyang, there is "no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea." U.S. intelligence officials said that there is no such view among analysts.

Trump accused Iran of violating a 2015 nuclear agreement with the United States and other major powers despite assessments by U.S. spy agencies and allies that Tehran was in compliance. More recently, Trump has claimed that his decision to abandon the nuclear deal had forced Iran into regional retreat and led to turnover in the top ranks of its government. "They're a much, much different group of leaders," he said in June.

But CIA assessments do not describe any such shift, officials said, noting that Iran's religious rulers remain firmly entrenched and that the country continues to uses proxies to fuel conflict across the Middle East.

Perhaps most notably, Trump has repeatedly undercut the agency's assessment that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was a contributing columnist for The Post.

The agency reached that conclusion with "medium to high confidence," terms that reflect a high degree of certainty. But Trump has described the CIA as having vague "feelings" on Mohammed's culpability, and when pressed on whether he thought the crown prince gave the order, said, "Maybe he did, maybe he didn't."

By contrast, senior lawmakers emerged from a session last week with CIA Director Gina Haspel saying the case against Mohammed was overwhelming. "There's not a smoking gun -- there's a smoking saw," Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said, referring to the alleged dismemberment of Khashoggi's corpse. [...]

One official said CIA employees were staggered by Trump's performance during a news conference with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin in Helsinki earlier this year in which Trump treated denials by Putin as so "strong and powerful" that they offset the conclusions of the CIA.

"There was this gasp" among those watching at CIA, the official said. "You literally had people in panic mode watching it at Langley. On all floors. Just shock."

The disorienting impact of such statements has rippled beyond CIA headquarters even to stations overseas, where intelligence operatives have struggled to comprehend Trump's characterization of developments abroad.

"I think you definitely do see a bewilderment and a concern over the president's conduct and relationship to the intelligence community," said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who frequently visits with senior CIA officials on overseas trips.

Trump's disagreements are not driven by "questions about their methodology or differing interpretations of the same facts," Schiff said. "He wants to tell an alternate narrative."