Important things that weren't recognized by the wider populace as important things? Do you have citations? Even for much more mundane things, governments routinely fail to either notice them, or to act once they have noticed. Eg., Chamberlain didn't notice that Hitler wanted total control of Europe, even though he said so in his publicly-available book Mein Kampf. Stalin didn't notice that Hitler was about to invade, even though he had numerous warnings from his subordinates.