I recently read a book on Richard Sorge, a German Communist who pretended to be a Nazi and spied on the Japanese for Moscow. He had acquired a large amount of information indicating that Germany was preparing for an invasion of the Soviet Union, and was attempting to secure Japanese support for this invasion. His reports were viewed by Stalin and his cabinet, but Stalin refused to believe that his good buddy Hitler would betray him (I believe he referred to Sorge as "a little shit"). This was a bad decision.
It's even worse than that- Barton Whaley's definitive history of pre-war Soviet intelligence, Codeword "Barbarossa", identifies no less than 84 separate warnings Stalin had.
I'm looking for historical examples of "flinching away," so I can illustrate the concept to others and talk about motivated cognition and leaving a line of retreat and so on.
The ideal example would be one of motivated skepticism with grave consequences. Like, a military commander who shied away from believing certain reports because they implied something huge and scary was about to happen, and then the huge and scary thing happened and caused great damage. Something like that.
What examples can you think of?