Wednesday, September 12, 2012

White House Admits Obama Skips Most Intelligence Briefings


White House Admits Obama Skips Most Intelligence Briefings

Tuesday, 11 Sep 2012 01:26 PM
By Martin Gould
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President Barack Obama has missed more than half of his daily intelligence briefings since he came into power, a new report shows.

Obama has been to less than 44 percent of the vital meetings, the White House admits, with his attendance reaching a low spot towards the end of 2011 and the start of this year.

His predecessor, George W, Bush made a point of having the meetings six days a week, and attending as many as possible, the American Enterprise Institute fellow, Marc Thiessen reports in the Washington Post.

Obama’s attendance figures were prepared by the conservative Government Accountability Institute, and were not disputed by the White House. At one point he was attending fewer than two meetings out of five.

National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told Thiessen that Obama’s attendance at the meetings was “not particularly interesting or useful,” as he received written daily briefings. “The president gets the information he needs from the intelligence community every day,” Vietor said.

However, in January, the Post published an article, in which security officials stressed the importance of the daily meetings. “One regular participant in the roughly 500 Oval Office sessions during Obama’s presidency said the meetings show a president consistently participating in an exploration of foreign policy and intelligence issues,” that piece said.

Thiessen’s Op-Ed says that the president’s personal attendance at the briefings “is enormously important both for the president and those who prepare the brief.”

“For the president, the meeting is an opportunity to ask questions of the briefers, probe assumptions and request additional information,” Thiessen writes.

“For those preparing the brief, meeting with the president on a daily basis gives them vital, direct feedback from the commander in chief about what is on his mind, how they can be more responsive to his needs, and what information he may have to feed back into the intelligence process.”

Thiessen adds, “This process cannot be replicated on paper.”


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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

He certainly isn't contributing any intelligence to the meetings, so why attend ?

He's going to need more money to attend meetings if he has to skip playing golf or basketball.

Anonymous said...

Why attend when the puppet master that has a gun to his head, is calling the shots?

THIS SPEAKS VOLUMES to what is really going on! Listen up!

Anonymous said...

So now we have an ignoramus that spends most of his time playing golf, campaigning and taking expensive vacations to Hawaii. I say we send the Obama's packing.

Dan said...

Don't you know that there are people on his staff that can handle any situation!

With Bush on 9/11 he could NOT be Bothered with the Terrorist Attacks when a few dozen school children needed to be read to!

So in the Same Manner Obama can go play golf or go on vacation 30 weeks out of the year and have his staff handle the problems, but then he can prepare to make movies in January!