It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
The notion that Obama has skipped his intelligence briefings was promoted by a right-leaning research group called the Government Accountability Institute, which published a report detailing that the president’s daily calendar shows Obama receiving an in-person briefing on the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) 43.8 percent of his time in office. (The percentage dropped from a high of 48.8 percent in 2010 to 38.2 percent through May of 2012.)
That column also includes the White House’s response — that Obama reads his PDB every day, but he does not always require an in-person briefing every day. The White House argument is that this is how Obama structured his White House operation, so it is specious to say he has “skipped” a meeting that was not actually scheduled.
"Obama reads the PDB ahead of time and comes to the morning meeting with questions. Intelligence briefers are there to answer those questions, expand on a point or raise a new issue. [National Intelligence Director James] Clapper may be present once or twice a week, but most often one of his deputies is in attendance in case an intelligence community issue arises."
When Pincus refers to the “morning meeting,” he is describing a regular national security meeting that is held every day at 9:30 a.m. with the president’s top advisers. In his article, he cites a meeting that took place on Jan. 13, 2012, that included discussion of the PDB with one of Clapper’s deputies. Yet the White House public schedule for that day lists no such meeting — and no PDB meeting. So the entire controversy appears based on a semantic distinction — or perhaps inaccurate White House schedules.
As it turns out, no president does it the exact same way. Under the standards of this ad, Republican icon Ronald Reagan skipped his intelligence briefings 99 percent of the time.
originally posted by: Kettu
Trump doesn't need the Pentagon or anyone. He has his "own sources" the best sources. Amazing sources. They do intelligence so well. People tell me -- and I know a lot of people -- that Trump's intelligence people are fantastic at intelligence.