During a Monday press conference, President Barack Obama dismissed concerns and congressional inquiries into the Benghazi attack that claimed the lives of four Americans including U.S. Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens.
“And suddenly three days ago this gets spun up as if there’s something new to the story,” Obama told reporters. “There’s no there there.”
Obama added: “Keep in mind by the way these so-called talking points that were prepared for Susan Rice, five, six days after the event occurred, pretty much matched the assessments that I was receiving at that time in my presidential daily briefing.”
The careful parsing of Obama’s statement indicates the Administration’s sensitivity to the president’s lackluster attendance record on daily intelligence briefings. As Breitbart News exclusively reported the day after the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack, Obama did not attend his intelligence briefings (known officially as the presidential daily brief, or PDB) for the week leading up to the attacks.
Indeed, the last time the White House calendar publicly confirmed Obama attending his presidential daily briefing was September 5th. (The White House did not provide an official public calendar for September 8-10.)
A report by the Government Accountability Institute found that in his first 1,225 days in office, Obama only attended 43.8% of his daily intelligence briefings.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.