President Barack Obama has only attended roughly 40 percent of his daily intelligence briefings throughout his presidency, according to the Government Accountability Institute (GAI).
According to the GAI report released Tuesday:
In September 2014, the Government Accountability Institute updated an analysis of how much time President Barack Obama has spent attending his Presidential Daily Briefs (PDBs), as recorded on the White House official calendar and Politico’s comprehensive calendar. The updated study covered the president’s first 2,079 days in office, running from January 20, 2009 through September 29, 2014. Of those, President Obama attended a total of 875 Presidential Daily Briefs for an overall 42.09% attendance rate.
The report also found President Obama’s attendance has declined slightly in his second term from 42.43 percent to 41.26 percent.
In 2014, the president has only attended 37.5 percent of his briefings. Obama attended only eight in August, despite the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS).
In an interview with 60 Minutes, Obama recently blamed the intelligence community for underestimating the terrorist threat.