Obama has had accurate intelligence about ISIS since BEFORE the 2012 election, says administration insider
- A national security staffer in the Obama administration said
the president has been seeing 'highly accurate predictions' about the
rise of the ISIS terror army since 'before the 2012 election'
- Obama insisted in his campaign speeches that year that America was safe and al-Qaeda was 'on the run'
- The president said during Sunday's '60 Minutes' program that his Director of National Intelligence had conceded he underestimated ISIS
- But
the administration aide insisted that Obama's advisers gave him
actionable information that sat and gathered dust for more than a year
- 'He knew what was at stake,' the aide said of the president, and 'he knew where all the moving pieces were'
- Obama
takes daily intelligence briefings in writing, he explained, because no
one will be able to testify about warning the president in person about
threats that the White House doesn't act on
Published:
16:22 EST, 29 September 2014
|
Updated:
17:42 EST, 29 September 2014
President
Barack Obama's intelligence briefings have provided him with specific
information since before he won re-election in 2012 about the growing
threat of the terror group now known alternatively as ISIS and ISIL, an
administration insider told MailOnline on Monday.
'Unless
someone very senior has been shredding the president's daily briefings
and telling him that the dog ate them, highly accurate predictions about
ISIL have been showing up in the Oval Office since before the 2012
election,' said a national security staffer in the Obama administration
who is familiar with the content of intelligence briefings.
The
staffer declined to share anything specific about the content of those
briefings, citing his need to maintain a security clearance.
But 'it's true,' he said, 'that the [intelligence] community was sending pretty specific intel up to us.'
'We were seeing specific threat assessments and many of them have panned out exactly as we were told they would.'
+7
Too little, too late? American-led
coalition airstrikes against targets near Aleppo, Syriaare welcome
relief but don't change tough questions about when the White House knew
ISIS had become a genocidal terror army
While ISIS claims it is plotting
attacks on US and European targets, President Barack Obama says his
intelligence chiefs failed to tell him how dire the threat was all along
Obama campaigned in 2012 while US
intelligence services provided him with specific information about the
moves and threats of militants who would later declare themselves a
state as ISIS
The aide said he is familiar with some of the material regarding the Middle East that reaches Obama's desk.
In
a '60 Minutes' interview that aired Sunday, the president singled out
James Clapper, his director of national intelligence, for blame in
failing to understand the significance of the threat posed by the terror
army that calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.
'Our
head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper,' Obama said, 'has
acknowledged that, I think, they underestimated what had been taking
place in Syria.'
That finger-pointing, MailOnline's source said, is not sitting well in the White House.
'It's starting to affect morale around here,' he said.
'Any
time you're hired by a boss to advise him about what to do in a
high-stakes area, and he ignores you for a long time, it's going to gnaw
at you.'
And
choosing a fall guy, he said, has a smell of desperation about it since
the president was warned long ago what could happen if ISIS, formerly
known in the West as Al-Qaeda In Iraq, were left alone to fester
following a U.S. military withdrawal.
The
last American boots on the ground were airlifted from Iraq in December
2011. In the months that followed, he explained, U.S. intelligence
services compiled detailed information about what the groups he called
'bad guys' were doing to take advantage of the sudden power vacuum.
And
those briefings were specific about both the breadth of ISIS's aims and
their ability to run roughshod over large swaths of two countries.
There's 'no way' the president should blame the alphabet-soup of intelligence agencies for what resulted, the aide said.
'He had enough to go on ... He knew what was at stake. He knew where all the moving pieces were.'
'By February [2014] we had generals basically reading out their memos to Congress,' he added, referring to testimony from Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Flynn
predicted ISIS 'probably will attempt to take territory in Iraq and
Syria to exhibit its strength in 2014.' The Islamist terror group had
already seized Fallujah and Ramadi, he said, had the 'ability to
concurrently maintain multiple safe havens in Syria.'
By the time Flynn spoke on Capitol Hill, Congress had already heard the story at least once before.
Assistant
Secretary of State Brett McGurk told a House Foreign Affairs
subcommittee in November 2013 that ISIS had been militarily active all
year because of 'a permissive operating environment due to inherent
weaknesses of Iraqi security forces, poor operational tactics, and
popular grievances, which remain unaddressed.'
'It
has also benefited from a sanctuary across the porous border in Syria,
control of lucrative facilities there, such as oil wells, and regular
movement of weapons and fighters between Syria and Iraq,' McGurk said.
Is an air campaign enough? Obama is
sending planes like these Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles over targets in
Northern Iraq and Syria, but his enthusiasm for defeating the loathed
Islamist radicals is late in coming if he has been briefed about them
for more than two years
Under the bus: Obama told the '60
Minutes' program on Sunday that 'our head of the intelligence community,
Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that, I think, they underestimated what
had been taking place in Syria'
Asked
Monday whether the president heard that early warning and found it
credible, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told an ABC News
reporter that 'nobody could predict ... the (lack of) willingness of the
Iraqi security forces to stand up and fight for their own country.'
But MailOnline's source said that even McGurk's warning bells were old news in the White House.
The president, he said, was hearing information about ISIS 'long before that. It goes back to the autumn of 2012.'
Al-Qaeda
in Iraq, he said, had already begun to metamorphose into ISIS before
Obama ran for president the first time. In 2006 the group's Mujahideen
Shura Council declared an Islamic 'state' in western and central Iraq, a
development U.S. military intelligence was aware of since they were
stationed 'in country.'
By the late autumn of that year the nascent self-proclaimed Sunni country was organized and holding open-air military parades.
President
Obama ordered America's military to pack up and return home at the end
of 2011. By that time, the would-be nation ISIS's goals had exploded to
encompass controlling land in Syria. And its tactical toolbox had grown
to include the kind of genocidal preferences that ISIS has showed in
2013 and 2014.
While
the U.S. officially left no residual military force in Iraq, the aide
told MailOnline, small contingents of Special Operators and intelligence
assets did remain behind. And the information they provided became part
of the president's briefings in the months that followed – right in the
midst of presidential campaign season.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Shots across the
bow: The president is seeing significant pushback now from members of
the intel and national security communities who resent the White House
ignoring their warning for years
Still,
Obama repeatedly claimed in his campaign speeches that his
administration had left Middle Eastern terror groups hamstrung and
hurting.
'Four
years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq – and we did,' he said
during a Sept. 13, 2012 speech in Colorado. 'I said we’d wind down the
war in Afghanistan – and we are.'
'And while a new tower rises above the New York skyline, al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat and Osama bin Laden is dead.'
Those words came two days after a terror attack that left a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans dead in Benghazi, Libya.
The
administration later claimed he was referring to 'al-Qaeda core,' the
Pakistan-based mother ship once helped by Osama bin Laden. But ISIS's
roots as an al-Qaeda faction now make Obama's pronouncements look
questionable.
Since
the president's CBS interview aired Sunday night, a few intrepid
whistle-blowers have poked their heads above Washington's parapets to
disagree with his claim that his intelligence advisers failed to
pinpoint the growing ISIS threat.
One former senior Pentagon aide told The Daily Beast that 'either the president doesn't read the intelligence he’s getting or he’s bulls***ting.'
Like that former official, MailOnline's source requested anonymity.
He
echoed the Pentagon veteran's concerns about how the president digests
the information that Clapper and others distill for him on a daily
basis.
'It's
pretty well-known that the president hasn’t taken in-person
intelligence briefings with any regularity since the early days of
2009,' the aide said. 'He gets them in writing.'
'And
it's well-understood why. No one sits and watches him read them, and no
one can come back later and tell Congress in a closed session that "I
told the president this specific thing was likely to happen".'
ISIS, which has its roots in Al-Qaeda
In Iraq, is a 31,000-strong terror army that has seized massive land
areas in Iraq and Syria and now occupies about one-third of both
House
Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican,
said late Monday in a statement that U.S. intelligence agencies have
'specifically warned' for 'over a year' that ISIS 'was taking advantage
of the situation in Syria to recruit members and provoke violence that
could spill into Iraq and the rest of the region.'
In
2013, he said, his committee 'formally pressed the administration for
action to address the terrorist threat present in Syria.'
'We
all knew that former Iraqi Prime Minster Maliki had mismanaged his
military and gutted the ISF (Iraqi Security Forces) of its top
commanders. Indeed, over a year ago, our Arab League partners sought
U.S. support and leadership for a coordinated effort to address the
extremist threat in eastern Syria.'
'This was not an Intelligence Community failure,' Rogers said, 'but a failure by policy makers to confront the threat.'
Arizona
Republican Sen. John McCain told a CNN audience on Monday that he was
'puzzled by the president, some of his statements. ... We predicted what
would happen if we didn’t leave (a) residual force' in Iraq.
'The intelligence people are pushing back hard,' McCain observed.
'We
predicted this and watched it, it was like watching a train wreck, and
warning every step of the way that this was happening.'
