President Barack Obama has attended only 42.1 percent of his daily intelligence briefings — and that could be dangerous for the security of the United States, according to retired four-star US Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and NSA.
"It opens you up," Hayden said Tuesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
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The Government Accountability Institute's finding came after a study of Obama's 2,079 days in office through Sept. 29, 2014.
In a "60 Minutes" interview on Sunday, Obama blamed the rise of the Islamic State on faulty data from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
"I was President Obama's CIA chief for three weeks waiting for Director [Leon] Panetta to be confirmed. He had a different style than President [George W.] Bush," Hayden said.
"President Bush learned and developed his ideas in the exchange, in the conversation. President Obama just by personality and choice prefers to learn in the reading and in the reflection.
"So just naturally you can tell early on that President Obama just wasn't going to do those morning briefings the way President Bush did religiously six days a week … That style does make the system the president and the intelligence guy more vulnerable to what happened here."
Hayden added that a president's particular style — and a lack of participation — can cause problems.
"What we have here is an example where the president's written intelligence reports could be read as reinforcing what it was he wanted to believe, which was these guys are still the JV and not as big a problem," he said.
"Since you didn't have the human exchange, you could never break that cycle."
The Government Accountability Institute, which monitored Obama's briefings, is a watchdog non-profit organization.
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