One wouldn’t be surprised if President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, woke up Monday morning checking for tire tracks after his boss effectively threw him under the bus for having “underestimated” the threat posed by the Islamic State militant group.
But Obama’s remarks in a “60 Minutes” interview drew immediate objections from lawmakers and the intelligence community.
In the interview, Obama was asked how the Islamic State was able to gain so much territory. “Our head of the intelligence community Jim Clapper has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” the president said.
Clapper previously had admitted that U.S. analysts both underestimated the Islamic State, or ISIS, and “overestimated” the ability of the Iraqi army to fight them.
But sources say Obama nevertheless was looped in on the rise of ISIS for a while.