Former top-ranking CIA officer: Obama has failed to defend U.S.

President Barack Obama has failed in his obligation to defend the United States from terrorism, a former top-ranking CIA official supporting Donald Trump said Friday, in the wake of the latest terrorist attack in France that killed at least 80 people, including two Americans.

Gary Berntsen, who served in the CIA's directorate of operations from 1982 to 2005 and endorsed Donald Trump in February, remarked on "Fox & Friends" that the Islamic State will continue to perpetrate attacks as it continues to lose ground in the Middle East. No terrorist group has come forward to claim responsibility for the Nice attack as of Friday morning.


"They also have chemical weapons. They seize those chemical weapons from the Syrians. So I would see sort of an end of days scenario for them, that they will increase the lethality and the terror and they use those in the region. Less likely against us, but this is going to get very, very ugly," Berntsen said. "The president of the United States, as Newt Gingrich had stated, has failed in his responsibilities to defend the United States. He's lost control of the Middle East. It's in flames. And that's what he will leave when he leaves office."

Addressing Hillary Clinton's comments to Bill O'Reilly on Thursday night, Berntsen denounced her assessment that there is not "enough intelligence cooperation" between other countries' agencies in Europe and elsewhere.

"What a bunch of nonsense. We have had liaison relationships with our European partners since World War II. These are deep relationships with significant cooperations. We have assisted them with funding at times in different ways," Berntsen said. "Look, the problem is the Europeans themselves don't commit enough resources to the problem, and the Europeans are overwhelmed by refugees and very large and growing populations that they're not covering."

"It's not a failure of cooperation, Mrs. Clinton. It's a failure of our European partners to step up to the plate and commit the resources they need, as they're failing to do on NATO, as well. They're not reaching their 2 percent, and you didn't hold them to account when you were in the job of secretary of state," he said. "This is just a talking point to avoid action."

Obama should declare war on the Islamic State "so that the people of the United States will recognize that sacrifice and commitment is needed to destroy ISIS," he said, invoking Article V of the NATO charter, as well as getting "Europeans to step up their intel machines, their programs, commit larger resources, and we all have to recognize this is going to be a minimum a decade fight."

"Even if we destroy ISIS, they'll cut their beards off and some may integrate back into Al Qaeda," Berntsen said. "It's Islamic jihadist terrorism we're fighting."