Benghazi and related matters

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/12/29/i-read-this-report-i-was-really-incredulous-ex-cia-analyst-rips-nyt-benghazi-report/

[G M]

What do we make of this?

The spirit of Walter Duranty is still strong at the slimes.

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No Qaeda Link Seen in Benghazi Attack; Interviews Show Militia and Insults to Islam Fueled Assault

The September 2012 attack on the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans was led by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was accelerated in part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.

Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault.

A fuller accounting of the attacks suggests lessons for the United States that go well beyond Libya. It shows the risks of expecting American aid in a time of desperation to buy durable loyalty, and the difficulty of discerning friends from allies of convenience in a culture shaped by decades of anti-Western sentiment. Both challenges now hang over the American involvement in Syria’s civil conflict.

The attack also suggests that, as the threats from local militants around the region have multiplied, an intensive focus on combating Al Qaeda may distract from safeguarding American interests.

READ MORE »
http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/benghazi?emc=edit_na_20131228


A Deadly Mix in Benghazi
By David D. Kirkpatrick
December 28, 2013

Benghazi, Libya

A boyish-looking American diplomat was meeting for the first time with the Islamist leaders of eastern Libya’s most formidable militias.

It was Sept. 9, 2012. Gathered on folding chairs in a banquet hall by the Mediterranean, the Libyans warned of rising threats against Americans from extremists in Benghazi. One militia leader, with a long beard and mismatched military fatigues, mentioned time in exile in Afghanistan. An American guard discreetly touched his gun.

“Since Benghazi isn’t safe, it is better for you to leave now,” Mohamed al-Gharabi, the leader of the Rafallah al-Sehati Brigade, later recalled telling the Americans. “I specifically told the Americans myself that we hoped that they would leave Benghazi as soon as possible.”

Yet as the militiamen snacked on Twinkie-style cakes with their American guests, they also gushed about their gratitude for President Obama’s support in their uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. They emphasized that they wanted to build a partnership with the United States, especially in the form of more investment. They specifically asked for Benghazi outlets of McDonald’s and KFC.

The diplomat, David McFarland, a former congressional aide who had never before met with a Libyan militia leader, left feeling agitated, according to colleagues. But the meeting did not shake his faith in the prospects for deeper involvement in Libya. Two days later, he summarized the meeting in a cable to Washington, describing a mixed message from the militia leaders.

Despite “growing problems with security,” he wrote, the fighters wanted the United States to become more engaged “by ‘pressuring’ American businesses to invest in Benghazi.”

The cable, dated Sept. 11, 2012, was sent over the name of Mr. McFarland’s boss, Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

Later that day, Mr. Stevens was dead, killed with three other Americans in Benghazi in the most significant attack on United States property in 11 years, since Sept. 11, 2001.
The Diplomatic Mission on Sept. 11, 2012

Four Americans died in attacks on a diplomatic mission and a C.I.A. compound in Benghazi.

As the attacks begin, there are seven Americans at the mission, including five armed diplomatic security officers; the information officer, Sean Smith; and Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Both Mr. Smith and Ambassador Stevens die in the attack.

The cable was a last token of months of American misunderstandings and misperceptions about Libya and especially Benghazi, many fostered by shadows of the earlier Sept. 11 attack. The United States waded deeply into post-Qaddafi Libya, hoping to build a beachhead against extremists, especially Al Qaeda. It believed it could draw a bright line between friends and enemies in Libya. But it ultimately lost its ambassador in an attack that involved both avowed opponents of the West and fighters belonging to militias that the Americans had taken for allies.

Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault. The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.

A fuller accounting of the attacks suggests lessons for the United States that go well beyond Libya. It shows the risks of expecting American aid in a time of desperation to buy durable loyalty, and the difficulty of discerning friends from allies of convenience in a culture shaped by decades of anti-Western sentiment. Both are challenges now hanging over the American involvement in Syria’s civil conflict.

The attack also suggests that, as the threats from local militants around the region have multiplied, an intensive focus on combating Al Qaeda may distract from safeguarding American interests.

In this case, a central figure in the attack was an eccentric, malcontent militia leader, Ahmed Abu Khattala, according to numerous Libyans present at the time. American officials briefed on the American criminal investigation into the killings call him a prime suspect. Mr. Abu Khattala declared openly and often that he placed the United States not far behind Colonel Qaddafi on his list of infidel enemies. But he had no known affiliations with terrorist groups, and he had escaped scrutiny from the 20-person C.I.A. station in Benghazi that was set up to monitor the local situation.

Mr. Abu Khattala, who denies participating in the attack, was firmly embedded in the network of Benghazi militias before and afterward. Many other Islamist leaders consider him an erratic extremist. But he was never more than a step removed from the most influential commanders who dominated Benghazi and who befriended the Americans. They were his neighbors, his fellow inmates and his comrades on the front lines in the fight against Colonel Qaddafi.

To this day, some militia leaders offer alibis for Mr. Abu Khattala. All resist quiet American pressure to turn him over to face prosecution. Last spring, one of Libya’s most influential militia leaders sought to make him a kind of local judge.

Fifteen months after Mr. Stevens’s death, the question of responsibility remains a searing issue in Washington, framed by two contradictory story lines.

One has it that the video, which was posted on YouTube, inspired spontaneous street protests that got out of hand. This version, based on early intelligence reports, was initially offered publicly by Susan E. Rice, who is now Mr. Obama’s national security adviser.

The other, favored by Republicans, holds that Mr. Stevens died in a carefully planned assault by Al Qaeda to mark the anniversary of its strike on the United States 11 years before. Republicans have accused the Obama administration of covering up evidence of Al Qaeda’s role to avoid undermining the president’s claim that the group has been decimated, in part because of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The investigation by The Times shows that the reality in Benghazi was different, and murkier, than either of those story lines suggests. Benghazi was not infiltrated by Al Qaeda, but nonetheless contained grave local threats to American interests. The attack does not appear to have been meticulously planned, but neither was it spontaneous or without warning signs.

Mr. Abu Khattala had become well known in Benghazi for his role in the killing of a rebel general, and then for declaring that his fellow Islamists were insufficiently committed to theocracy. He made no secret of his readiness to use violence against Western interests. One of his allies, the leader of Benghazi’s most overtly anti-Western militia, Ansar al-Shariah, boasted a few months before the attack that his fighters could “flatten” the American Mission. Surveillance of the American compound appears to have been underway at least 12 hours before the assault started.

The violence, though, also had spontaneous elements. Anger at the video motivated the initial attack. Dozens of people joined in, some of them provoked by the video and others responding to fast-spreading false rumors that guards inside the American compound had shot Libyan protesters. Looters and arsonists, without any sign of a plan, were the ones who ravaged the compound after the initial attack, according to more than a dozen Libyan witnesses as well as many American officials who have viewed the footage from security cameras.
The C.I.A. Annex

A 20-person team from the Central Intelligence Agency is in the compound known as the Annex, about a half-mile from the mission, where the security officers Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty are later killed.

The Benghazi-based C.I.A. team had briefed Mr. McFarland and Mr. Stevens as recently as the day before the attack. But the American intelligence efforts in Libya concentrated on the agendas of the biggest militia leaders and the handful of Libyans with suspected ties to Al Qaeda, several officials who received the briefings said. Like virtually all briefings over that period, the one that day made no mention of Mr. Abu Khattala, Ansar al-Shariah or the video ridiculing Islam, even though Egyptian satellite television networks popular in Benghazi were already spewing outrage against it.

Members of the local militia groups that the Americans called on for help proved unreliable, even hostile. The fixation on Al Qaeda might have distracted experts from more imminent threats. Those now look like intelligence failures.

More broadly, Mr. Stevens, like his bosses in Washington, believed that the United States could turn a critical mass of the fighters it helped oust Colonel Qaddafi into reliable friends. He died trying.

[DougMacG]

Just locals, with ties to al Qaida:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/world/middleeast/no-specific-warnings-in-benghazi-attack.html?_r=2&
Three Congressional investigations and a State Department inquiry are now examining the[Benghazi] attack, which American officials said included participants from Ansar al-Shariah, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Muhammad Jamal network, a militant group in Egypt.

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2013/02/communications_with.php
Cairo's Al Yawm al Sabi first published one of the letters from Jamal to Zawahiri. The letter was apparently written in late 2011. The Long War Journal has obtained a translation of the original Al Yawm al Sabi account.

"My Dear Sheikh Abu Muhammad," Jamal begins, referring to Zawahiri by his kunya. Jamal goes on to call Zawahiri an "asset" for Islam and prays for Allah to enable Zawahiri to establish an Islamic state.

Jamal also thanks Allah "for the blessing of communication with my brother and teacher Sheikh Ayman." Jamal says he has greatly desired to see Zawahiri after his release from an Egyptian prison, "so that I can be by your side, which is an honor for me."

Because he was "banned for travel" and his "name was on a list of international terror in more than one Arab country," Jamal says, he could not reach Zawahiri. Jamal even tried, to no avail, to travel using fraudulent documents.

"So I resorted to send another person who was with me in prison," Jamal writes. "Agreement was reached on jihadist action inside Egypt, irrespective of the conditions inside the country. We believed in the necessity of establishing a jihadist entity in Egypt."

Jamal writes that he "encouraged the youths by virtue of my past record to work with you." Somewhat cryptically, Jamal notes that he does not know Zawahiri's "opinion of establishing an effective jihadist organization in Egypt against the Zionist-Crusaders... or exploiting the security vacuum for advocacy and religious media promotion." It is not entirely clear what Jamal means.

Jamal then summarizes his work to date. Jamal's letter reads like a request for additional resources, given all that he has accomplished thus far. Jamal says he had established "solid forces from the cadres we trust here and an advanced base outside Egypt in Libya to take advantage of the conditions in Libya after the revolution." This was done "in order to buy weapons and also attract elements not known in Egypt."

Jamal writes that he formed "groups for us inside Sinai," an especially interesting revelation given that some jihadist groups there have openly proclaimed their allegiance to al Qaeda.

Shortly after he was released from prison in early 2011, Jamal began work. He complains that he "received an amount of money from our brothers in Yemen," a reference to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), "but it was much less than what is required." Zawahiri is "aware" of the "huge amounts of money" needed to purchase arms, set up training camps, move vehicles into the Sinai Peninsula, and "provide for the families of the brothers who work with us."

Transporting small arms and missiles from Libya into Egypt is expensive, Jamal writes. "We point out that part of the strategy of international action relies on heavy weapons like mortars and Grad Missiles." It is therefore necessary for them, Jamal continues, to request assistance from brothers who are either "hard-pressed" or "miserly."
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The worst part of this NY Times - Hillary Cover piece is that with a year of so-called investigations, besides getting it wrong, they don't even try to answer any of the unanswered questions:

(http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/12/the-ny-times-attempt-to-whitewash-benghazi-not-just-wrong-but-futile.php)

Why didn’t Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State, respond to any of Ambassador Chris Stevens’ several requests for increased security? The Times offers no answer to this fundamental question. On the contrary, it sets Stevens up as the principal American expert on the various militias and terrorist groups operating in Libya. Which means that his pleas for more security should have been viewed as highly credible. Stevens obviously was correct when he told Clinton that Benghazi needed better security, yet she ignored his repeated pleas. Why?

Further: Where were Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the night of September 11, 2012, and what orders, if any, did they give? The news media’s lack of curiosity as to what Obama and Clinton were doing during the seven or eight hours that went by while four Americans, including an ambassador, were under attack and ultimately were murdered, is remarkable. If we had a real president or a real Secretary of State, they would have been in control that night, and would have taken responsibility for the decisions they made. Instead, Washington did nothing to try to help the besieged Americans, and no one knows whether either Obama or Clinton ever made any decisions at all, or whether they were off partying somewhere. Or fast asleep.

And finally: Why haven’t the perpetrators of the murders been found and punished? President Obama vowed to find and punish those responsible for the murders of the Americans. One would think that Hillary Clinton, too, would be interested in identifying and punishing those who killed an ambassador who was serving under her. And yet, even though many of those who participated in that night’s carnage have been happy to give interviews to New York Times reporters and others, nothing has been done to bring justice to the perpetrators of the greatest outrage against American honor in recent years.

It is remarkable that the New York Times, with all its resources, cannot come up with an account of the Benghazi disaster that even addresses, let alone satisfactorily explains, the Obama administration’s principal failures.

[DougMacG]

See previous posts in this thread, Eli Lake has probably been the most thorough reporter on this story.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/29/yes-there-is-evidence-linking-al-qaeda-to-benghazi.html

Yes, There IS Evidence Linking al Qaeda to Benghazi

By Eli Lake
December 29th 20133:27 pm

Libyan militants tell the New York Times that al Qaeda is not behind the 2012 Benghazi attack. Some members of Congress have intelligence that says otherwise.

On Sunday, The New York Times published an investigation that concluded al Qaeda played no role in the September 11, 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi. For Democrats, this was welcome news considering the bruising investigations into the attack from Republicans in Congress. The piece was trumpeted by the progressive non-profit, Media Matters in a blast email as “bad news for Benghazi Hoaxers.”

But two members of the House intelligence committee, Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Adam Schiff, told Fox News on Sunday that U.S. intelligence assessments concluded al Qaeda did play a role in the attack. While no Republicans have asserted the Benghazi attacks were planned in a manner similar to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, evidence has emerged in the last year that does show the participation of militias and fighters with known ties to al Qaeda.

Abu Khattala: The Times focuses its reporting on Ahmed Abu Khattala, a militia leader who spoke to reporter David Kirkpatrick, last year and claimed to be at the scene of the Benghazi assault with no apparent worry that he would be abducted or killed by U.S. authorities.  In his piece Sunday, Kirkpatrick fills in the rest of Abu Khattala’s story, revealing that he was a part-time construction worker who was publicly associated with the abduction and murder of a rival militia commander supported by NATO. In interviews with the Times, Abu Khattala denies any connection to al Qaeda. He does however say he admires the group’s vision.  The Times also discloses that Abu Khattala was close to a leader of the militia the U.S. had entrusted to protect its facilities in Benghazi in light of an attack.  But Abu Khattala was by no means the only person who participated in the attack.

    “Sometimes though the intelligence which has the advantage of hearing to people when they don’t know they are being listening to, that can be misleading as well, when people make claims, they boast of things they were not involved in for various purposes.”

The Jamal network:  Some fighters who attacked the U.S. diplomatic compound and CIA annex in Benghazi are believed to be from a group headed by a former top lieutenant to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of al Qaeda. When Egyptian authorities raided the home of Mohammed al-Jamal, who was an operational commander under al-Zawahiri’s terrorist group in the 1990s known as Egyptian Islamic Jihad, it found messages to al Qaeda leadership asking for support and plans to establish training camps and cells in the Sinai, creating a group now known as the Jamal Network. In October, the State Department designated Jamal Network as a terrorist group tied to al Qaeda. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the participation of the network in the Benghazi attacks, and the group’s participation in the attacks has also been acknowledged in the Times. The New York Times Benghazi investigation makes no mention of the Jamal Network in their piece.

What militants say when they think no one is listening. On Fox News Sunday, Schiff, a Democratic member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said the intelligence indicated that al Qaeda did play a role in the attack. The intelligence community knows this, he said, from insights gleaned from eavesdropping on the night of the attack. Speaking of the Times report, Schiff said “they did not have the same access to people who were not aware they were being listened to. They were heavily reliant obviously on people they interviewed who had a reason to provide the story they did.” But Schiff also said sometimes eavesdropping has its limits as well. “Sometimes though the intelligence which has the advantage of hearing to people when they don’t know they are being listening to, that can be misleading as well, when people make claims, they boast of things they were not involved in for various purposes,” he said. The Daily Beast first reported that an intercepted phone conversation from one of the attackers to a person connected to al Qaeda’s north Africa affiliates boasting of the attack. The Times says this intercept was the “only intelligence connecting al Qaeda to the attack,” a claim disputed this weekend by two U.S. intelligence officials. The Times reports the phone call showed the person connected to al Qaeda sounded “astonished,” suggesting he had no prior knowledge of the assault.

Ansar al-Sharia: No one has disputed the participation of a local Islamist militia known as Ansar al-Sharia. The Times describes Ansar al-Sharia in Libya as a group formed in 2012 to protest the support other militias had for elections but an organization separate and distinct from al Qaeda. An August 2012 report commissioned by a Pentagon terrorism research organization found that Ansar al-Sharia “has increasingly embodied al Qaeda’s presence in Libya, as indicated by its active social-media propaganda, extremist discourse, and hatred of the West, especially the United States.” Not everyone however agreed. As The Daily Beast reported last year, Ansar al-Sharia was not a priority for U.S. intelligence collection in Libya  The Times also drew a distinction between the Benghazi branch of Ansar al-Sharia and the Dernaa branch of the group that was led by a former Guantanamo detainee Sufian Ben Qhumu. Others however see Ansar al-Sharia’s activities in Libya more coordinated with al-Qaeda’s regional affiliates. In October, Tunisia’s Prime Minister told Reuters that “there is a relation between leaders of Ansar al-Sharia, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar al-Sharia in Libya.” The Times also states, “the Republican arguments appear to conflate purely local extremist organizations like Ansar al-Shariah with al Qaeda’s international terrorist network.” On Fox News Sunday Rogers stuck to his guns. “Do they have differences of opinions with al Qaeda core? Yes,” he said. “Do they have affiliations with al Qaeda core? Definitely.”

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/30/intel-community-still-insists-on-al-qaeda-ties-in-/

[DougMacG]

http://m.nationalreview.com/article/367247/times-benghazi-report-convenient-clinton-elliott-abrams

We’ll never know whom the Times thought it important to interview and whom it believed, but we do know that it had no access to the intelligence that members of Congress saw. And we are being told by members of Congress that the embassy staff had it right in saying the video was unimportant, and that there were some al-Qaeda links. So the much-ballyhooed Times story, based on months of reporting, seems to come down to this: Do you believe the intelligence our agencies collected and the reporting of our diplomats on the scene at the time, or do you believe what the New York Times was told by Libyans, many of them Islamic extremists and some of them terrorists, more than a year later?

The answer to that question probably depends on what position you hold in the Hillary Clinton campaign.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2014/01/08/wapo-alqaeda-linked-former-guantanamo-detainee-implicated-in-benghazi-attacks-n1773600?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/09/world/africa/us-to-list-libyan-groups-and-militant-tied-to-benghazi-attack-as-terrorists.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140109&_r=0

[objectivist1]

New Declassified Docs Expose Obama’s Benghazi Lies

Posted By Arnold Ahlert On January 14, 2014 - www.frontpagemag.com

Newly declassified documents reveal that high-ranking members of the Obama administration were aware that the September 11, 2012 assault on the American consulate in Benghazi was a “terrorist attack” only minutes after the battle began. In classified testimony given on June 26, 2013 to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, Gen. Carter Hamm, former head of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) revealed he was the one who broke the news to former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to declassified testimony obtained by Fox News, Hamm testified that he learned about the attack only 15 minutes after it began at 9:42 p.m. Libya time. Thus, the administration’s carefully crafted narrative that the attack was based on a video has once again been revealed for the lie it always was.

“My first call was to General Dempsey, General Dempsey’s office, to say, ‘Hey, I am headed down the hall. I need to see him right away,’” the General told lawmakers. ”I told him what I knew. We immediately walked upstairs to meet with Secretary Panetta.” Hamm characterized the ability to meet with both men so soon after the attack occurred as a fortunate ”happenstance” because “they had the basic information as they headed across for the meeting at the White House.”

That meeting had been pre-scheduled with the president for 5 p.m. EST. A Defense Department (DOD) timeline notes that the meeting occurred one hour and 18 minutes after the attack began, and even as the battle at the consulate was ongoing. The DOD also revealed that an unarmed drone arrived over the battlefield during that time. As both men revealed in subsequent testimony, the meeting with the president lasted approximately 30 minutes — after which they never heard from anyone in the White House again.

Hamm revealed that he met with Panetta and Dempsey when they returned from that session.

Armed Services Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) was the lawmaker who put Hamm on the spot regarding the administration’s video narrative. ”In your discussions with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta, was there any mention of a demonstration, or was all discussion about an attack?” McKeon asked. Hamm characterized the discussion of a demonstration as “peripheral,” but noted that ”at that initial meeting, we knew that a U.S. facility had been attacked and was under attack, and we knew at that point that we had two individuals, Ambassador Stevens and Mr. Smith, unaccounted for.”

Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), an Iraq war veteran and Army reserve officer, pressed the General more forcefully on the nature of his conversation with Panetta and Dempsey. He expressed his concern “that someone in the military would be advising that this was a demonstration” rather than a terrorist attack. Hamm noted their was some “preliminary discussion” of the point, but emphasized that they were aware of what was really going on. “But I think at the command, I personally and I think the command very quickly got to the point that this was not a demonstration, this was a terrorist attack,” he testified. Hamm also reiterated that “with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta, that is the nature of the conversation we had, yes, sir.”

Hamm, Dempsey and Carter were not the only ones aware that a terrorist attack was occurring. The declassified transcripts show that key officers, along with several channels of command throughout the Pentagon and its combatants commands, were equally quick to label the assault a terrorist attack.

Wenstrup took the approach with Marine Corps Col. George Bristol, commander of AFRICOM’s Joint Special Operations Task Force for the Trans Sahara region, that he did with Dempsey. Bristol testified he was in Dakar, Senegal when the Joint Operations Center called to tell him about “a considerable event unfolding in Libya.” Bristol called Lt. Col. S.E. Gibson, an Army commander stationed in Tripoli, who informed Bristol that Ambassador Stevens was missing and ”there was a fight going on” at the compound. ”So no one from the military was ever advising, that you are aware of, that this was a demonstration gone out of control, it was always considered an attack on the United States?” Wenstrup asked Bristol. ”Yes, sir. … We referred to it as the attack,” he replied.

When their investigations continue, staffers on the Armed Services subcommittee have indicated their desire to recall Panetta to ask him additional questions. ”He is in the president’s Cabinet,” Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL), chair of the panel that collected the testimony, told Fox News. “The American people deserve the truth. They deserve to know what’s going on, and I honestly think that that’s why you have seen — beyond the tragedy that there was a loss of four Americans’ lives – is that the American people feel misled.”

Kim R. Holmes, a former assistant secretary of state under President George W. Bush, echoed that assertion. ”Leon Panetta should have spoken up,” he insisted. ”The people at the Pentagon and frankly, the people at the CIA stood back while all of this was unfolding and allowed this narrative to go on longer than they should have.”

As of now, the retired Panetta has resisted requests for further testimony.

Preliminary conclusions reached by those same staffers regarding Panetta’s earlier testimony that a rescue operation would have been impossible, agreed with the former Secretary’s assessment. But those same documents reveal it was because America’s assets in the region were badly arrayed. And not just with regard to Benghazi, but other Middle East hotspots as well. Transcripts from top military commanders paint a woeful picture of gaps in the position of assets worldwide. Examples of unpreparedness include the reality that no aircraft were put on high alert for September 11, and that the closet F-35 fighter jets to Benghazi, stationed in Aviano, Italy were unarmed. Moreover, the closest mid-air re-fuelers were 10 hours away in Great Briatin.

Other assets, including AC-130 gunships were 10 hours from Libya, and a unit of 23 special operators that comprise part of a discretionary, “in-extremis” force, were training in Croatia. According to testimony, they didn’t even make it to a staging base in Sigonella, Italy until 19 hours after the attack began.

Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL), the Republican chairwoman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, addressed this disturbing reality. ”It does not appear that U.S. military forces, units, aircrafts, drones, or specific personnel that could have been readily deployed in the course of the attack in Benghazi were unduly held back, or told to stand down, or refused permission to enter the fight,” she concluded. “Rather, we were so badly postured, they could not have made a difference or we were desperately needed elsewhere.”

The newly released documents also reveal that Gen. Hamm had been left out of the loop in White House-led discussions regarding military preparedness and force posture on the eve of Sept. 11. This revelation undercuts White House assurances that then-counterterrorism adviser John Brennan had ”convened numerous meetings,” and the president and his national security principals discussed “steps taken to protect U.S. persons and facilities abroad.”

Perhaps they they did. But it remains unknown why the head of AFRICOM would not be include in those discussions.

Hamm insisted that no one told him to stand down, there simply weren’t assets available to counter the attack. He repeatedly argued that having an F-16 do a fly-over in  Benghazi wouldn’t have made any difference, despite that tactic being routinely employed to disperse enemy forces in Afghanistan.

AFRICOM and Pentagon officials insisted they were more worried about threats emanating from Tunisia, Egypt and Sudan on Sept. 11, 2012. “As I look back at the intelligence, I don’t see the indications of imminent attack in Benghazi,” Ham said. Yet Maj. Gen. Darryl Roberson, vice chief of operations on the Joint Staff in the Pentagon that night, seemingly confirmed the lack of military preparedness. ”We were postured as appropriately as we can be and we thought we should be around the world. It wasn’t just in Africa, in North Africa, that we had issues. We had issues around the world.”

“Appropriately postured”–but with “issues”?

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) remained skeptical of Hamm’s assessment. ”The extraction took an exceptionally long amount of time,” he noted. ”I still don’t understand, with two men down by 10:00 p.m. local time and then another attack at 5:00 a.m. the next morning, how at 6:05 in the morning the Department of Defense prepares a C-17 to go down, and that doesn’t actually depart Germany until 2:15 p.m. and doesn’t return back to Germany until 10:19 p.m. I have flown with you from Germany to Libya. It is not that far a flight.”

Another infuriating fact revealed by the documents regards a FAST team of Marines in Rota, Spain. They were apparently forced to deplane and change out of their uniforms before flying to Libya. “When we got people down do you really have — do you really actually let somebody push the military around and say, well, you are in the wrong uniform,” Chaffetz asked in disbelief. “Is that really a reason to delay the FAST team coming in to protect Americans, that they are not wearing a t-shirt?”

Nothing should surprise anyone with regard to Benghazi anymore. Not the administration’s wholesale lying about a video. Not the callousness of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who wondered aloud in congressional testimony, “what difference at this point does it make?” regarding the how and why of the attack. Not the equal amount of callousness demonstrated by a president who handed off responsibility for the operations to Panetta and Dempsey, and promptly disappeared, even as he showed up at a Las Vegas fundraiser the next day with his oft-repeated campaign slogan that was also a lie: “A day after 9/11, we are reminded that a new tower rises above the New York skyline, but al Qaeda is on the path to defeat and bin Laden is dead,” Obama told the audience.

That would be the same al Qaeda that, according to CNN, “appears to control more territory in the Arab world than it has done at any time in its history.”

The can be no doubt any longer what the president knew and when he knew it. On September 11, 2012 four Americans were killed in a terrorist attack. The president was aware of that reality shortly after 5 p.m. EST, even as a drone flew over the battlefield relaying video in real time. And despite all the lying, and incompetence, not a single person has been fired or held accountable, nor has even one member of the media asked the president where he was between the time he left Panetta and Dempsey, and boarded a plan for the fundraiser in Las Vegas.

Last Sunday, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates may have inadvertently given America some insight in that regard. He was describing Obama with regard to Afghanistan. “As I write in the book, it was this absence of passion, this absence of a conviction of the importance of success that disturbed me,” Gates said.

Americans might ask themselves whether that lack of compassion and absence of conviction extended to Benghazi.

Or perhaps former Carter campaign worker Pat Caddell had it right at an Accuracy in Media conference in June of 2012, when he lambasted the media and their unrelenting efforts to cover for Obama. “If a President of either party—I don’t care whether it was Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or George Bush or Ronald Reagan or George H. W. Bush—had a terrorist incident, and got on an airplane after saying something, and flown off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas, they would have been crucified!” he declared.

Perhaps that time is coming.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01/14/benghazi-transcripts-top-defense-officials-briefed-obama-on-attack-not-video-or/

[DougMacG]

Not that I favor impeachment but funny that we take it off the table for political reasons before we know the offenses.  Yet Dems bring it up on a lane closure.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/01/15/Devastating-Benghazi-Timeline-Reveals-Obama-MIA?utm_source=e_breitbart_com&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Breitbart+News+Roundup%2C+January+16%2C+2014&utm_campaign=20140116_m118779005_Breitbart+News+Roundup%2C+January+16%2C+2014&utm_term=More

[objectivist1]

This is well-worth watching - a 12-minute damning indictment of Hillary Clinton and her State Department:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLKsHCDmWaA

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.dickmorris.com/benghazi-was-hillarys-fault-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports

[Crafty_Dog]

second post

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/01/18/Admin-Source-Told-Van-Susteren-To-Tell-Colleague-To-Halt-Benghazi-Coverage

[G M]

second post

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/01/18/Admin-Source-Told-Van-Susteren-To-Tell-Colleague-To-Halt-Benghazi-Coverage

Chicago thug style.

[objectivist1]

And exactly WHY, may I ask, has Van Susteren not mentioned a word about this until now???

[Crafty_Dog]

The very same question occurred to me as well.

[Crafty_Dog]

Gregory Hicks: Benghazi and the Smearing of Chris Stevens
Shifting blame to our dead ambassador is wrong on the facts. I know—I was there.
By Gregory N. Hicks
Jan. 22, 2014 7:18 p.m. ET

Last week the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued its report on the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya. The report concluded that the attack, which resulted in the murder of four Americans, was "preventable." Some have been suggesting that the blame for this tragedy lies at least partly with Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in the attack. This is untrue: The blame lies entirely with Washington.

The report states that retired Gen. Carter Ham, then-commander of the U.S. Africa Command (Africom) headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, twice offered to "sustain" the special forces security team in Tripoli and that Chris twice "declined." Since Chris cannot speak, I want to explain the reasons and timing for his responses to Gen. Ham. As the deputy chief of mission, I was kept informed by Chris or was present throughout the process.

On Aug. 1, 2012, the day after I arrived in Tripoli, Chris invited me to a video conference with Africom to discuss changing the mission of the U.S. Special Forces from protecting the U.S. Embassy and its personnel to training Libyan forces. This change in mission would result in the transfer of authority over the unit in Tripoli from Chris to Gen. Ham. In other words, the special forces would report to the Defense Department, not State.

Chris wanted the decision postponed but could not say so directly. Chris had requested on July 9 by cable that Washington provide a minimum of 13 American security professionals for Libya over and above the diplomatic security complement of eight assigned to Tripoli and Benghazi. On July 11, the Defense Department, apparently in response to Chris's request, offered to extend the special forces mission to protect the U.S. Embassy.

However, on July 13, State Department Undersecretary Patrick Kennedy refused the Defense Department offer and thus Chris's July 9 request. His rationale was that Libyan guards would be hired to take over this responsibility. Because of Mr. Kennedy's refusal, Chris had to use diplomatic language at the video conference, such as expressing "reservations" about the transfer of authority.


Chris's concern was significant. Transferring authority would immediately strip the special forces team of its diplomatic immunity. Moreover, the U.S. had no status of forces agreement with Libya. He explained to Rear Adm. Charles J. Leidig that if a member of the special forces team used weapons to protect U.S. facilities, personnel or themselves, he would be subject to Libyan law. The law would be administered by judges appointed to the bench by Moammar Gadhafi or, worse, tribal judges.

Chris described an incident in Pakistan in 2011 when an American security contractor killed Pakistani citizens in self-defense, precipitating a crisis in U.S.-Pakistani relations. He also pointed out that four International Criminal Court staff, who had traveled to Libya in June 2012 to interview Gadhafi's oldest son, Saif al-Islam al-Qadhafi, were illegally detained by tribal authorities under suspicion of spying. This was another risk U.S. military personnel might face.

During that video conference, Chris stressed that the only way to mitigate the risk was to ensure that U.S. military personnel serving in Libya would have diplomatic immunity, which should be done prior to any change of authority.  Chris understood the importance of the special forces team to the security of our embassy personnel. He believed that by explaining his concerns, the Defense Department would postpone the decision so he could have time to work with the Libyan government and get diplomatic immunity for the special forces.  According to the National Defense Authorization Act, the Defense Department needed Chris's concurrence to change the special forces mission. But soon after the Aug. 1 meeting, and as a complete surprise to us at the embassy, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta signed the order without Chris's concurrence.

The SenateIntelligence Committee's report accurately notes that on Aug. 6, after the transfer of authority, two special forces team members in a diplomatic vehicle were forced off the road in Tripoli and attacked. Only because of their courage, skills and training did they escape unharmed. But the incident highlighted the risks associated with having military personnel in Libya unprotected by diplomatic immunity or a status of forces agreement. As a result of this incident, Chris was forced to agree with Gen. Ham's withdrawal of most of the special forces team from Tripoli until the Libyan government formally approved their new training mission and granted them diplomatic immunity.

Because Mr. Kennedy had refused to extend the special forces security mission, State Department protocol required Chris to decline Gen. Ham's two offers to do so, which were made after Aug. 6. I have found the reporting of these so-called offers strange, since my recollection of events is that after the Aug. 6 incident, Gen. Ham wanted to withdraw the entire special forces team from Tripoli until they had Libyan government approval of their new mission and the diplomatic immunity necessary to perform their mission safely. However, Chris convinced Gen. Ham to leave six members of the team in Tripoli.

When I arrived in Tripoli on July 31, we had over 30 security personnel, from the State Department and the U.S. military, assigned to protect the diplomatic mission to Libya. All were under the ambassador's authority. On Sept. 11, we had only nine diplomatic security agents under Chris's authority to protect our diplomatic personnel in Tripoli and Benghazi.

I was interviewed by the Select Committee and its staff, who were professional and thorough. I explained this sequence of events. For some reason, my explanation did not make it into the Senate report.

To sum up: Chris Stevens was not responsible for the reduction in security personnel. His requests for additional security were denied or ignored. Officials at the State and Defense Departments in Washington made the decisions that resulted in reduced security. Sen. Lindsey Graham stated on the Senate floor last week that Chris "was in Benghazi because that is where he was supposed to be doing what America wanted him to do: Try to hold Libya together." He added, "Quit blaming the dead guy."

Mr. Hicks served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli from July 31 to Dec. 7, 2012.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/23/gen-dempsey-failed-leader-scathing-senate-review-f/?page=all#pagebreak

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/25/delta-force-commando-awarded-second-highest-milita/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1jeJmeeMjs&feature=youtu.be

[Crafty_Dog]

Woof All:

I am looking unsuccessfully for the recent reports about how it was known on the very first day that it was an attack and so reported to Sec Def Panetta, Sec. Clinton, and that they met with the president.  Help please.

[Crafty_Dog]

Again, help on this please.  This is an important point and I really regret having missed posting it here.

[ccp]

Hillary's Benghazi Cover-Up

By Dick Morris - January 29, 2014

By saying that her main regret during her years as secretary of state is the terror attack on the Benghazi consulate and the deaths of four Americans, Hillary Clinton continues her cover-up.

Even as she expresses her regrets, she pretends that the reason she did not act to beef up security at the compound and that she lied afterwards, blaming the attack on the Internet video, was "imperfect" intelligence information.

In fact, as the records released by the bi-partisan Senate Intelligence Committee make clear, she had all the relevant facts before her and just ignored them

This is highlighted in the text of a recent interview.

"Oh, sure. My biggest, you know, regret is what happened in Benghazi," said Clinton. "I mean, you know, you make these choices based on imperfect information. And you make them to -- as we say, the best of your ability. But that doesn't mean that there's not going to be unforeseen consequences, unpredictable twists and turns."

However, "unforeseen consequences and unpredictable twists and turns" had nothing to do with her failure to secure the compound or to send adequate security to protect it. Rather, she got every sort of warning from her own ambassador, the State Department, the CIA, and the Defense Department. She just failed to act on them.

When you read the various pieces and bits of information she received in the weeks and months prior to the attack, it is hard to see how they could have been any more blunt or explicit in warning of the likelihood of future terror attacks in Benghazi:

According to the Senate Intelligence Committee:

On June 12, 2012, the Defense Intelligence Agency authored a report entitled: "Libya: Terrorists Now Targeting U.S. and Western Interests."

The report cited "growing ties between al-Qaeda regional nodes and Libya-based terrorists."

The DIA report said: "We expect more anti-U.S. terrorist attacks in eastern Libya [redacted], due to the terrorists greater presence there."

Six days later, according to the committee report, the Pentagon's Joint Staff daily intelligence report included a slide entitled: "Terrorism: Conditions Ripe for More Attacks, Terrorist Safe Haven in Libya."

It said: "[Redacted] support will increase Libyan terrorist capability in the permissive post-revolution security environment. Attacks will also increase in number and lethality as terrorists connect with AQ associates in Libya. Areas of eastern Libya will likely become a safe haven by the end of 2012."

A CIA report issued on July 6, 2012 -- "Libya: Al-Qaeda Establishing Sanctuary" -- was more declarative.

"Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups and associates are exploiting the permissive security environment in Libya to enhance their capabilities and expand their operational reach," said this CIA report.

Two months before Sept. 11, 2012 the CIA was already reporting that al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists had made parts of eastern Libya "their safe haven."

Soon after that, a CIA officer told State Department officials that al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists had training camps "within Benghazi."

On Aug. 15, 2012, the State Department's principal officer in Benghazi called together an "Emergency Action Committee" to discuss "the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi."

The next day, Ambassador Chris Stevens sent a cable to State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C., summarizing the points made at this meeting.

Stevens' cable said a CIA officer had "briefed the EAC on the location of approximately ten Islamist militias and AQ training camps within Benghazi."

For Hillary now to say that she did the best she could on the basis of "imperfect information" and to blame the tragic outcome on "unforeseen consequences and unpredictable twists and turns" is such an act of distortion of the record that it takes one's breath away.

The plan fact is that this possible future president failed miserably in her first major administrative assignment: Running the embassies and consulates under her jurisdiction as secretary.

Morris, a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of "Outrage." To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to www.dickmorris.com.

COPYRIGHT 2014 DICK MORRIS AND EILEEN MCGANN
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
 
 

[Crafty_Dog]

CCP:

Thank you but this is not what I am looking for.

What I am looking for is the FOX report (about two weeks ago?)of govt. documents revealing that Sec Def Paneta knew THAT VERY DAY that it was a terrorist attack and so did Sec. Clinton (and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff too?) and that they met with the President i.e. he and Clinton ALWAYS KNEW FROM DAY ONE.

[G M]

http://armedservices.house.gov/index.cfm/press-releases?ContentRecord_id=17D69AFC-744A-43DA-8BEA-D582975C1277




Jan 13 2014

Declassified Transcripts of Benghazi Briefings Released

Armed Services Committee Examined Actions Of Military Chain Of Command Before, During, and After Attack


WASHINGTON— The House Armed Services Committee today released a series of recently declassified transcripts of briefings on the September 11th 2012 attack on Americans in Benghazi, Libya. The briefings were conducted by the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations then chaired by Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL), though they were open to all members of the Committee and attended by Members off the Committee. The briefings, which took place over the course of several months, were part of the Committee’s examination of the actions of the military chain of command before, during, and after the attack. A report summarizing the conclusion of the HASC Oversight & Investigations majority Members draw from these briefings is expected to be released later this week.
 
Read the transcripts linked below
 


Permalink: http://armedservices.house.gov/index.cfm/2014/1/declassified-transcripts-of-benghazi-briefings-released

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Benghazi Transcripts: Top Defense officials briefed Obama on ‘attack,’ not video or protest






By James Rosen
 • Published January 14, 2014 •
FoxNews.com

Facebook6604Twitter3604LinkedIn27





 






Minutes after the American consulate in Benghazi came under assault on Sept. 11, 2012, the nation's top civilian and uniformed defense officials -- headed for a previously scheduled Oval Office session with President Obama -- were informed that the event was a "terrorist attack," declassified documents show. The new evidence raises the question of why the top military men, one of whom was a member of the president's Cabinet, allowed him and other senior Obama administration officials to press a false narrative of the Benghazi attacks for two weeks afterward.




Gen. Carter Ham, who at the time was head of AFRICOM, the Defense Department combatant command with jurisdiction over Libya, told the House in classified testimony last year that it was him who broke the news about the unfolding situation in Benghazi to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The tense briefing -- in which it was already known that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens had been targeted and had gone missing -- occurred just before the two senior officials departed the Pentagon for their session with the commander in chief.

According to declassified testimony obtained by Fox News, Ham -- who was working out of his Pentagon office on the afternoon of Sept. 11 -- said he learned about the assault on the consulate compound within 15 minutes of its commencement, at 9:42 p.m. Libya time, through a call he received from the AFRICOM Command Center.

"My first call was to General Dempsey, General Dempsey's office, to say, 'Hey, I am headed down the hall. I need to see him right away,'" Ham told lawmakers on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation on June 26 of last year. "I told him what I knew. We immediately walked upstairs to meet with Secretary Panetta."

Ham's account of that fateful day was included in some 450 pages of testimony given by senior Pentagon officials in classified, closed-door hearings conducted last year by the Armed Services subcommittee. The testimony, given under "Top Secret" clearance and only declassified this month, presents a rare glimpse into how information during a crisis travels at the top echelons of America's national security apparatus, all the way up to the president.

Also among those whose secret testimony was declassified was Dempsey, the first person Ham briefed about Benghazi. Ham told lawmakers he considered it a fortuitous "happenstance" that he was able to rope Dempsey and Panetta into one meeting, so that, as Ham put it, "they had the basic information as they headed across for the meeting at the White House." Ham also told lawmakers he met with Panetta and Dempsey when they returned from their 30-minute session with President Obama on Sept. 11.

Armed Services Chairman Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., sitting in on the subcommittee's hearing with Ham last June, reserved for himself an especially sensitive line of questioning: namely, whether senior Obama administration officials, in the very earliest stages of their knowledge of Benghazi, had any reason to believe that the assault grew spontaneously out of a demonstration over an anti-Islam video produced in America.

Numerous aides to the president and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly told the public in the weeks following the murder of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans that night -- as Obama's hotly contested bid for re-election was entering its final stretch -- that there was no evidence the killings were the result of a premeditated terrorist attack, but rather were the result of a protest gone awry. Subsequent disclosures exposed the falsity of that narrative, and the Obama administration ultimately acknowledged that its early statements on Benghazi were untrue.

"In your discussions with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta," McKeon asked, "was there any mention of a demonstration or was all discussion about an attack?" Ham initially testified that there was some "peripheral" discussion of this subject, but added "at that initial meeting, we knew that a U.S. facility had been attacked and was under attack, and we knew at that point that we had two individuals, Ambassador Stevens and Mr. [Sean] Smith, unaccounted for."

Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, a first-term lawmaker with experience as an Iraq war veteran and Army reserve officer, pressed Ham further on the point, prodding the 29-year Army veteran to admit that "the nature of the conversation" he had with Panetta and Dempsey was that "this was a terrorist attack."

The transcript reads as follows:

WENSTRUP: "As a military person, I am concerned that someone in the military would be advising that this was a demonstration. I would hope that our military leadership would be advising that this was a terrorist attack."

HAM: "Again, sir, I think, you know, there was some preliminary discussion about, you know, maybe there was a demonstration. But I think at the command, I personally and I think the command very quickly got to the point that this was not a demonstration, this was a terrorist attack."

WENSTRUP: "And you would have advised as such if asked. Would that be correct?"

HAM: "Well, and with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta, that is the nature of the conversation we had, yes, sir."

Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February of last year that it was him who informed the president that "there was an apparent attack going on in Benghazi." "Secretary Panetta, do you believe that unequivocally at that time we knew that this was a terrorist attack?" asked Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. "There was no question in my mind that this was a terrorist attack," Panetta replied.

Senior State Department officials who were in direct, real-time contact with the Americans under assault in Benghazi have also made clear they, too, knew immediately -- from surveillance video and eyewitness accounts -- that the incident was a terrorist attack. After providing the first substantive "tick-tock" of the events in Benghazi, during a background briefing conducted on the evening of Oct. 9, 2012, a reporter asked two top aides to then-Secretary Clinton: "What in all of these events that you've described led officials to believe for the first several days that this was prompted by protests against the video?"

"That is a question that you would have to ask others," replied one of the senior officials. "That was not our conclusion."

Ham's declassified testimony further underscores that Obama's earliest briefing on Benghazi was solely to the effect that the incident was a terrorist attack, and raises once again the question of how the narrative about the offensive video, and a demonstration that never occurred, took root within the White House as the explanation for Benghazi.

The day after the attacks, which marked the first killing of an American ambassador in the line of duty since 1979, Obama strode to the Rose Garden to comment on the loss, taking pains in his statement to say: "We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others." As late as Sept. 24, during an appearance on the talk show "The View," when asked directly by co-host Joy Behar if Benghazi had been "an act of terrorism," the president hedged, saying: "Well, we're still doing an investigation."

The declassified transcripts show that beyond Ham, Panetta and Dempsey, other key officers and channels throughout the Pentagon and its combatant commands were similarly quick to label the incident a terrorist attack. In a classified session on July 31 of last year, Westrup raised the question with Marine Corps Col. George Bristol, commander of AFRICOM's Joint Special Operations Task Force for the Trans Sahara region.

Bristol, who was traveling in Dakar, Senegal when the attack occurred, said he received a call from the Joint Operations Center alerting him to "a considerable event unfolding in Libya." Bristol's next call was to Lt. Col. S.E. Gibson, an Army commander stationed in Tripoli. Gibson informed Bristol that Stevens was missing, and that "there was a fight going on" at the consulate compound.

WESTRUP: "So no one from the military was ever advising, that you are aware of, that this was a demonstration gone out of control, it was always considered an attack -"

BRISTOL: "Yes, sir."

WENSTRUP: "-- on the United States?"

BRISTOL: "Yes, sir. ... We referred to it as the attack."

Staffers on the Armed Services subcommittee conducted nine classified sessions on the Benghazi attacks, and are close to issuing what they call an "interim" report on the affair. Fox News reported in October their preliminary conclusion that U.S. forces on the night of the Benghazi attacks were postured in such a way as to make military rescue or intervention impossible -- a finding that buttresses the claims of Dempsey and other senior Pentagon officials.

While their investigation continues, staffers say they still want to question Panetta directly. But the former defense secretary, now retired, has resisted such calls for additional testimony.

"He is in the president's Cabinet," said Rep. Martha Roby R-Ala., chair of the panel that collected the testimony, of Panetta. "The American people deserve the truth. They deserve to know what's going on, and I honestly think that that's why you have seen -- beyond the tragedy that there was a loss of four Americans' lives -- is that  the American people feel misled."

"Leon Panetta should have spoken up," agreed Kim R. Holmes, a former assistant secretary of state under President George W. Bush and now a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation. "The people at the Pentagon and frankly, the people at the CIA stood back while all of this was unfolding and allowed this narrative to go on longer than they should have."

Neither Panetta's office nor the White House responded to Fox News' requests for comment.



James Rosen joined Fox News Channel (FNC) in 1999. He currently serves as the chief Washington correspondent and hosts the online show "The Foxhole."

[Crafty_Dog]

THAT is what I was looking for GM-- thank you!!!

[Crafty_Dog]

My posting of GM's find has led me to this:

http://m.nationalreview.com/article/349231/%5Btitle-raw%5D-jim-geraghty

I have not read it fully yet but from what I have read it seems well worth a serious read.

[Crafty_Dog]

Hat tip to Doug:


http://www.ijreview.com/2014/02/112890-benghazi-cover-continues-smoking-gun-former-cia-director-morrell-editing-talking-points/
Hillary Campaign Adviser Lied About CIA's Role Editing Benghazi Talking Points

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/02/benghazi-cia-libya_n_2062131.html
The Journal's report placed the blame for many of the missteps in Benghazi specifically on CIA director David Petraeus

[Crafty_Dog]

I suspect this will be put to bad use.  The underlying point remains-- rescue efforts were prohibited against what was known then and there to be an attack.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/02/10/house-committee-no-stand-down-order-given-in-benghazi/

[Crafty_Dog]

Well, well, well, it would appear some folks have been rather Clintonesque with their language.

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/02/115028-house-report-benghazi-terror-attack-contradicts-2-diplomat-libya-stand-order/

[Crafty_Dog]

Rove: The Endless Benghazi Coverup
Susan Rice's latest claims about the attacks are no more credible than the ones she made in 2012.
by Karl Rove
Updated Feb. 26, 2014 7:33 p.m. ET

The worst part of National Security Adviser Susan Rice's comments on Sunday's "Meet The Press" was that she expressed no regret for saying that the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on U.S. outposts in Benghazi were "absolutely" the result of protests against a "very hateful, very offensive video that has offended many people around the world." (She made these comments while she was ambassador to the United Nations, less than a week after four Americans were killed.)

Almost as bad was Ms. Rice's statement that she was merely sharing "the best information that we had at the time." That is a contemptible falsehood. The government knew long before Ms. Rice went on five Sunday television shows that the assaults were carefully planned terrorist attacks unconnected to a video.

Gen. Carter Ham, then head of Africa Command, knew "this was not a demonstration, this was a terrorist attack" within minutes of learning about the assault, according to testimony he gave last June to the House Armed Services Committee that was declassified this month. Gen. Ham almost immediately informed Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey before their previously scheduled Oval Office meeting with President Obama. Mr. Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee last year that he informed Mr. Obama of the attack. "There was no question in my mind this was a terrorist attack," he testified.


Deputy Chief of Mission Greg Hicks, America's No. 2 diplomat in Libya, told congressional investigators in April 2013 that "I never reported a demonstration." Instead, "everybody in the mission thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning."

Acting Assistant Secretary of State Beth Jones sent an email to State Department officials on Sept. 12, 2012, confirming that she had told the Libyan ambassador to the U.S. that Ansar al-Shariah, a terrorist group, "conducted the attacks." The CIA station chief in Libya sent an email three days later to the deputy director of the CIA and others at the agency that the attacks were "NOT, NOT an escalation of protests."

Yet Ms. Rice continues to insist that she gave the best available intelligence.

In the months since the Benghazi attacks, the role of then-Deputy CIA Director Mike Morell in shaping the administration's response raises important questions that need answers. What contact did Mr. Morell have with the CIA station chief and Mr. Hicks? Did they tell him it was a terrorist attack? If so, what did he say or direct them to do?

Fox News correspondent Catherine Herridge reported earlier this month that there was a video conference within 72 hours of the attack among CIA officials in Washington, Libya and survivors. During that call, according to Ms. Herridge, Mr. Morell suggested that the attacks resulted from a demonstration. True? And if so, how did Mr. Morell come up with that concoction?

Another curiosity: Who chose Ms. Rice to go on the Sunday shows and why? After all, she wasn't involved in the post-Benghazi meetings and deliberations. Who briefed Ms. Rice and gave her the talking points about the video? From where did those briefers receive their instructions? Who did Ms. Rice talk to besides her (still unknown) briefers? She never talked to Deputy Chief of Mission Hicks, according to sources familiar with the situation. Did she talk to the CIA station chief? Did she see his email?

What was the role of the National Security Council's political people— Ben Rhodes and Tommy Vietor —and White House politicos, especially then-senior adviser David Plouffe ? They might have been more concerned with Benghazi's impact on the president's re-election than with the facts.

Mr. Morell left the CIA for a plum job at a consulting firm run by Hillary Clinton's close adviser, Philippe Reines, and a contract with CBS News, whose president, David Rhodes, is the brother of Ben Rhodes at the National Security Council. A less supine press corps would find this all rather curious and worth investigation.

It will be hard for Congress to get Ms. Rice to testify under oath. The White House will assert executive privilege. The way to start getting these questions answered is for the House Intelligence Committee to interview the CIA station chief, and then put Mr. Morell under oath.

The Obama administration and Mrs. Clinton desperately want Benghazi to go away, and the mainstream media continues ignoring it. But four Americans are dead. While Ms. Rice claims she has no regrets about misleading the country, she should. Americans are owed the truth, most of all the families of those who died in Benghazi in the service of their country.

Mr. Rove, a former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, helped organize the political action committee American Crossroads.

[Crafty_Dog]

Look where Mike Morrell is working , , ,

http://beaconglobalstrategies.com/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/14/eckert-keeping-americans-in-the-dark-on-benghazi/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.dickmorris.com/republican-chairman-has-huge-benghazi-conflict-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.tpnn.com/2014/04/29/bombshell-newly-released-emails-reveal-obama-admins-reaction-to-benghazi/

[Crafty_Dog]

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty
April 30, 2014

White House E-Mail: 'Underscore that These Protests Are Rooted in an Internet Video'

KABOOM. In short, the Obama administration's lies about Benghazi came about exactly as we expected: one of the political guys telling the national security appointees what to say.

Republicans say e-mails released Tuesday on the attack in Benghazi, Libya, include "the smoking gun" that shows a White House official urged that the assault on the U.S. consulate be blamed on a protest that never happened.

The e-mails, obtained by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act request, include one in which White House official Ben Rhodes lists "goals" for then-U.N. ambassador Susan Rice to meet in explaining the attack and protests occurring across the Middle East that week to the American public.

Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans died in the assault, which the White House subsequently acknowledged was an al-Qaeda-linked terror attack.
The e-mail, sent to various officials including White House spokesman Jay Carney, said one goal was "to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy."

Another goal was "to reinforce the president and administration's strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges."

Rhodes is assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for strategic communication and speechwriting.

During appearances on five Sunday news programs, Rice did blame the attack on Sept. 11, 2012, on a protest against an anti-Islam video produced by an American. So did Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and President Obama would not say whether it was a terrorist attack until several days later.

The CIA station chief in Libya reported from the beginning that the attack was an al-Qaeda-linked operation and that there was no protest. Though there was some dispute over the manner of the attack, former CIA deputy director Mike Morell testified earlier this month that he had no idea where the story about a video protest came from when he saw Rice make the claim on television.

Well, now we know.

Yes, Rhodes' speechwriting always focused in the foreign-policy realm. He was a longtime assistant to Lee Hamilton, then joined Obama as a speechwriter in 2007. But this guy's not an expert on Libya. There's no way he was in any position, from Washington, to overrule the assessment of the folks on the ground. He's a message guy. And he quickly concluded -- accurately -- that the administration's obvious ill-prepared presence in Libya and failure to organize timely rescue efforts on the 9/11 anniversary represented a serious threat to the president's reelection. They needed a scapegoat; the video was the best option at hand.

A perfectly ironic quote from a 2010 profile: "I very much wanted to be a fiction writer." Guess he finally got that chance.

[DougMacG]

[G M]

We have more important things to focus on, like racist sentiments from an octogenarian NBA owner.


Squirrel!

[Crafty_Dog]

The Missing Benghazi Email
New evidence that Ben Rhodes told Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton to blame the video.


April 30, 2014 7:05 p.m. ET

Most of the media refuses to cover what happened in Benghazi in 2012, and Congressional Republicans have been less than skillful in their probes. But the story isn't going away despite the best efforts of the Obama Administration and the Hillary for President campaign.

The latest revelation comes from White House emails in the days after the September 11, 2012 terrorist strike on the U.S. mission in Libya's second largest city. These emails weren't included last year in what the Administration claimed was a complete set of documents about its handling of the attack and its aftermath. They were released Tuesday after the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request. We can see why the Administration tried to keep them under wraps.

A September 14, 2012 email from Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, sets out the Administration's view of the cause of the Benghazi attacks. He wrote it to prepare U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and current national security adviser Susan Rice for her appearances on the Sunday news shows two days later. As Mr. Rhodes wrote, the Administration wanted her "to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy."

In fact the attack on the diplomatic compound and CIA annex was a planned and well-coordinated assault by Islamist groups with ties to al Qaeda that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Within hours, State and CIA officials at the Embassy EMYB 0.00% in Tripoli, Libya's president and video footage made that clear. Yet the Administration settled on deceptive spin and stuck to it for over a week.

Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, on Sept. 14 blamed the attack on a spontaneous protest against an obscure anti-Muslim video posted on YouTube. Two days later, Ms. Rice returned repeatedly to the video in her appearances on the Sunday shows, saying on Fox News that "what sparked the recent violence was the airing on the Internet of a very hateful, very offensive video that has offended many people around the world."
Enlarge Image

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton AFP/Getty Images

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also pushed the video fiction, telling the public on Sept. 14 at Andrews Air Force base as the remains of the four dead were returned that, "We have seen rage and violence directed at American Embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with."

The White House also found a scapegoat in the intelligence community, blaming the CIA for drawing up the faulty "talking points" used by Administration officials. Last May it released drafts of emails from the CIA, with input from State and the White House, that spontaneous protests had "evolved into a direct assault." Yet those talking points never mentioned a video, and earlier this month former acting CIA Director Mike Morell said he didn't understand why Ms. Rice had mentioned it.

Mr. Rhodes's email provides the answer. The message directive came directly from the White House and was followed to the word. Mr. Rhodes alluded to the video in five spots in his email. On Wednesday, Mr. Carney still insisted Ms. Rice had "relied on points about the Benghazi attack that were produced by the CIA." He must think the press corps is stupid.

The Rhodes email shows a White House political operative trying to protect his boss two months before Election Day. Mr. Obama's campaign said al Qaeda was on the run and it was time for "nation-building at home." The terror attack on Americans in Benghazi didn't fit this story. It did, however, expose the "broader failure of policy" (to use Mr. Rhodes's phrase) in North Africa in the wake of the Arab political upheavals in 2011.

After the election, the Administration was slow to cooperate with congressional investigations. The "talking points" emails were released last May only after parts were leaked to the press. The Rhodes email was subpoenaed last August, but the White House blocked release until it seemed obvious it would lose its attempts to keep them secret.

All of this bears directly on Mrs. Clinton's qualifications to be President. Her State Department overlooked repeated warnings about a growing militant threat in Benghazi, denying requests for improved security. And the father of a CIA contractor told media outlets that Mrs. Clinton tried to comfort him by promising that the maker of the YouTube video would be "prosecuted and arrested," though the video had nothing to do with his son's death.

The several congressional investigations into Benghazi have been undermined by turf battles and shoddy work. We long ago advised that a select committee could focus the effort and bring overdue clarity to a shameful episode in American history. It still could.

[objectivist1]

Benghazi Smoking Gun Exposed

Posted By Arnold Ahlert On May 1, 2014 @ frontpagemag.com

The idea that the Obama administration willfully orchestrated a disinformation campaign with regard to the attacks in Benghazi has now been confirmed.

An email written by then-White House Deputy Strategic Communications Adviser Ben Rhodes and obtained by Judicial Watch contained four bullet-point “Goals” outlined as part of the strategy to contain the political damage engendered by the murder of four Americans on September 11, 2012 at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. One bullet-point in particular revealed the Obama administration’s deliberate crafting of a deceitful narrative following the incident.  According to the Judicial Watch emails, the objective of the Obama administration was to “underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”

The email was part of a series of 41 new Benghazi-related documents obtained by Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed June 21, 2013. That effort was aimed at gaining access to the documents used by then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice for her September 16 appearance on five different  Sunday TV news programs. Rhodes’ email was sent on Friday, September 14, 2012 at 8:09 PM. It contained the following subject line: “RE: PREP CALL with Susan, Saturday at 4:00 pm ET.”

“Now we know the Obama White House’s chief concern about the Benghazi attack was making sure that President Obama looked good,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And these documents undermine the Obama administration’s narrative that it thought the Benghazi attack had something to do with protests or an Internet video. Given the explosive material in these documents, it is no surprise that we had to go to federal court to pry them loose from the Obama State Department.”

Rhodes’ email was sent to several members of the administration’s inner circle. They included White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Deputy Press Secretary Joshua Earnest, then-White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, then-White House Deputy Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri, then-National Security Council Director of Communications Erin Pelton, Special Assistant to the Press Secretary Howli Ledbetter, and then-White House Senior Advisor and political strategist David Plouffe.

Another critical email contained in the documents was written by former Deputy Spokesman at U.S. Mission to the United Nations Payton Knopf. It was addressed to Susan Rice and sent on Sept. 12, 2012, at 5:42 PM. It provided a brief summary of the attack, and further revealed that State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland had characterized the compound assault as “clearly a complex attack.” This characterization undermined Rice’s contention that the attacks were “spontaneous.”

Nonetheless when Rice appeared on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News and CNN she insisted, as she specifically stated on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” that “based on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is as of the present is in fact what began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy–sparked by this hateful video.”

Sen. John McCain, who immediately followed Rice’s appearance, revealed the utter nonsense of her assertion. “Most people don’t bring rocket-propelled grenades and heavy weapons to a demonstration,” he explained. “That was an act of terror, and for anyone to disagree with that fundamental fact I think is really ignoring the facts.”

Not ignoring the facts. Making them up. As Judicial Watch explains:

The Judicial Watch documents confirm that CIA talking points, that were prepared for Congress and may have been used by Rice on “Face the Nation” and four additional Sunday talk shows on September 16, had been heavily edited by then-CIA deputy director Mike Morell. According to one email:

The first draft apparently seemed unsuitable….because they seemed to encourage the reader to infer incorrectly that the CIA had warned about a specific attack on our embassy.  On the SVTS, Morell noted that these points were not good and he had taken a heavy hand to editing them. He noted that he would be happy to work with [then deputy chief of staff to Hillary Clinton]] Jake Sullivan and Rhodes to develop appropriate talking points.

This revelation appears to contradict written testimony given by Morell to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence last April, during which he insisted that “there is no truth to the allegations that the CIA or I ‘cooked the books’ with regard to what happened in Benghazi and then tried to cover this up after the fact.” Morell also claimed it was Rice, not the CIA, who linked the video to the attack. “My reaction was two-fold,” he told Committee members, “One was that what she said about the attacks evolving spontaneously from a protest was exactly what the talking points said, and it was exactly what the intelligence community analysts believed. When she talked about the video, my reaction was, that’s not something that the analysts have attributed this attack to.”

Rhodes’ email blows Morell’s allegation out of the water, but a critical question remains unanswered: who did brief Rice in the aforementioned “prep call”?

A letter sent Monday night to the House and Senate foreign affairs committees from Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and John McCain (R-AZ) addresses that issue. It asks both committees to compel the Obama administration to explain who briefed Rice for her talk show appearances, and whether anyone from the State Department or White House was involved. “How could former Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, during the five Sunday talk shows on September 16, 2012, claim that the attacks on our compounds were caused by a hateful video when Mr. Morell testified that the CIA never mentioned the video as a causal factor,” the letter inquired.

Graham characterizes the latest emails as “a smoking gun,” indicating White House efforts “to shape the story” of the Benghazi attacks and “to put a political stance on a disaster six weeks before an election.”

The White House says otherwise. In an explanation that strains credulity, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney claimed the White House withheld Ben Rhodes’ email from Congress and the media because it didn’t deal directly with the Benghazi attack. “This document was explicitly not about Benghazi, but about the general dynamic in the Muslim world at the time,” he insisted. “The overall issue of unrest in the Muslim world and the danger posed by these protests … was very much a topic in the news.”

Yesterday, in a testy exchange with ABC News White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl, Carney further declared that the White House urged Rice to focus on the video because her TV appearances were ostensibly supposed to address all of various protests sparked by that video, not just the murders in Benghazi. Karl ridiculed that assertion and reminded Carney that he had lied repeatedly in the past. “You stood there, time after time, and said that she was referring to talking points created by the CIA,” Karl stated. “Now we see a document that comes from the White House, not from the CIA, attributing the protests to the video.” In response, Carney continued to insist the protests outside American embassies were just as big a story, that Rice relied on CIA talking points, and the Rhodes’ email was part of the preparation to respond to the protests in general, not Benghazi.

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, who believes the newly released emails completely undermine President Obama’s 2012 campaign narrative (i.e. “Al Qaeda is on the run”), also believes a more thorough investigation of Benghazi is warranted. “I think the Republicans have something here that really ought to be looked at,” he said Tuesday. “I just don’t know if there’s gonna be any interest in the mainstream media. They should, because this exposes a cover-up of a cover-up. The fact that it was redacted when the documents were asked for and only revealed by a court order is telling you this is a classic cover-up of a cover-up, and that is a serious offense.”

What Krauthammer is referring to is the reality that Rhodes’ email wasn’t included in the 100 pages of emails released by the administration last May, when Republicans refused to confirm John Brennan as CIA director until the “taking points” memos were released.

Yet Krauthammer’s other point about a lack of mainstream media interest is just as germane. Some of that lack may be driven by the reality that Ben Rhodes’ brother is CBS News President David Rhodes, who was not enamored with former CBS investigative report Sharyl Attkisson’s reporting on the attack, despite the fact that she had been one of the few reporters to follow the story wherever it led. Yesterday in interview with Glenn Beck, Attkisson said she was glad to see “a little more light” shed on that relationship, even as she bemoaned the incestuous relationship between Big Government and Big Media, and the increasing level of intimidation aimed at journalists who refuse to abide that collaboration.

Unfortunately, many in the media are still willing to carry water for the White House. The George Soros-funded Media Matters insists Fox News is “distorting” the use of Ben Rhodes’ memo “to falsely suggest that the administration was lying about the Benghazi attacks for political gain.” Slate’s Dave Weigel claims the email “was largely redundant” and that the talking points blaming the attacks on a video “came from the CIA,” apparently ignoring Morrel’s testimony. Politico Magazine Deputy Editor Blake Hounshell tweeted, ”Can you point me to a credible, authoritative story saying the WH knowingly pushed a false narrative?” demonstrating a willful obliviousness to the efforts undertaken by Attkisson, Karl and Fox’s Catherine Herridge.

That’s water-carrying by commission. There’s also water-carrying by omission. On Tuesday, when this story first broke, CBS This Morning was the only network broadcast to cover it. ABC, CBS and NBC completely omitted the story from their evening broadcasts.

Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) spokesman, Catherine Frazier, expresses what must occur going forward. “This administration must be held accountable to telling the truth so that we can find closure, bring our attackers to justice, and prevent future attacks — and Hillary Clinton’s regrets are not enough,” she said. “All witnesses with knowledge of the attack including administration officials should be called to testify before a joint select committee so we can once and for all know the truth about what happened.”

A select committee on Benghazi has been thwarted by House Majority leader John Boehner (R-OH), who as recently as April 7 still insisted that the four separate committees — Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, and Oversight — are sufficient to investigate the matter. “There are four committees that are investigating Benghazi,” Boehner told Fox New’s Megyn Kelly “I see no reason to break up all the work that’s been done and to take months and months and months to create some select committee.” “But your own people want it,” Kelly countered. “You got 190 House Republicans whose say they need it.”

Boehner remained resolute.“I understand that,” he said. “At some point, that may — that may be required.” We are now at the point, Mr. Boehner.

[ccp]

Yep.  This is clearly a bigger scandal than Watergate ever was.   Only difference is that now it is *their* guy, so the MSM refuses to do anything about it.

Yet we here over and over again about Sterling's private conversations that were illegally taped and released to the media.  It is really terrible how the NBA players are treated isn't it? 

[Crafty_Dog]

Why Are We Still Talking About Benghazi? Concerned Democrats Want to Know
 

It's hard to overstate the importance of the smoking gun in the Benghazi case -- the White House emails revealing that the administration's narrative after Benghazi was cravenly political. To sum up the scandal, U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed by a terrorist, and the administration subsequently explained it away with a bogus story about a protest over a YouTube video in order to preserve Barack Obama's campaign narrative. Then they covered up talking-points alterations to avoid the appearance of politicizing it.

Commentator Charles Krauthammer says this is critical, and he likened it to the only scandal ever to take down a president: Watergate. "t's the equivalent of what was discovered with the Nixon tapes," he said, which is to say that it's hard to argue that Barack Obama didn't know about the cover-up.

Not that the White House won't try to downplay it. In fact, White House Propaganda Minister Jay Carney tried to say that the Benghazi emails "were not about Benghazi. They were about the general situation in the Muslim world." Sometimes even we're amazed by the brazenness of their lies.

Meanwhile, former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor says none of this is a big deal and we should move on. "Dude," he said to Fox News' Bret Baier Thursday, "this was two years ago. We're still talking about the most mundane thing." He wasn't exactly referring to the murder of a U.S. ambassador when he said that, but that is, after all, what matters, and it's hardly "mundane."

Other Democrats are likewise trying to move focus away from the scandal. "Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi," that's all the media want to talk about, complained House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). "Why aren't we talking about something else?" Because the 9/11 terrorist attack at Benghazi and the White House's botched response and subsequent cover-up is one of the biggest political scandals in decades, that's why. Well, she added, "If you all want to sit around and talk about Benghazi you can sit around and talk about Benghazi." Addressing the subject later, she said, "I don't think there's anything new there." Just keep repeating that BIG Lie.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) seems to grasp the importance of the new revelations, saying the administration "saw Benghazi as a political problem seven weeks before the election and they formed a political answer." To do that, he said, "The White House created a narrative completely different from the intelligence. ... The answer given about Benghazi by Susan Rice was a political answer and disconnected from the facts. ... They were more worried about the president's re-election than they were about telling the American people the truth. They did not give a damn about the intelligence. ... When Susan Rice said, 'I have no regrets, I gave the American people the best evidence available,' that's a bald-faced lie."

Unfortunately, the Republican leadership questions about Benghazi, with a few exceptions, have been so disjointed that most folks listening to them have probably yet to understand the gravity of the lies and cover-up. It's so bad that Democrats may actually want Republicans to keep the Benghazi issue going because it's a good distraction from the Obama economy and the ObamaCare fiasco.

It's time to put this case into the hands of either a joint congressional select committee or special prosecutor who can investigate this White House deception professionally.

Perhaps something good will come of the fact that House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) has subpoenaed Secretary of State John Kerry "to answer questions about your agency's response to the congressional investigation of the Benghazi attack." Issa also noted, "The State Department's response ... has shown a disturbing disregard for the Department's legal obligations to Congress." Disturbing disregard definitely gets to the heart of the problem.

[ccp]

Benghazi - just "right wing" hysterics because "they can't come up with anything else so says MSLSD's Chris Hayes pounding the table today @ the same time Fox is covering the story in an honest and legitimate way.

This is just as much BS as the Black Caucus Congressman saying anyone opposed to Obama is not opposed to him because he is a lying, manipulative, pompous, arrogant asshole who deceives, distorts, cons, robs, breaks laws, hates Jews, hates whites, hates America, hates capitalism, is a Communist, is a megalomaniac, but because, get this, he's black.   

No Congressman, you can talk stupid but many of us are not as dumb as you.

[objectivist1]

CCP,

I heartily second your thoughts! 

[G M]

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/348932.php

[G M]

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/348932.php

https://explore.data.gov/dataset/3-meet-with-Potus-NO-TIME-LISTED-9-11-12/hg5b-q3e9?no_mobile=true

Someone needs to subpoena Michael Donilon, David Ginsburg and Ron Klain.

[G M]

http://akpdmedia.com/partners/mike-donilon/

http://www.revolution.com/our-team/ronald-a-klain#.U2Uk1XnnYiE

http://www.crunchbase.com/person/david-i-ginsberg

[Crafty_Dog]

Coming Soon: The Benghazi Select Committee

Trey Gowdy

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) will chair a select committee tasked with investigating the terrorist attack in Benghazi and the subsequent cover-up by the Obama administration. In announcing the decision, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said that the administration's continued stonewalling "compel the House to take every possible action to ensure the American people have the truth about the terrorist attack on our consulate that killed four of our countrymen," including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.
Last week's bombshell report on internal White House emails proves that the narrative after the attack was cravenly political, and a select committee is the necessary next step. Boehner called the revealed emails "the straw that broke the camel's back." For Democrats who complain of GOP political games, the only reason this is political is that the administration made it so.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf blasted Boehner's move, saying, "We've produced tens of thousands of documents. We've done nine hearings, 46 briefings. How many more taxpayer dollars are we going to spend trying to prove a political point that in 18 months they haven't been able to prove?" Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) chimed in, similarly complaining, "For Republicans to waste the American people's time and money staging a partisan political circus instead of focusing on the middle class is simply a bad decision."

So Democrats are suddenly concerned with how taxpayer dollars are being spent?

Reid also brought it all back around to his new favorite pastime -- bashing the Koch brothers. He said, "Republicans care more about defending billionaires like the Koch brothers and trying to rekindle debunked right-wing conspiracy theories than raising the minimum wage or ensuring women receive equal pay for equal work."

Gowdy, a former prosecutor, is just the man for the job of heading the select committee. He's a no-nonsense conservative whose aim is to uphold Rule of Law, and choosing him means this committee may actually produce results. He demonstrated this already over the weekend, saying, "I have evidence that, not only are they hiding it, there is an intent to hide it. I can't disclose that evidence yet, but I have evidence that there was a systematic, intentional decision to withhold certain documents from Congress.  If you want to have [former Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli] Greg Hicks and the station chief from Tripoli and Hillary Clinton all sitting at the same table, you need to have a committee that has the power to do that. And a select committee would have that power."

It may be "political" to say so, but Clinton should be disqualified from being president of the United States after her disgraceful performance in this whole fiasco.

Of course, it remains to be seen if the select committee can successfully hold the Obama administration accountable -- as in heads rolling at the very least -- for its failed immediate response to the attack, the subsequent lies to cover-up that failure, and the further lies to cover the lies.

[G M]

http://hotair.com/archives/2014/05/05/ben-rhodess-brother-the-day-after-benghazi-the-government-thinks-this-could-be-a-coordinated-attack-not-a-video-protest/

Ben Rhodes’s brother, the day after Benghazi: The government thinks this could be a coordinated attack, not a video protest


posted at 5:51 pm on May 5, 2014 by Allahpundit






Ben Rhodes’s brother is of course David Rhodes, the president of CBS News — although, if you’re a CBS viewer, maybe I shouldn’t assume that you know that. Anyway, a nifty catch here by John Sexton of Breitbart. The key bit comes 50 seconds in. Quote:
 

“Our government thinks that, you know, there’s a really good chance this was not just a spontaneous mob reaction to what some thought was an offensive film but actually a coordinated effort timed to the 9/11 anniversary.”
 
Two days later, Sexton reminds us, Ben Rhodes sent out an e-mail ahead of Susan Rice’s Sunday show appearances urging her “to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.” What changed between the time his brother said this on September 12th and the time he sent that e-mail on September 14th? Sharyl Attkisson asked a similar question last week, noting that an e-mail chain at the State Department shows that the feds’ earliest suspicions after the attack had focused on Ansar al-Sharia, the jihadi group that had claimed responsibility for it online, rather than a mob driven to fury by the Mohammed video. Somehow the conventional wisdom shifted from the “planned attack” to the “spontaneous protest” theory in 48 hours. And since, it seems fair to assume, David Rhodes’s knowledge of what “our government” thinks was relayed to him at least in part by his brother Ben, it’s more accurate to say that Ben Rhodes’s thinking in particular shifted during those 48 hours. Why?
 
Depending upon how closely you want to parse David Rhodes’s language here (specifically the word “just” in the quote above, and hedging with “there’s a really good chance”), you can argue that he’s not ruling out the protest theory, just stressing that there may have been more than one group outside the consulate that night. I don’t read it that way; the “just” sounds like a synonym for “merely,” as if he was dismissing the protest theory and offering the attack theory as a substitute. Maybe Trey Gowdy should ask him. Would CBS cover that or would it be blackout time again?
 
You know what the real irony of Ben Rhodes’s e-mail is? It sets up an either/or between “the protests were caused by a YouTube video” and “the protests were caused by a broader failure of policy” when in reality there was no need to make that move. The fact that Islamists were screaming outside the embassy in Cairo on the anniversary of 9/11 shouldn’t, rationally, be thought of as a “failure of policy.” Screaming outside a U.S. embassy, especially on the day of AQ’s big victory, is what Islamists do. It’s especially goofy to imagine the White House fretting about policy failures when their policy in Egypt to that point had been to support the Islamists’ “democratic” aspirations to power. The Cairo embassy protest took place two months after a member of the Muslim Brotherhood had become president, with U.S. backing; the people protesting were thus hardcore fanatics (among them Ayman al-Zawahiri’s brother) whom no policy would placate. But Obama got elected promising he’d rebuild America’s reputation in the Middle East, so naturally a raucous, ultimately dangerous protest in Cairo — where he’d given his famous speech a few years before — looked bad for him, proof positive that America was still the Great Satan to some people there despite the Lightbringer’s best efforts. If he hadn’t overpromised so much as a candidate, Ben Rhodes might not have been so panicked in shunting blame off onto a video instead of the fact that jihadis hate America no matter who’s president. But he did overpromise, so here we are.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-zdbgMFbPE&safe=active[/youtube]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-zdbgMFbPE&safe=active