House panel: No administration wrongdoing in Benghazi attack Carolyn Lochhead
(08-01) 11:42 PDT WASHINGTON -- The House Intelligence Committee, led by Republicans, has concluded that there was no deliberate wrongdoing by the Obama administration in the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, said Rep. Mike Thompson of St. Helena, the second-ranking Democrat on the committee.
The panel voted Thursday to declassify the report, the result of two years of investigation by the committee. U.S. intelligence agencies will have to approve making the report public.
Thompson said the report "confirms that no one was deliberately misled, no military assets were withheld and no stand-down order (to U.S. forces) was given."
That conflicts with accusations of administration wrongdoing voiced by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), whose House Government Oversight and Reform Committee has held hearings on the Benghazi attack.
Stevens, who grew up in Piedmont, and the other Americans died when Libyans attacked the consulate on Sept. 11, 2012. Among the Intelligence Committee's findings, according to Thompson:
-- Intelligence agencies were "warned about an increased threat environment, but did not have specific tactical warning of an attack before it happened."
-- "A mixed group of individuals, including those associated with al Qaeda, (Moammar) Khadafy loyalists and other Libyan militias, participated in the attack."
-- "There was no 'stand-down order' given to American personnel attempting to offer assistance that evening, no illegal activity or illegal arms transfers occurring by U.S. personnel in Benghazi, and no American was left behind."
-- The administration's process for developing "talking points" was "flawed, but the talking points reflected the conflicting intelligence assessments in the days immediately following the crisis."
Those talking points included assertions that those who attacked the compound were angered by an obscure anti-Muhammad video posted to YouTube in the U.S. There is disagreement to this day about whether that was the case.
Carolyn Lochhead is the San Francisco Chronicle's Washington correspondent. E-mail: clochhead@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carolynlochhead
Primarily it's the formal structure between how "Select Committees" are created compared to the "Standing Committees".
Ie, Select Committees temporarily formed for specific purposes, and as such are given wider latitude to investigate.
That's not strictly true. While select committees are generally convened to investigate or review matters which extend beyond the authority, willingness, or ability of a standing committee; they don't get any wider latitude than a standing committee with respect to the organizations they investigate or oversee. Indeed, one could argue they have less freedom to act, as generally speaking select committees can't present legislation.
Its also worth noting that the intelligence committees in both houses are technically select committees, muddying the waters even further.
So multiple house committees led by Republicans state there was no mistake here, and instead of people saying that maybe this was also a whole lot of smoke and no fire and that they got this one wrong, instead it becomes time to talk about the last, final committee in to Benghazi that hasn't released its report, in the hope that they'll keep the flame burning.
Also, Trey Gowdy has the worst haircut in US politics.
sebster wrote: Also, Trey Gowdy has the worst haircut in US politics.
Though not a current US politician, James Traficant has to at least be a strong contender.
Although Mr. Gowdy wins any Draco Malfoy look-alike contest hands down.
That is a fine contender, I'll grant you that. I'll stick with Mr Gowdy though, because otherwise I'd have to admit I said something that was wrong, and this isn't the thread for that
I can't help to think that the writer of this post is trying to draw me back in...
Don't worry, Congress is on recess and this will certainly come up during the next Prez election cycle if Hillary is the candidate. I can see some permutations on Hillary's old 3am call ad:
The Republican-led House Select Committee investigating Benghazi has selected its lead legal official: a retired three-star general who, most recently, served as the U.S. Army’s Judge Advocate General under President Obama. That’s according to sources with information regarding the appointment.
Lt. Gen. Dana Chipman, 55, attended West Point and received his law degree from Stanford Law School in 1986, according to public reports. He also holds a Master of Science degree in Strategic Studies. He will serve as Chief Counsel of the Select Committee.
Chipman retired from the military last year after 33 years of service. His retirement ceremony was hosted by Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, whose actions have come under scrutiny as part of the Congressional investigation into the limited military response to the Benghazi terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2012.
In a 2010 interview, Chipman stated that the last books he’d recently read included: The Unforgiving Minute, by Craig Mullaney, and Talent is Overrated, by Geoff Colvin. He also stated that he spent 33 months as a criminal prosecutor and “loved ‘crime’ – how/why people do what they do is fascinating!” His awards include the Legion of Merit and Bronze Star Medal.
The Benghazi Select Committee, chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) has already begun some work behind the scenes and is expected to ramp up fully when Congress returns from its summer vacation in September.
Good idea to have a retired serviceman to be the lead counsel. Probably because you'd need someone with security clearance.
The Benghazi Select Committee, chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) has already begun some work behind the scenes and is expected to ramp up fully when Congress returns from its summer vacation in September.
It's good to know they'll get right back to getting nothing accomplished since they've already worked so hard to earn such a long vacation.
Good idea to have a retired serviceman to be the lead counsel. Probably because you'd need someone with security clearance.
Assuming he has security clearance, or the requisite level of security clearance. And, even then, the other members of the committee must be considered.
Good idea to have a retired serviceman to be the lead counsel. Probably because you'd need someone with security clearance.
Assuming he has security clearance, or the requisite level of security clearance. And, even then, the other members of the committee must be considered.
I once got into a political discussion about Israel killing civilians, the argument devolved into him chanting Benghazi because he had no arguments left. He seems to no longer quote faux news and instead goes for these peculiar blogs that I have never heard of before. He became a news hipster....
As the House Select Committee on Benghazi prepares for its first hearing this week, a former State Department diplomat is coming forward with a startling allegation: Hillary Clinton confidants were part of an operation to “separate” damaging documents before they were turned over to the Accountability Review Board investigating security lapses surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.
According to former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell, the after-hours session took place over a weekend in a basement operations-type center at State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. This is the first time Maxwell has publicly come forward with the story.
At the time, Maxwell was a leader in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA), which was charged with collecting emails and documents relevant to the Benghazi probe.
“I was not invited to that after-hours endeavor, but I heard about it and decided to check it out on a Sunday afternoon,” says Maxwell.
He didn’t know it then, but Maxwell would ultimately become one of four State Department officials singled out for discipline—he says scapegoated—then later cleared for devastating security lapses leading up to the attacks. Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were murdered during the Benghazi attacks.
“Basement Operation”
As the House Select Committee on Benghazi prepares for its first hearing this week, a former State Department diplomat is coming forward with a startling allegation: Hillary Clinton confidants were part of an operation to “separate” damaging documents before they were turned over to the Accountability Review Board investigating security lapses surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.
New Benghazi allegation puts spotlight on Hillary Clinton confidants, alleged after-hours document review.
According to former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell, the after-hours session took place over a weekend in a basement operations-type center at State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. This is the first time Maxwell has publicly come forward with the story.
At the time, Maxwell was a leader in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA), which was charged with collecting emails and documents relevant to the Benghazi probe.
Ray Maxwell (Photo: Sharyl Attkisson)
Raymond Maxwell, former State Dept. Deputy Assistant Secretary (Photo: Sharyl Attkisson)
“I was not invited to that after-hours endeavor, but I heard about it and decided to check it out on a Sunday afternoon,” says Maxwell.
He didn’t know it then, but Maxwell would ultimately become one of four State Department officials singled out for discipline—he says scapegoated—then later cleared for devastating security lapses leading up to the attacks. Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were murdered during the Benghazi attacks.
“Basement Operation”
Maxwell says the weekend document session was held in the basement of the State Department’s Foggy Bottom headquarters in a room underneath the “jogger’s entrance.” He describes it as a large space, outfitted with computers and big screen monitors, intended for emergency planning, and with small offices on the periphery.
When he arrived, Maxwell says he observed boxes and stacks of documents. He says a State Department office director, whom Maxwell described as close to Clinton’s top advisers, was there. Though the office director technically worked for him, Maxwell says he wasn’t consulted about her weekend assignment.
“She told me, ‘Ray, we are to go through these stacks and pull out anything that might put anybody in the [Near Eastern Affairs] front office or the seventh floor in a bad light,’” says Maxwell. He says “seventh floor” was State Department shorthand for then-Secretary of State Clinton and her principal advisors.
“I asked her, ‘But isn’t that unethical?’ She responded, ‘Ray, those are our orders.’ ”
A few minutes after he arrived, Maxwell says in walked two high-ranking State Department officials.
Maxwell says the two officials, close confidants of Clinton, appeared to check in on the operation and soon left.
Maxwell says after those two officials arrived, he, the office director and an intern moved into a small office where they looked through some papers. Maxwell says his stack included pre-attack telegrams and cables between the U.S. embassy in Tripoli and State Department headquarters. After a short time, Maxwell says he decided to leave.
“I didn’t feel good about it,” he said.
We reached out to Clinton, who declined an interview request and offered no comment. A State Department spokesman told us it would have been impossible for anybody outside the Accountability Review Board (ARB) to control the flow of information because the board cultivated so many sources.
“Unfettered access”?
When the ARB issued its call for documents in early October 2012, the executive directorate of the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs was put in charge of collecting all emails and relevant material. It was gathered, boxed and—Maxwell says—ended up in the basement room prior to being turned over.
In May 2013, when critics questioned the ARB’s investigation as not thorough enough, co-chairmen Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Adm. Mike Mullen stated, “we had unfettered access to everyone and everything including all the documentation we needed.”
Maxwell says when he heard that statement, he couldn’t help but wonder if the ARB—perhaps unknowingly—had received from his bureau a scrubbed set of documents with the most damaging material missing.
Maxwell also criticizes the ARB as “anything but independent,” pointing to Mullen’s admission in congressional testimony that he called Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills to give her inside advice after the ARB interviewed a potential congressional witness.
In an interview in September 2013, Pickering told me that he would not have done what Mullen did. But both co-chairmen strongly defend their probe as “fiercely independent.”
Maxwell also criticizes the ARB for failing to interview key people at the White House, State Department and the CIA, including Secretary Clinton; Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides, who managed department resources in Libya; Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro; and White House National Security Council Director for Libya Ben Fishman.
“The ARB inquiry was, at best, a shoddily executed attempt at damage control, both in Foggy Bottom and on Capitol Hill,” says Maxwell. He views the after-hours operation he witnessed in the State Department basement as “an exercise in misdirection.”
State Department Response
A State Department spokesman calls the implication that documents were withheld “totally without merit.” Spokesman Alec Gerlach says “The range of sources that the ARB’s investigation drew on would have made it impossible for anyone outside of the ARB to control its access to information.”
Gerlach says the State Department instructed all employees to cooperate “fully and promptly” with the ARB, which invited anyone with relevant information to contact them directly.
“So individuals with information were reaching out proactively to the board. And, the ARB was also directly engaged with individuals and the [State] Department’s bureaus and offices to request information and pull on whichever threads it chose to,” says Gerlach.
Benghazi Select Committee
Maxwell says he has been privately interviewed by several members of Congress in recent months, including Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a member of the House Oversight Committee.
When reached for comment, Chaffetz told me that Maxwell’s allegations “go to the heart of the integrity of the State Department.”
“The allegations are as serious as it gets, and it’s something we have obviously followed up and pursued,” Chaffetz says. “I’m 100 percent confident the Benghazi Select Committee is going to dive deep on that issue.”
Former Obama Supporter
Maxwell, 58, strongly supported Barack Obama and personally contributed to his presidential campaign. But post-Benghazi, he has soured on both Obama and Clinton, saying he had nothing to do with security and was sacrificed as a scapegoat while higher-up officials directly responsible escaped discipline. He spent a year on paid administrative leave with no official charge ever levied. Ultimately, the State Department cleared Maxwell of wrongdoing and reinstated him. He retired a short time later in November 2013.
Maxwell worked in foreign service for 21 years as the well-respected deputy assistant secretary for Maghreb Affairs in the Near East Bureau and former chief of staff to the ambassador in Baghdad. Fluent in Portuguese, Maxwell is also an ex-Navy “mustanger,” which means he successfully made the leap from enlisted ranks to commissioned officer.
He’s also a prolific poet. While on administrative leave, he published poems online: allegories hinting at his post-Benghazi observations and experiences.
A poem entitled “Invitation,” refers to Maxwell’s placement on administrative leave in December 2012: “The Queen’s Henchmen / request the pleasure of your company / at a Lynching – / to be held / at 23rd and C Streets NW [State Dept. building] / on Tuesday, December 18, 2012 / just past sunset. / Dress: Formal, Masks and Hoods- / the four being lynched / must never know the identities/ of their executioners, or what/ whose sin required their sacrifice./ A blood sacrifice- / to divert the hounds- / to appease the gods- / to cleanse our filth and /satisfy our guilty consciences…”
In another poem called “Trapped in a purgatory of their own deceit,” Maxwell wrote: “The web of lies they weave / gets tighter and tighter / in its deceit / until it bottoms out – / at a very low frequency – / and implodes…Yet all the while, / the more they talk, / the more they lie, / and the deeper down the hole they go… Just wait…/ just wait and feed them the rope.”
Several weeks after he was placed on leave with no formal accusations, Maxwell made an appointment to address his status with a State Department ombudsman.
“She told me, ‘You are taking this all too personally, Raymond. It is not about you,’” Maxwell says.
“I told her that ‘My name is on TV and I’m on administrative leave, it seems like it’s about me.’ Then she said, ‘You’re not harmed, you’re still getting paid. Don’t watch TV. Take your wife on a cruise. It’s not about you; it’s about Hillary and 2016.”
Since Maxwell retired from the State Department, he has obtained a master’s degree in library information science.
That 'writer' really loves hitting that word basement, as if saying it automatically makes people think of illegal dealings underground that they want hidden from people, rather than just another floor of a building. Because if it had been on the 2nd floor, in the light of day, then all of this 'super sketchy stuff' wouldn't have happened.
motyak wrote: That 'writer' really loves hitting that word basement, as if saying it automatically makes people think of illegal dealings underground that they want hidden from people, rather than just another floor of a building. Because if it had been on the 2nd floor, in the light of day, then all of this 'super sketchy stuff' wouldn't have happened.
Illegal? Probably not since the ARB was a States Department creature and depositions weren't under oath...
motyak wrote: That 'writer' really loves hitting that word basement, as if saying it automatically makes people think of illegal dealings underground that they want hidden from people, rather than just another floor of a building. Because if it had been on the 2nd floor, in the light of day, then all of this 'super sketchy stuff' wouldn't have happened.
Illegal? Probably not since the ARB was a States Department creature and depositions weren't under oath...
Sketchy? You betcha.
Probably the best quality reporting about Benghazi around? Probably
Is this an embarrassing reflection upon those who continue to chase this non-story? You betcha
Just re-read that, I'm not saying you are chasing this story, but you just keep coughing up whatever those that are chasing it are churning out of their donkey caves.
motyak wrote: That 'writer' really loves hitting that word basement, as if saying it automatically makes people think of illegal dealings underground that they want hidden from people, rather than just another floor of a building. Because if it had been on the 2nd floor, in the light of day, then all of this 'super sketchy stuff' wouldn't have happened.
Illegal? Probably not since the ARB was a States Department creature and depositions weren't under oath...
Sketchy? You betcha.
Probably the best quality reporting about Benghazi around? Probably
Is this an embarrassing reflection upon those who continue to chase this non-story? You betcha
Just re-read that, I'm not saying you are chasing this story, but you just keep coughing up whatever those that are chasing it are churning out of their donkey caves.
Well...
Let's be frank here... this administration's handling of the whole ordeal has been very suspect. Very junior varsity...
But, I'm coming from the angle that while Nixon got thrown out for the Watergate burglary, the way the media covers for Obama and the Clintons... they could be video taped carrying everything not nailed down from that place and we’d not hear a word about it. If they did mention it it would only be to say how racist the Tea Party is for noticing.
Seriously, this is about the Obama Administration's attempt to cover their asses during the re-election campaign.
All this select committee will do is embarrass this administration. Nothing more... (get real, no one is going to be impeached or go to jail).
And, that's okay with me, because there were real fethups along the way and hopefully it becames a lesson for future leaders.
that's an interesting one for the filter to miss, motyak
And, that's okay with me, because there were real fethups along the way and hopefully it becames a lesson for future leaders.
Wait, so they don't need to go to jail, because the fethup wasn't that bad, but they need to be embarrassed and hurt in the next election, and however many piles of taxpayer money wasted on these hearings, because the fethups were that bad? That's some interesting logic.
And, that's okay with me, because there were real fethups along the way and hopefully it becames a lesson for future leaders.
Wait, so they don't need to go to jail, because the fethup wasn't that bad, but they need to be embarrassed and hurt in the next election, and however many piles of taxpayer money wasted on these hearings, because the fethups were that bad? That's some interesting logic.
You're coming from a positions that everything we need to know about this event has been said and there's nothing more that needs to be said. Right?
Here's the kicker. We still don't exactly know what Obama did and when during what transpired.
We still don't know, specifically, why the consulate were poorly defended.
There's a lot of unknowns.
This administration is trying so damned hard to stonwall, deflect, and mislead any inquiry.
And, that's okay with me, because there were real fethups along the way and hopefully it becames a lesson for future leaders.
Wait, so they don't need to go to jail, because the fethup wasn't that bad, but they need to be embarrassed and hurt in the next election, and however many piles of taxpayer money wasted on these hearings, because the fethups were that bad? That's some interesting logic.
You're coming from a positions that everything we need to know about this event has been said and there's nothing more that needs to be said. Right?
Here's the kicker. We still don't exactly know what Obama did and when during what transpired.
We still don't know, specifically, why the consulate were poorly defended.
There's a lot of unknowns.
I'm coming from the position where you said it wasn't a big enough deal for one thing to happen, but it is a big enough deal to waste thousands, and a lot of time which could be spent on better governance, which is the biggest problem I have with nothing issues like this. The amount of time they drain away from actual leadership and country-running is just disgusting. These people have a responsibility to govern, and while that involves beating the other side once every 2 years, it doesn't mean that's what your whole career needs to devolve into, as it has recently in US politics. Aus politics is heading there too, the amount of time wasted in parliament...nevermind. Off Topic.
I'm just saying, the amount of time and money wasted chasing what you seem to understand on some level to be relatively a non-story is just sickening.
I'm coming from the position where you said it wasn't a big enough deal for one thing to happen, but it is a big enough deal to waste thousands, and a lot of time which could be spent on better governance, which is the biggest problem I have with nothing issues like this. The amount of time they drain away from actual leadership and country-running is just disgusting. These people have a responsibility to govern, and while that involves beating the other side once every 2 years, it doesn't mean that's what your whole career needs to devolve into, as it has recently in US politics. Aus politics is heading there too, the amount of time wasted in parliament...nevermind. Off Topic.
I'm just saying, the amount of time and money wasted chasing what you seem to understand on some level to be relatively a non-story is just sickening.
If no one is held to account or "a lesson" isn't made... then, nothing changes.
Honest question my straya friend... did you honestly believe that it was a spontaneous protest gone awry because of that anti-Islam YouTube video?
I'm coming from the position where you said it wasn't a big enough deal for one thing to happen, but it is a big enough deal to waste thousands, and a lot of time which could be spent on better governance, which is the biggest problem I have with nothing issues like this. The amount of time they drain away from actual leadership and country-running is just disgusting. These people have a responsibility to govern, and while that involves beating the other side once every 2 years, it doesn't mean that's what your whole career needs to devolve into, as it has recently in US politics. Aus politics is heading there too, the amount of time wasted in parliament...nevermind. Off Topic.
I'm just saying, the amount of time and money wasted chasing what you seem to understand on some level to be relatively a non-story is just sickening.
If no one is held to account or "a lesson" isn't made... then, nothing changes.
Honest question my straya friend... did you honestly believe that it was a spontaneous protest gone awry because of that anti-Islam YouTube video?
1) *shudder* straya. It haunts us even from over there.
2) You can hold people accountable, make a lesson, without spending this much time and money on it. Make a note of it on the floor, you must have some kind of 'this is a formal shaming of X' procedure. Do that. Do that, make a media statement or two about it, but don't waste this much time and money on an attempt to make the other side look bad.
3) I don't think it was because of the video, but at this point it is irrelevant. If they wanted to make a lesson of someone, they've been dragging names through the mud for a good long while now. They've made their point, given their lesson, but they refuse. They need it to keep going into the election, and that's where it crosses the line from 'doing the public a service by keeping the people in power accountable' to 'neglecting their jobs in favour of keeping their jobs'. Governance of a county is probably the only place I can think of where that is a viable option, and that's a big problem in and of itself.
I'll pose a question back at you. Do you think this is the best way that these people who are chasing this story could have been serving their people? Because if you do, then we are at opposite ends of this argument.
I'm coming from the position where you said it wasn't a big enough deal for one thing to happen, but it is a big enough deal to waste thousands, and a lot of time which could be spent on better governance, which is the biggest problem I have with nothing issues like this. The amount of time they drain away from actual leadership and country-running is just disgusting. These people have a responsibility to govern, and while that involves beating the other side once every 2 years, it doesn't mean that's what your whole career needs to devolve into, as it has recently in US politics. Aus politics is heading there too, the amount of time wasted in parliament...nevermind. Off Topic.
I'm just saying, the amount of time and money wasted chasing what you seem to understand on some level to be relatively a non-story is just sickening.
If no one is held to account or "a lesson" isn't made... then, nothing changes.
Honest question my straya friend... did you honestly believe that it was a spontaneous protest gone awry because of that anti-Islam YouTube video?
1) *shudder* straya. It haunts us even from over there.
Oh? Sorry it's insulting... if it helps, I've been saying that with love. What's the desired nickname then?
2) You can hold people accountable, make a lesson, without spending this much time and money on it. Make a note of it on the floor, you must have some kind of 'this is a formal shaming of X' procedure. Do that. Do that, make a media statement or two about it, but don't waste this much time and money on an attempt to make the other side look bad.
There is no formal shaming method... unless it's the non-binding "vote of no confident".
*shrugs*
Again, let me rephrase, no one has been held accountable in any way shape or form. Not yet at least...
3) I don't think it was because of the video, but at this point it is irrelevant. If they wanted to make a lesson of someone, they've been dragging names through the mud for a good long while now. They've made their point, given their lesson, but they refuse. They need it to keep going into the election, and that's where it crosses the line from 'doing the public a service by keeping the people in power accountable' to 'neglecting their jobs in favour of keeping their jobs'. Governance of a county is probably the only place I can think of where that is a viable option, and that's a big problem in and of itself.
It's totally relevant as my own administration LIED to me in my face for more than two weeks. Purposeful misinformation in attempt to deflect criticism during a hotly contest election campaign.
I'll pose a question back at you. Do you think this is the best way that these people who are chasing this story could have been serving their people? Because if you do, then we are at opposite ends of this argument.
Well... it's the only way for the public to demand accountability, besides voting them out of the office.
If there were truly no malfeasance by this administration over this ordeal... do you think they'd stonewall/spin is hard as they have been?
1) *shudder* straya. It haunts us even from over there.
Oh? Sorry it's insulting... if it helps, I've been saying that with love. What's the desired nickname then?
Oh I'm more complaining than anything. 'straya is how the stereotypical 'bogan' says it. Bogans are stereotypically racist, criminal, etc. So I guess it's kind of like 'Murica!. No one is actually insulted by it, but you can still cringe a bit at it ha.
Exhibit A. There's a lot more, but they all include language inappropriate for this forum
2) You can hold people accountable, make a lesson, without spending this much time and money on it. Make a note of it on the floor, you must have some kind of 'this is a formal shaming of X' procedure. Do that. Do that, make a media statement or two about it, but don't waste this much time and money on an attempt to make the other side look bad.
There is no formal shaming method... unless it's the non-binding "vote of no confident".
*shrugs*
Again, let me rephrase, no one has been held accountable in any way shape or form. Not yet at least...
How much time is acceptable for them to take to hold someone accountable then? Another year? Two? Another month? Where do you draw the line and say 'ok, now you're just wasting time to make them look bad at the election, regardless of whether or not they receive any legal or otherwise official sanction'. Or are you ok with them wasting time and money chasing someone to the election, because that person totally deserves it and its more important that they chase them to the election than work on actual lawmaking and fixing the country?
3) I don't think it was because of the video, but at this point it is irrelevant. If they wanted to make a lesson of someone, they've been dragging names through the mud for a good long while now. They've made their point, given their lesson, but they refuse. They need it to keep going into the election, and that's where it crosses the line from 'doing the public a service by keeping the people in power accountable' to 'neglecting their jobs in favour of keeping their jobs'. Governance of a county is probably the only place I can think of where that is a viable option, and that's a big problem in and of itself.
It's totally relevant as my own administration LIED to me in my face for more than two weeks. Purposeful misinformation in attempt to deflect criticism during a hotly contest election campaign.
So how long is it relevant. Is it relevant until someone goes to jail. Until they get a vote of no confidence. Until they lose an election. Where do you draw the line in going after someone at the expense of time that could most definitely be used for things more important to the national interest.
I'll pose a question back at you. Do you think this is the best way that these people who are chasing this story could have been serving their people? Because if you do, then we are at opposite ends of this argument.
Well... it's the only way for the public to demand accountability, besides voting them out of the office.
If there were truly no malfeasance by this administration over this ordeal... do you think they'd stonewall/spin is hard as they have been?
Yes, I think governments will always be reluctant to relinquish anything to the other side that is damaging in any way to them. Whether it's malfeasance (nice word), incompetence, or just a minor hiccup that caused something sad, they don't want to give the other side anything. Because that's the climate that has been fostered by all this 2 party nonsense, that the other side is without a doubt the enemy and needs to be denied at every turn. If this climate didn't exist, the R's wouldn't have jumped on this like starving dogs, the D's wouldn't have shelled up like an agoraphobic turtle, documents would have been released to show either issues or just bad luck, and everyone would have gotten on with the running of the country. Instead, somehow, it's become more desirable for this to happen. Which is really, really sad. Anyway, I'm going to leave it there whembly, I try and not get sucked into OT arguments (as hard as that is to do). Thanks for the chat, and I'll of course read your rebuttal of these points.
And Cotor, the swear word was fethup. Nothing amazing, just surprising that it wasn't there
1) *shudder* straya. It haunts us even from over there.
Oh? Sorry it's insulting... if it helps, I've been saying that with love. What's the desired nickname then?
Oh I'm more complaining than anything. 'straya is how the stereotypical 'bogan' says it. Bogans are stereotypically racist, criminal, etc. So I guess it's kind of like 'Murica!. No one is actually insulted by it, but you can still cringe a bit at it ha.
Exhibit A. There's a lot more, but they all include language inappropriate for this forum
Oh... that is cringe worthy. Thanks for 'splain'n dat to this ignorant rednecked 'Murrican!
2) You can hold people accountable, make a lesson, without spending this much time and money on it. Make a note of it on the floor, you must have some kind of 'this is a formal shaming of X' procedure. Do that. Do that, make a media statement or two about it, but don't waste this much time and money on an attempt to make the other side look bad.
There is no formal shaming method... unless it's the non-binding "vote of no confident".
*shrugs*
Again, let me rephrase, no one has been held accountable in any way shape or form. Not yet at least...
How much time is acceptable for them to take to hold someone accountable then? Another year? Two? Another month? Where do you draw the line and say 'ok, now you're just wasting time to make them look bad at the election, regardless of whether or not they receive any legal or otherwise official sanction'. Or are you ok with them wasting time and money chasing someone to the election, because that person totally deserves it and its more important that they chase them to the election than work on actual lawmaking and fixing the country?
It's the nature of both how our divided government and the system of check & balances operate.
As to your question on "how long does it take"? That answer is: as long as it takes. Otherwise, nothing changes and then, Snake Plissken would be right:
3) I don't think it was because of the video, but at this point it is irrelevant. If they wanted to make a lesson of someone, they've been dragging names through the mud for a good long while now. They've made their point, given their lesson, but they refuse. They need it to keep going into the election, and that's where it crosses the line from 'doing the public a service by keeping the people in power accountable' to 'neglecting their jobs in favour of keeping their jobs'. Governance of a county is probably the only place I can think of where that is a viable option, and that's a big problem in and of itself.
It's totally relevant as my own administration LIED to me in my face for more than two weeks. Purposeful misinformation in attempt to deflect criticism during a hotly contest election campaign.
So how long is it relevant. Is it relevant until someone goes to jail. Until they get a vote of no confidence. Until they lose an election. Where do you draw the line in going after someone at the expense of time that could most definitely be used for things more important to the national interest.
It's relevant because we don't know the genesis of this idea.
I'll pose a question back at you. Do you think this is the best way that these people who are chasing this story could have been serving their people? Because if you do, then we are at opposite ends of this argument.
Well... it's the only way for the public to demand accountability, besides voting them out of the office.
If there were truly no malfeasance by this administration over this ordeal... do you think they'd stonewall/spin is hard as they have been?
Yes, I think governments will always be reluctant to relinquish anything to the other side that is damaging in any way to them. Whether it's malfeasance (nice word), incompetence, or just a minor hiccup that caused something sad, they don't want to give the other side anything. Because that's the climate that has been fostered by all this 2 party nonsense, that the other side is without a doubt the enemy and needs to be denied at every turn. If this climate didn't exist, the R's wouldn't have jumped on this like starving dogs, the D's wouldn't have shelled up like an agoraphobic turtle, documents would have been released to show either issues or just bad luck, and everyone would have gotten on with the running of the country. Instead, somehow, it's become more desirable for this to happen. Which is really, really sad. Anyway, I'm going to leave it there whembly, I try and not get sucked into OT arguments (as hard as that is to do). Thanks for the chat, and I'll of course read your rebuttal of these points.
Seriously, it simply was an obvious reaction in the heat of a re-election campaign. It's even understandable why they reacted in such fashion... but, I want my President (and Administration) to be above that.
Frankly, I think the IRS scandal is even a bigger deal, as it's potentially criminal in the same vein as Watergate.
Whereas the Benghazi ordeal was likely an event that key decision makers panicked, and reacted to the situation through the lens of "how do we mitigate potential fallouts", as opposed to actually doing a genuine, honest job.
Gowdy Opening Statement at Benghazi Select Committee Hearing 1
As prepared for delivery
Gowdy: A little over two years ago, four Americans were killed serving our country in Benghazi, Libya. Two were killed when a facility emblematic of our country was set on fire. Two were killed because they dared to fight back and defend themselves and others. Sean Smith, Chris Stevens, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty represented us. They represented our country and our values. We sent them to do that. They were killed in an attack rooted in the animus some people hold toward us, simply because we are us.
To the family, friends, and loved ones of those killed, we can never adequately express our condolences and gratitude. As you have helped us understand, the four killed were more than just pictures on a TV screen. They were sons, husbands, fathers, brothers, and friends. And they were our fellow Americans.
I remain hopeful there are still things left in our country that can transcend politics. I remain convinced our fellow citizens deserve all of the facts of what happened before, during, and after the attacks in Benghazi and they deserve an investigative process worthy of the memory of those who died and worthy of the trust of our fellow citizens.
Some question the need for this committee. I respect your right to disagree, but the mark of a professional, indeed the mark of character, is to do a good job even if you do not think the task should have been assigned in the first place. Given the gravity of the issues at hand, I am willing to risk answering the same question twice rather than risk not answering it once. I am willing to reconsider previously held beliefs in light of new, additional, complimentary or contradictory evidence. I am willing to approach anew witnesses previously interviewed in light of the real possibility that additional questions may be warranted. As we are keenly aware, all documents responsive to congressional requests have not been produced. Moreover, there are witnesses with information or access to information with whom no committee of Congress has spoken. I am optimistic the vast and varied backgrounds of our colleagues can be put to great use on behalf of our fellow citizens. The House of Representatives constituted this committee to find all of the facts, and I intend to do so fully and in a manner worthy of the people we serve.
Our fellow citizens have legitimate and high expectations:
(1) They expect us to protect and defend those we send to represent us,
(2) They expect us to move heaven and earth to help those representing us who are in harm’s way;
(3) They expect government to tell the truth in the aftermath of a tragedy;
(4) They expect we will not continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.
Which leads to this hearing.
Benghazi was not the first time our diplomatic facilities and people have been attacked. The barracks in Beirut, our facilities in Tanzania and Kenya are a few that come to mind amid too many others. And after those attacks, groups came together and made recommendations on how to prevent future attacks. That is the process seemingly followed. An attack takes place, we commission a group to study how to make sure it doesn’t happen again, we pronounce it is time to move on and yet it happens again. So to those who believe it is time to move on, that there is nothing left to discover, that all questions have been asked and answered, that we have learned the lessons to be learned— we have heard that before. And yet the attacks and the tragedies keep coming.
It is stunning to see the similarities in the recommendations made decades ago and the recommendations made after Benghazi. If you doubt that, compare the recommendations made nearly 25 years ago with those made after Benghazi. We do not suffer from a lack of recommendations. We do not suffer from a lack of boards, commissions and blue ribbon panels. We suffer from a lack of implementing and enacting those recommendations. That must end.
So it is appropriate to review the recommendations of the most recent ARB and Rep. Adam Schiff is to be credited for suggesting we do so. It is also fair for us to ask why have we not done a better job implementing recommendations made decades ago. Why does it take an attack on our people and facilities for us to make recommendations? Why not evaluate the threat before the attack? Why not anticipate rather than react?
The people we work for yearn to see the right thing done, for the right reasons, and in the right way. They want to know that something can rise above the din of politics. They want to trust the institutions of government. So to fulfill the duties owed to those we serve and in honor of those who were killed perhaps we can be what those four brave men were: neither Republican nor Democrat. We can just be Americans in pursuit of the facts, the truth, and justice no matter where that journey takes us.
A State Department whistleblower has come forward to say the details of a former colleague’s account of the sifting of Benghazi-related documents to identify damaging material “ring true.”
The Daily Signal reported Monday on Raymond Maxwell, a former deputy assistant secretary at the State Department who says he observed an unusual after-hours session in a basement operations room of the agency’s headquarters in Washington in October 2012.
Maxwell said a State Department office director told him those present were ordered to separate out any documents related to the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on Americans in Benghazi that could prove damaging to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. While he was present, Maxwell said, Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan stopped by.
“Document reviews at State following a significant event are not unheard of,” writes department veteran Peter Van Buren in The American Conservative, adding that “an affected office needs to recap how it got to where it is.”
Van Buren continues:
Conducting such a review in secret, on a Sunday, with some of the Secretary’s most senior advisors personally overseeing things, is in fact unheard of. The details of Maxwell’s story ring true, the place, the procedures.
In short, he concludes, “I think Ray Maxwell is credible.”
Van Buren, an author and 24-year veteran of the State Department, was himself a whistleblower. He weighs in on Maxwell’s allegations—and the subsequent attempts to discredit him—in a commentary published today.
“People will claim [Maxwell] is nothing more than a disgruntled employee with an agenda. I don’t think that’s true. Because I was once in his place,” Van Buren writes.
Van Buren also addresses efforts to disparage Maxwell and his story by those who point to the fact that he did not go public sooner:
For whistleblowers to go public, there is a calculus of pain and gain, and working it out takes time. You try to go through channels: Congressman Jason Chaffetz [R-Utah] says Maxwell first told lawmakers his full story privately some time ago. Then you wait in hopes the information will come out without you, that someone else might speak up first; you hint at the truth, hoping someone will take the bait, but instead see faux investigations and bleats about ‘it’s just politics’ further bury it.
Van Buren spent a year leading Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq. He blew the whistle on “incompetence and waste of taxpayer money” as well as “near-complete lack of interest by the [State] Department.”
“In my case, I was ignorant of what would happen once I blew the whistle,” Van Buren adds. “Ray Maxwell had examples to learn from. He likely calculated he needed to securely retire from State before taking Team Clinton head-on.”
After he wrote a book exposing what he saw, Van Buren recalls, “my security clearance was pulled; my case was sent to the Department of Justice for prosecution; I was frog-marched out of my office and forbidden to enter any State Department facility; I was placed on a Secret Service watch list as a potential threat to Mrs. Clinton; the pension I earned over a long career was threatened.”
He continues:
There was a two-year gap between much of what I saw in Iraq and my public coming out. The same was true for [Edward] Snowden and other whistleblowers. You don’t just wake up one morning and decide to turn your own life, and that of your family, upside down, risking financial ruin, public shaming and possibly jail time. It is a process, not an event. You have to wonder what your fate will be once the media grows bored with your story, how far your actions will follow you. Fear travels with you on your journey of conscience.
Mills, Sullivan and Clinton offered no comment on Maxwell’s allegations. The State Department this week did not interview Maxwell to investigate details, and instead responded by saying the Accountability Review Board had unfettered and direct access to State Department people and documents.
Van Buren concludes his commentary:
Checks of State Department entry and exit records and room use requests should establish the basic facts. Proving what happened at that document review will be much, much harder and will focus in large part on Maxwell’s own credibility.
Is Maxwell a disgruntled employee with an agenda? Possibly, but whistleblowers act on conscience, not revenge; the cost is too high for that, and in this day revenge is available much cheaper via a leak or as an unnamed source. Going public and disgruntlement often coincide but are not necessarily causally connected. Knowing the right thing to do is easier than summoning the courage and aligning one’s life to step up and do it.
I think Ray Maxwell is credible. I don’t think his timing suggests he is not. We’ll see, paraphrasing Clinton’s own words on Benghazi, if it really matters anymore, and what difference it does make.
Not really, they started out with a ridiculous lie about a video and stuck to their guns knowing it was a lie. There were several other instances of stonewalling and deflection in that pattern by the Obama administration to the point it's doubtful if we ever have the real truth.
Not really, they started out with a ridiculous lie about a video and stuck to their guns knowing it was a lie. There were several other instances of stonewalling and deflection in that pattern by the Obama administration to the point it's doubtful if we ever have the real truth.
Didn't they actually think it was the video at first? I'm not really all that well up on this stuff.
Not really, they started out with a ridiculous lie about a video and stuck to their guns knowing it was a lie. There were several other instances of stonewalling and deflection in that pattern by the Obama administration to the point it's doubtful if we ever have the real truth.
Didn't they actually think it was the video at first? I'm not really all that well up on this stuff.
That was the original story, but it was later found out they knew it was not a video that caused the incident.
Not really, they started out with a ridiculous lie about a video and stuck to their guns knowing it was a lie. There were several other instances of stonewalling and deflection in that pattern by the Obama administration to the point it's doubtful if we ever have the real truth.
Didn't they actually think it was the video at first? I'm not really all that well up on this stuff.
That was the original story, but it was later found out they knew it was not a video that caused the incident.
OK then.
At this point, however, I think the Bengahzi thing is purely partisan.
Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told MSNBC that he knew Benghazi attack on 9-11-2012 was a terrorist attack.
“You know, I didn’t have any specific information but, the fact was, when you bring grenade launchers to a demonstration there’s something else going on. And, I just from the very beginning sensed that this was an attack. This was a terrorist attack. “
The Obama re-election campaign/administration insisted it was a protest from the beginning... because reason.
They had a campaign to win and it didn’t fit their Narrative ™.
Isn't it about time Romney feed some crow to Candy Crowley??
whembly wrote: Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told MSNBC that he knew Benghazi attack on 9-11-2012 was a terrorist attack.
“You know, I didn’t have any specific information but, the fact was, when you bring grenade launchers to a demonstration there’s something else going on. And, I just from the very beginning sensed that this was an attack. This was a terrorist attack. “
He said that he "sensed" that it was an attack, not that he "knew" that it was an attack.
whembly wrote: Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told MSNBC that he knew Benghazi attack on 9-11-2012 was a terrorist attack.
“You know, I didn’t have any specific information but, the fact was, when you bring grenade launchers to a demonstration there’s something else going on. And, I just from the very beginning sensed that this was an attack. This was a terrorist attack. “
He said that he "sensed" that it was an attack, not that he "knew" that it was an attack.
Anyone with at least two neurons to rub together would "sense" that.
I find it odd that Panetta would do this now ( I know he has a book to sell )... because of his proximity to the "Clinton Clan".
Anyone with at least two neurons to rub together would "sense" that.
Sense what? That you used the word "knew" instead of the word "sensed" and did so because you were attempting to support a point based on a long-term agenda?
Anyone with at least two neurons to rub together would "sense" that.
Sense what? That you used the word "knew" instead of the word "sensed" and did so because you were attempting to support a point based on a long-term agenda?
Michael Bay in Talks to Direct Benghazi Movie '13 Hours' (Exclusive)
Chuck Hogan, the author of 'The Town' and 'The Strain,' wrote the script for the Paramount film
In a massive change of pace, Michael Bay is going from toy tentpole to a Benghazi political drama.
Bay is in negotiations to direct 13 Hours, the adaptation of Mitchell Zuckoff’s book about the attack on an American compound in Libya that left U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens dead.
See more Highly Paid Film Stars
Chuck Hogan wrote the script adapting the book, which details how on Sept. 11, 2012, terrorists attacked the U.S. State Department Special Mission Compound in Benghazi. The focus is on six members of a security team that valiantly fought to defend the many Americans stationed there. They only partially succeeded: Stevens and a foreign service worker were killed in one attack, and two contract workers were killed during a second assault on a CIA station nearby.
Erwin Stoff is producing the Paramount film.
Bay has spent the better part of almost a decade in the land of Transformers movies, which have budgets of more $200 million, if not $250 million, each. He also took time to do a passion project, 2013’s Pain & Gain, which had a budget of around $26 million. Sources say that 13 Hours would be budgeted in the $30 to $40 million range.
Bay's last Transformers film, Age of Extinction, grossed over a billion dollars worldwide. He is repped by WME.
In other news... how in the did 'Age of Extinction' grossed over a billion??!??!?! o.O
In other news... how in the did 'Age of Extinction' grossed over a billion??!??!?! o.O
China and/or India, would be my guess. 60% of an American movie's money is made overseas these days and mindless explosions and gunfire are pretty easy to translate.
I wonder if a more cynical person would be wondering why a Republican controlled house releases a report that directly contradicts one of their biggest talking points for the last two years two weeks after the midterm elections.
If I hear the word Benghazi one more time, I will personally row the Atlantic just to introduce my left foot to the butt of a certain Benghazi obsessed individual!
d-usa wrote: I wonder if a more cynical person would be wondering why a Republican controlled house releases a report that directly contradicts one of their biggest talking points for the last two years two weeks after the midterm elections.
Maybe it's time for BenghaziGateGate!
*sigh* I just can't resist...
Call it the Gruberizing of the report. I see that all of the liberal/left-leaning news sites followed AP’s lead on this story, but the problem was that they completely mislead with the headline, and then try to cleverly write the story to infer that the report debunks a lot of the previous claims.
The report seems to back up all of the allegations. The main findings? The CIA did provide adequate security for their compound, but were not responsible for the security of the State Department.
Duh... different departments.
“The report did conclude, however, that the State Department diplomatic compound where Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed had inadequate security and had needed CIA assistance.” That is not anything new, it is confirming that the State Department fell down by not providing adequate security.
The other major finding? “The committee also found that there was “no intelligence failure prior to the attacks” as the US mission was aware of the worsening security situation in Benghazi but not of a specific planned attack.” That is also well known. The problem has been that DESPITE all those warnings and knowledge the STATE DEPARTMENT failed to acknowledge this and in fact turned down the Ambassador’s repeated requests for additional security, and beefing up the compound static security.
Another claim...“”The CIA received all military support that was available,” it added.” The question has been, why wasn’t more military support available over a 9 hour period (or was it 12 hours)? The administration failed to prepare for 9/11, despite the intelligence, and then decided early on that it would be over before they could send military assistance, so they did not. And then they have systematically removed and hidden the military leaders that did not agree with them.
This report was by the Intelligence committee and overall did not find much to fault in Intelligence. And I don’t think that has really been in dispute (other than the Susan Rice piece)... in that the intelligence was good before the attacks, and they rightly said it was a Terrorist attack right off the bat. The political operatives were the ones that kept up the “video” story for weeks/months.
And it's the political operatives that need to be held account. That's where Trey Gowdy comes in with the Select Committee.
What is important here is that 4 of my fellow Americans are dead, including an ambassador because the Dept of State ignored sage advice to provide more protection or remove them from the country.
In the end, the buck stops somewhere for this decision. And the answer isn’t “gak happens”.
It's all about politics. The people perusing this are not doing this out of some innate desire to protect our ambassadors, they are doing this out of petty party politics. It's just like when they tried to impeach Clinton. Or how they are now suing Obama. It's not about what's right, it's about getting what they want, and what they want is getting rid of this president.
Co'tor Shas wrote: It's all about politics. The people perusing this are not doing this out of some innate desire to protect our ambassadors, they are doing this out of petty party politics. It's just like when they tried to impeach Clinton. Or how they are now suing Obama. It's not about what's right, it's about getting what they want, and what they want is getting rid of this president.
Co'tor Shas wrote: It's all about politics. The people perusing this are not doing this out of some innate desire to protect our ambassadors, they are doing this out of petty party politics. It's just like when they tried to impeach Clinton. Or how they are now suing Obama. It's not about what's right, it's about getting what they want, and what they want is getting rid of this president.
Co'tor Shas wrote: It's all about politics. The people perusing this are not doing this out of some innate desire to protect our ambassadors, they are doing this out of petty party politics. It's just like when they tried to impeach Clinton. Or how they are now suing Obama. It's not about what's right, it's about getting what they want, and what they want is getting rid of this president.
Nah... we do not want to get rid of this president.
We wouldn't want to do that... cause, if we did, then it'd be President Joe Biden.
Co'tor Shas wrote: It's all about politics. The people perusing this are not doing this out of some innate desire to protect our ambassadors, they are doing this out of petty party politics. It's just like when they tried to impeach Clinton. Or how they are now suing Obama. It's not about what's right, it's about getting what they want, and what they want is getting rid of this president.
Yes it's my opinion, but that's only because for me to prove it I would have to be able to read the minds of the congresspeople.
But do you honestly think that this isn't about politics?
Co'tor Shas wrote: It's all about politics. The people perusing this are not doing this out of some innate desire to protect our ambassadors, they are doing this out of petty party politics. It's just like when they tried to impeach Clinton. Or how they are now suing Obama. It's not about what's right, it's about getting what they want, and what they want is getting rid of this president.
How do you know that?
By observation and reason. It's kind of obvious.
So you don't think there is anyone who has legitimate concerns that the State Department dropped the ball on security, leading to the death of an ambassador (which is a pretty big deal)? Or that there isn't anyone who has legitimate concerns about Clinton lying under oath?
Now, I'm not saying that there aren't people who are using these things to further party politics, but that doesn't mean there aren't those who have legitimate, non-political issues with both cases.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Co'tor Shas wrote: But do you honestly think that this isn't about politics?
I do think for some people it is, but I don't think that that's the case for everyone involved.
I agree, not everybody, but the majority. It was hijacked by the Rs as a campaign thing to excite their base. Fox news reported the hell out of it, to an excessive amount. It was used to attack Obama and H.C.
The answer you will keep getting is this: because the Obama team lied about it.
You have to assume they lied for political gain before the rest makes any sense, and I haven't seen compelling evidence that that is the case, at least beyond a general dislike for the President. This still puts us at politically motivated to keep harping on it. Being wrong is not new for anyone, White House or otherwise, nor is lying to the public for national security reasons. If we can find an article that isn't a blog and/or an article not written by someone for a religious website then we might be on to something.
The answer you will keep getting is this: because the Obama team lied about it.
You have to assume they lied for political gain before the rest makes any sense, and I haven't seen compelling evidence that that is the case, at least beyond a general dislike for the President. This still puts us at politically motivated to keep harping on it. Being wrong is not new for anyone, White House or otherwise, nor is lying to the public for national security reasons. If we can find an article that isn't a blog and/or an article not written by someone for a religious website then we might be on to something.
Except there was no reason to lie about this except to save face right before an election. And honestly telling the truth wouldn't have hurt them much, thats why them lying is a big deal.
The answer you will keep getting is this: because the Obama team lied about it.
You have to assume they lied for political gain before the rest makes any sense,
I think that's the only thing that make sense...
and I haven't seen compelling evidence that that is the case, at least beyond a general dislike for the President.
It's proven that they knew it wasn't about that youtube video... and YET for weeks they kept pushing that ridiculous idea. This was a tactical political decision during a hotly contested re-election campaign.
This still puts us at politically motivated to keep harping on it. Being wrong is not new for anyone, White House or otherwise, nor is lying to the public for national security reasons. If we can find an article that isn't a blog and/or an article not written by someone for a religious website then we might be on to something.
So... there should be no consequences for being wrong?
The answer you will keep getting is this: because the Obama team lied about it.
You have to assume they lied for political gain before the rest makes any sense, and I haven't seen compelling evidence that that is the case, at least beyond a general dislike for the President. This still puts us at politically motivated to keep harping on it. Being wrong is not new for anyone, White House or otherwise, nor is lying to the public for national security reasons. If we can find an article that isn't a blog and/or an article not written by someone for a religious website then we might be on to something.
I didn't notice religion being brought into the opinion piece.
I'm not sure what will honestly happen if they are successful. You can't get rid of the head of the state department (Kerry wasn't it ASAIR), your not going to impeach obama over this (hopefully), and they didn't do anything illegal.
whembly wrote: I think that's the only thing that make sense...
From a perverse, biased perspective I suppose. For most people that isn't true.
whembly wrote: So... there should be no consequences for being wrong?
Of course, and there has been. The problem here isn't that you are upset that they were wrong, it is that you are imagining and assuming the motivation for why, and continually harping about it with no evidence beyond political motivation.
Co'tor Shas wrote: I'm not sure what will honestly happen if they are successful. You can't get rid of the head of the state department (Kerry wasn't it ASAIR), your not going to impeach obama over this (hopefully), and they didn't do anything illegal.
I really don't envision Obama being impeached, either, since he's been given free passes on other things that were bigger than Watergate.
Co'tor Shas wrote: I'm not sure what will honestly happen if they are successful. You can't get rid of the head of the state department (Kerry wasn't it ASAIR), your not going to impeach obama over this (hopefully), and they didn't do anything illegal.
They placate their base and hope for a White House and Congressional win in the next election. Being right is less important than winning sits, especially yours: Political Bread and Circus.
Co'tor Shas wrote: I'm not sure what will honestly happen if they are successful. You can't get rid of the head of the state department (Kerry wasn't it ASAIR), your not going to impeach obama over this (hopefully), and they didn't do anything illegal.
I really don't envision Obama being impeached, either, since he's been given free passes on other things that were bigger than Watergate.
Impeachment?
feth no.
A black mark on his presidency? You betcha!
If anything, it should fall in Hillary's lap. But, she's teflon... so that ain't happening.
Co'tor Shas wrote: I'm not sure what will honestly happen if they are successful. You can't get rid of the head of the state department (Kerry wasn't it ASAIR), your not going to impeach obama over this (hopefully), and they didn't do anything illegal.
I really don't envision Obama being impeached, either, since he's been given free passes on other things that were bigger than Watergate.
• Both Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger are members of the Congressional Gang of Eight. They are the ONLY authors.
• This is not a House Intelligence “Committee” report on Benghazi. This is only two committee members writing a report based on prior information.
• Both Rogers and Ruppersberger would have been briefed on the CIA operations in Benghazi during 2011/2012 as the covert operation began.
• President Obama signed a finding memo in 2011 permitting Operation Zero Footprint to begin, which the annex in Benghazi was part of. The congressional “gang of eight” held oversight responsibilities.
• Rogers, Ruppersberger along with Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, Saxby Chambliss and Diane Feinstein would have been notified of the presidential authorization. In 2011 they were the congressional Gang of Eight. Their lack of oversight reflected a willful blindness to the operation.
In short: Mike Rogers is trying to hide his willful blindness.
Heh... Lindsey Graham thinks this report is "full of crap".
Also... one of the CIA dude there... calls BS:
So this BS report came out.....i don't think these weak congressman understand our resolve..i promise i will bring them all down!!! #13hours 8:05 PM - 21 Nov 2014 Miami Beach, FL, United States
whembly wrote: The problem has been that DESPITE all those warnings and knowledge the STATE DEPARTMENT failed to acknowledge this and in fact turned down the Ambassador’s repeated requests for additional security, and beefing up the compound static security.
Chris Stevens was a long-time member of State, and served under State in his capacity as ambassador to Libya. This former State Department employee elected to go to Benghazi despite State's refusal to provide additional security.
So this BS report came out.....i don't think these weak congressman understand our resolve..i promise i will bring them all down!!! #13hours
8:05 PM - 21 Nov 2014 Miami Beach, FL, United States
While selling a book, and persona. Funny how Paronto makes no specific claim regarding the event itself.
I'm a South Park Conservative™. Not a Republican lapdog.
Q: Are you two guys liberal or conservative? Me and my friends have had debates about this.
Parker: We avoid extremes but we hate liberals more than conservatives and we hate them [conservatives].
Stone: I hate conservatives but I really fething hate liberals.
I'm a South Park Conservative™. Not a Republican lapdog.
Q: Are you two guys liberal or conservative? Me and my friends have had debates about this.
Parker: We avoid extremes but we hate liberals more than conservatives and we hate them [conservatives].
Stone: I hate conservatives but I really fething hate liberals.
As someone who leans towards liberal causes I also am not super fond of left-wing politics. At least the right wing is consistent in standing up for what they want. I feel like Democrats are willing to toss aside liberal values (like the public option) because they are taken for granted, in pursuit of teamwork from conservatives that they're not going to get anyway. It's tossing aside what the guys who voted for you wanted so you can appease the people who wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire, and it sucks.
I'm pretty much a social liberal. I like the D's more than the R's, but still think that they are part of the problem. I don't do economic liberalism, because I don't know enough about economics to really pick a side.
whembly wrote: Lindsey Graham is clamoring for a Senate Select Committee on this... seems redundant to me...
He should clamor for Senate Select Committee over the IRS ordeal.
So you admit that Benghazi is a waste of time?
Nope.
One can only clamor so much and, as you alluded to, if Graham is clamoring about Benghazi he can't clamor about the IRS issue. This means that Graham is wasting his time, and the time of US citizens*, by propping the matter up. At least presuming you still feel the IRS issue is more important than Benghazi; which you should.
*But they enjoy having their time wasted, so fair play.
On September 11, 2012, Islamist militants attacked U.S. complexes in Benghazi, Libya. Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed, the first U.S. Ambassador killed in the line of duty since 1979. Three other men were killed and 10 were injured.
The media immediately turned it into a political story, focusing more anger on Mitt Romney’s comments about the administration’s blaming of a YouTube video critical of Islam than determining the facts of the attack itself. Many in the media thought it fine that President Obama jetted off to a high-dollar fundraiser before the bodies cooled. When various high-level government officials blamed either a YouTube video critical of Islam — or our laws protecting free speech, it didn’t generate much controversy among big media.
The media tended to parrot White House talking points about the attack even years later. So even though everyone with knowledge of the scene in Benghazi knew otherwise, the New York Times was claiming until Friday — just this past Friday — that al Qaeda had nothing to do with the attack on Benghazi.
Really. Less than one year ago, the New York Times ran one of its massive “projects” — Pulitzer Prize attempts, basically — around the following claim:
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.
If there’s something true in that pile of horse manure, you’ll have to point it out. Within days this was thoroughly debunked by those in the know (albeit highlighted by media outlets such as CNN). But just this past Friday afternoon, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released “the definitive House statement on the Intelligence Community’s activities before, during and after the tragic events that caused the deaths of four brave Americans” in Benghazi. We’ll look through all the flaws with this report (.pdf) here soon, but first we need to talk about the media reaction to same.
Things seemed to kind of get going with this tweet at 5:47 PM:
Now that’s what I call a Friday news dump. http://t.co/Ln5QzZum81 pic.twitter.com/ieeIGxukNo
Amanda Wills (@AmandaWills) November 21, 2014
The report and its appendices are hundreds of pages long. And I’d argue that the executive summary of the report is not well supported by the contents. It took me several hours to read and research it on Saturday and Sunday and I’m not even done with all the appendices. But let’s look at how journalists and media outlets responded:
What *ought* to happen now: audiences of conservative sites express anger at being misled about Benghazi for so long.
Do you sense a pattern here? The groupthinkers got to the keyboards and pounded out surprisingly similar headlines, whether they were from far-left partisan groups or just the typically left-leaning (in some cases left-careening) big media:
CNN: Republican-led report debunks Benghazi theories and accusations
Slate: GOP-Controlled Intelligence Committee Debunks Benghazi Conspiracies
Talking Points Memo: GOP Intel Report Debunks Its Own Party’s Nutty Benghazi Theories
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: GOP-led report obliterates Fox News’ version of Benghazi
I could go on and on and on and on and on. In fact, I only found one noteworthy story that didn’t adopt the groupthink.
And within a few hours, the story about this report became about Fox News’ coverage of same. See these tweets with links to stories:
Joining @VictorCNN and @Christi_Paul, talking abt why conservative media outlets are downplaying this Benghazi report http://t.co/btySt8R3mi
Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) November 22, 2014
How Fox News Dismissed Today’s Benghazi Report in Less Than 30 Seconds (VIDEO) http://t.co/Hh4z5BVXry (By @themattwilstein)
Mediaite (@Mediaite) November 22, 2014
We’re going on six years of many major media outlets completely failing to inform their viewers and readers about numerous Obama administration scandals, but this is what the “media reporters” choose to focus on? Really? In just this past week alone, for instance, we had updates to the IRS scandal relating to targeting of conservative groups (some 30,000 irretrievably lost emails were found), updates to the many scandals surrounding Obamacare’s drafting (note which outlets are carrying substantive updates about Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber) and implementation (thank God for Peter Suderman or we might not have learned about the latest Obamacare surprise coming out in the latest Friday night document dump), news a huge Obama bundler and major gay rights activist being arrested for child rape, reports of emails revealing Department of Justice attempts to silence one of the rare tenacious reporters covering the administration, a teensie weensie little Constitutional problemo about President Obama usurping the legislative process, signing a secret order to extend the war in Afghanistan, and probably a half dozen other things I’m missing.
If there’s a story about media downplaying Obama administration scandal news, and boy is there, this Fox News not giving enough coverage to a weak-sauce Benghazi report sure as hell ain’t it. Let’s look at what else the media missed.
1. Many journalists obviously didn’t read the report.
Much less read it critically.
One might assume this both because of the speed with which they joined the groupthink and their complete and uncritical acceptance of what they heard the report said. I grant that they may have read the 2-page executive summary.
2. They forgot the well-known problems with Congressional oversight
The relationship between intelligence agencies and the members of Congress who are supposed to oversee them could not be more damaged. I’m not even talking about stuff like how the CIA admitted to spying on members of the Senate committee that is supposed to oversee the agency.
It’s actually the good relationships that are even worse. (And I’m not even talking about how sometimes members are married to people who work in the private sector on related topics.) One of the most common criticisms levied against the intelligence oversight committees is that they’re far too approving and accepting of what the intelligence community wants. I’ve covered the federal government for more than 10 years, so I’m familiar with bureaucratic jargon. Still, I was stunned by the level of obfuscating jargon I found in the report, and what a reasonable person might assume that meant:
@MZHemingway the idea that a Republican investigation into darkest CIA ops would yield shining, shocking truths is…implausible
JAMES ❄ POULOS (@jamespoulos) November 22, 2014
Exactly. This is, like, reporting 101. How did so many big-shot reporters miss just that initial skepticism we should all share when reporting on — especially — politicians?
3. “Mistakes were made.”
On May 1, 1973, Nixon’s Press Secretary Ron Ziegler famously said, “I would apologize to the Post, and I would apologize to Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein… We would all have to say that mistakes were made in terms of comments.” Ziegler wasn’t the first to use the line “mistakes were made” but he made it so famous that it was included in obituaries when he died. The phrase is a cliched way to avoid responsibility for wrong-doing and to try to diminish the seriousness of allegations.
Guess what page “mistakes were made” appears in the explosive Benghazi report that supposedly exonerates everybody in the intelligence community that was within 3,000 miles of the deadly attack? Did you guess page one of the executive summary? Congratulations. You win.
4. Actual vs. caricatured complaints about Obama’s handling of Benghazi
Now, if you were to ask people who aren’t reflexively defensive of President Obama (as the media tend to be) what their main concerns with Benghazi were two years ago, they’d probably say something along the lines of:
That we allowed an ambassador to be assassinated by Islamist militants in Libya.
That we didn’t quite seem as concerned as we should have been, as evidenced by our commander-in-chief heading off to a Vegas fundraiser hours after it happened and a general patience about seeking justice.
That we claimed that an attack on September 11 probably actually had something to do with a silly video and nothing to do with Al Qaeda.
The we officially told the world that “since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others,” as President Obama said.
That our Secretary of State said of a video made by an American that “We absolutely reject its content and message.”
That these statements were dangerously untrue. In America, you’re actually totally allowed to disparage any religion you want. (I myself have fun targeting Methodists.) (Sidenote, check out how our Secretary of State gave a rhetorical beatdown to the Nazis when they complained about a mock trial of Hitler held in Madison Square Gardens in 1934.)
That our media seemed more obsessed with covering for Obama than investigating what the heck happened that night.
Now, the report whitewashes, excuses or glosses over almost all of this and fails completely to get at any of the deeper and troubling questions about what’s wrong with our intel community. It only “debunks” claims if you think that bureaucratic ass-covering and rather strained justifications of what I would hope all Americans would agree was a clear intelligence failure count as “debunking.”
5. Let’s talk about the Feb. 17th Brigade
Here’s a case in point.
The report says that at “appropriately” (I assume they meant “approximately”) 9:40 PM, dozens of militants approached the compound and that “as the men approached, three Libyan security officers in a car outside the [Temporary Mission Facility] drove away without warning U.S. personnel.” Further:
“The State Department had contracted with the February 17th Brigade and the Blue Mountain Group to provide local security for the TMF facility. All available information indicates that the February 17th Brigade guards were inside the walls of the compound and did not detect or report information about the attackers before the attackers breached the gate.”
Now, the report doesn’t mention the Feb. 17th Brigade too much again (we hear the telling — for what it suggests isn’t mentioned — reference to some “helpful” members of the group a few pages later). And maybe it’s telling because the Feb. 17th Brigade — our security contractors — are now allied with Ansar al Sharia — the perpetrators of the attack — and the two groups have taken over large parts of Benghazi. Now, I know that you have to contract with bad guys when you’re doing shady but important work. But don’t you think that maybe a definitive report about how absolutely nothing went wrong in Benghazi that could have been prevented should include that we contracted out our compound security to al Qaeda affiliates there? I mean, maybe the group used to be totes awesome and only went bad after we left. Or, given how things went down, maybe they totally sold us out. But to not even discuss this issue strikes me as odd in the extreme.
Or what about this guy:
Wissam Bin Hamid’s name has surfaced time and again in the investigation into the Benghazi attack. He admittedly met with American officials in Benghazi just days before the assault to discuss security, and he reportedly refused to provide assistance once the attack was underway. The post-revolution Libyan government also worked with Bin Hamid and his Libya Shield militia, which was supposedly one of the strongest “security” forces inside Benghazi.
You will never ever ever guess where this guy is now. OK, if you guessed that a few weeks ago Ansar al Sharia released a 42-minute video featuring him, you win. However, you won’t find any mention of him in this report.
Another weird paragraph says that a Tripoli security team arranged with someone for some particular equipment to be there when they landed in Benghazi. But when they got there, the equipment was nowhere to be found and their interlocutor’s cell phone was turned off. Interesting.
Should these angles have been discussed in the “definitive” report on how everything is awesome? I kind of think so, don’t you?
6. Remember that New York Times report that was only updated on Friday?
I just want to point out that the first line of the report that supposedly makes Republicans look bad places blame for the attack on “armed militias with ties to terrorist organizations, including al-Qa’ida.” And while, yes, the Times did finally get around to updating their report to note that these militias have ties to al Qa’ida, they hedged as much as you could imagine and buried it on page 8. Why are we making fun of FOX, again?
7. Our response was slow.
Now, you can read the report as a big intel agency CYA or you can read it as just a really charitable defense of the decision making that night. But no matter how you read it, it’s striking how slow we were in responding to this crisis.
You know that line about how when seconds count, the police are minutes away? Well, here we had a situation where seconds counted but the nearest security team was 42 minutes away, because of various delays. And the Tripoli team didn’t even start for the air field in Tripoli until after that. And both cited traffic concerns.
Once the Tripoli team finally got to Benghazi, the equipment they arranged for wasn’t there and the group supposed to take them to the hospital (where they believed the ambassador to be) decided they didn’t want to go. The explosive report simply says, “it was not clear why those individuals did not want to travel to the hospital.”
Oh, and the “confusion at the airport lasted for about three and a half hours.” Oh. OK. And then the reason why they were able to leave was because the Libyan Shield brought vehicles to them. But the committee “uncovered no evidence” that the militia tipped off the attackers to the Tripoli Team’s presence. The attack of lethal and deadly accurate mortar fire just happened to take place 11 minutes after they finally arrived at their destination. After some difficulties, they were able to convinced Libyan Shield drivers to help them evacuate.
8. Intelligence failures explained away.
A good example of how the report treads softly happens in Section 2, where we’re told that while intelligence agencies knew the threats in Libya were rising, they didn’t have any knowledge of a specific attack.
“There is no evidence of an intelligence failure,” the report says. But by that it simply means that nobody had given the CIA blueprints for an attack. I mean, we do know that Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri “had called for Americans to be targeted in Libya the day before the diplomatic mission was attacked, leading to speculation that al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan had some sort of role or influence in the attack.” This would seem to indicate that maybe our confidence al Qaeda had nothing to do with the attack was as misguided as our belief that there was no intel failure in predicting an attack on Americans there.
“One of the first questions [the committee] pursued is whether the U.S. government had or should have had intelligence that could have prevented or disrupted the attacks, and thus whether there was an intelligence failure.” This is idiotic. I mean, you might explain why we had an intel failure but there’s no question that we failed. By definition we failed. We have a dead ambassador, three other dead Americans and 10 severely wounded. All because of a surprise attack we were unprepared for. That’s a failure of the intelligence community.
But instead the report says the Committee “found no evidence of an intelligence failure, and an internal CIA analytic review provided to the Committee on January 4, 2013, corroborates the Committee’s findings.”
Wait, the CIA said the CIA didn’t fail? That’s not surprising at all. I mean, this may be what passes for intelligence committee oversight, but I think most Americans want to know why we weren’t more on top of the Al Qaeda leader’s warning or why we didn’t connect that to one of Al Qaeda’s favorite targets (diplomatic compounds) or why we forgot the significance of September 11. Or just why we weren’t better informed of who was friend and who was foe, who was working with whom and why and what we could do to prevent more dead Americans.
Examples of intel failures are brushed away as uncorroborated. To wit, the CIA apparently reported that “a former Transitional National Council security official in Benghazi said he received, very shortly before the attack, information of a possible imminent attack against the TMF and tried to notify the Libyan Intelligence Service the day of the attacks. However he was unable to make contact and relay the information.” Sounds like a failure. But the committee says it wasn’t corroborated by anyone. OK?
9. Try cutting through the jargon here.
Finding #2 says that the “CIA provided sufficient security personnel, resources, and equipment to defend against the known terrorist threat and to enable CIA operations in Benghazi. There is no evidence that the CIA turned down requests for additional security resources at the Annex.”
Well, we’ve already excused failures by saying that the CIA couldn’t have known of the threat. So the first line that they had appropriate resources for “known” threats is basically meaningless. And we already knew two years ago that Ambassador Stevens requested a beefing up of security.
Now, let’s say the request was never officially turned down but just never fulfilled, which is, in fact, extremely plausible. The end result is a lack of requested security but you could report that “There is no evidence that the CIA turned down requests for additional security.” See how bureaucratic jargon works? It’s like magic. (And if you’re immediately wondering how that first line about “known threats” doesn’t work in conjunction with the knowledge that Stevens requested more security, you are smarter than a typical reporter.)
Does a finding like that really “debunk” the supposed conspiracy theory that there wasn’t enough security? I don’t see how it does. Further, Finding #2 is something of a slap in the face of Ambassador Stevens’ memos to his superiors. These aren’t mentioned in the section.
Should I mention that this section about how everything was hunky dory mentions that “perhaps all of the [Diplomatic Security] agents were unarmed and one of them was not wearing shoes”? Or should I instead Groupthink my way into poking fun at conservatives and telling them to be ashamed?
10. Scathing indictment of how little our Feds understand about al Qaeda
As recently as Friday, the State Department was being mocked for its refusal to acknowledge that Ansar al Sharia is tied to Al Qaeda.
Finding #5 is fairly explicit about how a ragtag group of Al Qaeda affiliates launched the attack.
What’s going on with the State Department’s downplaying of Al Qaeda links? Well, I think it has a lot to do with Obama campaign pledges regarding Al Qaeda. You’d have to be a Major League Gruber to claim that the global Islamist militant movement is waning. But President Obama did make a lot of claims about Al Qaeda being “on its heels” or “on the run” or “decimated” and so on. To wit:
“Now, four years ago, I made a few commitments to you. I told you I’d end the war in Iraq, and I did. I said I’d end the war in Afghanistan, and we are,” said Obama. “I said we’d refocus on the people who actually attacked us on 9/11 — and today, al Qaeda is on its heels and Osama bin Laden is no more.”
To make this campaign rhetoric stick, our executive branch has claimed that it meant “core” al Qaeda as opposed to all the groups al Qaeda oversees and works with. Because if we know anything about al Qaeda it’s not that it’s a powerful decentralized operation with a global network. Oh wait, that’s precisely what we do know.
So Finding #5 says “A mixed group, including members of al-Qa’ida in the lands of the Islamic Meghreb (AQIM), al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), the Muhammad Jamal Network (MJN), Ansar al-Sharia (AAS), and Abu Abaydah Ibn Jarah Battalion (UJB) participated in the attacks, along with Qadafi loyalists.
Of course it was a mixed group such as this! It was the White House that consistently downplayed al Qaeda’s involvement for so long. It’s not entirely clear why this finding is such a debunking of what people other than the New York Times have been saying.
11. The involvement of prisoners released from Gitmo
So that New York Times report I keep going back to includes a portion that says this:
The C.I.A. kept its closest watch on people who had known ties to terrorist networks abroad, especially those connected to Al Qaeda. Intelligence briefings for diplomats often mentioned Sufian bin Qumu, a former driver for a company run by Bin Laden. Mr. Qumu had been apprehended in Pakistan in 2001 and detained for six years at Guantánamo Bay before returning home to Derna, a coastal city near Benghazi that was known for a high concentration of Islamist extremists. But neither Mr. Qumu nor anyone else in Derna appears to have played a significant role in the attack on the American Mission, officials briefed on the investigation and the intelligence said.
Again, if you were reading conservative sites, you already knew that this wasn’t true.
But the report says he was almost certainly involved and that he was trained by al Qaeda. And that others who were involved were part of al Qaeda.
12. “They told us to wait.” “Yeah, We told them to wait.”
Remember a few months ago when FOX News had a special documentary “13 Hours at Benghazi”? This was an explosive documentary hosted by Bret Baier that featured three American security forces who were in Benghazi saying they disagreed with how long they were told to wait before trying to rescue folks at TMF.
You can watch the relevant portion here but I’ll just note that these men are speaking on the record about their experience:
If you’d rather read the relevant portion, here’s a transcript. The guys said they were ready to go within five minutes but they were held back by a top CIA officer named “Bob.”
“It had probably been 15 minutes I think, and … I just said, ‘Hey, you know, we gotta– we need to get over there, we’re losing the initiative,’” said Tiegen. “And Bob just looks straight at me and said, ‘Stand down, you need to wait.’” “We’re starting to get calls from the State Department guys saying, ‘Hey, we’re taking fire, we need you guys here, we need help,’” said Paronto. After a delay of nearly 30 minutes, the security team headed to the besieged consulate without orders. They asked their CIA superiors to call for armed air support, which never came. Now, looking back, the security team said they believed that if they had not been delayed for nearly half an hour, or if the air support had come, things might have turned out differently. “Ambassador Stevens and Sean [Smith], yeah, they would still be alive, my gut is yes,” Paronto said. Tiegen concurred. “I strongly believe if we’d left immediately, they’d still be alive today,” he added… In a statement to Fox News, a senior intelligence official did allow that the security team was delayed from responding while the CIA’s top officer in Benghazi tried to rally local support.
Here’s how this is “debunked” according to the report:
Finding #7: Prior to the CIA security team departing for the TMF, the Annex leadership deliberated thoughtfully, reasonable, and quickly about whether further security could be provided to the team. Although some security officers voiced a greater urgency to depart for the TMF, no officer was ever told to stand down.
Oh where to begin? Now, what the report does is explain the delay, not deny it. It characterizes the delay as thoughtful and reasonable. The guys who went on the record thought it overdone, but that’s a natural disagreement.
But note that while the guys said they were told to “stand down” by a top CIA officer, the “debunkers” say that no CIA officer was told to stand down. Later they say that no “stand down” order was given from CIA HQ or from the Tripoli Team.
Of course, these security guys never said that. They said they were told to stand down by an officer right there who looked them in the eye and was named Bob. Further, it’s rather obvious from the actual interview that their big point of dispute is that they were told to wait. The report confirms that is exactly what happened.
13. Explanations aren’t eviscerations
Similarly, Finding #9 explains “The Tripoli Team’s decision not to move to the hospital to retrieve Ambassador Stevens was based on the best intelligence at the time.”
And yes, this report says, that intelligence turned out to be completely inaccurate. (But remember, there were no intelligence failures, just inaccurate or insufficient intelligence that turned out to be disastrous.) But if the claim is that nobody moved to the hospital to help Stevens, explaining why no one moved isn’t the same thing as “debunking” the claim.
14.No focus on State Department or Defense Department [whembly: most important imo] This isn’t a big thing but it’s worth noting that this review was of intelligence agencies. Therefore, it lacks a substantive discussion of State Department and Defense Department performance. Not that I’d expect any biting oversight of those departments, either, but since those departments also played (or didn’t play, as the case may be) roles in what happened, the lack of focus is just something to consider when declaring, as one media outlet did, the release date of this report the date when Benghazi was no longer up for discussion.
15. Did we mention that there was nothing good about the talking points?
Yeah, so, late in the report we learn that “the Administration’s initial public narrative on the causes and motivations for the attacks were not fully accurate.” You don’t say! Also that “The process and edits made to these talking points was flawed.”
And for this, the GOP should be ashamed? Really? It’s almost like a less obsequious press might think something else might be amiss.
Much of the report wishy-washily explains that there is a fog in intel gathering that makes things difficult to assess and that this kind of sort of excuses all the horse manure that was shoveled by the administration during the campaign-season terrorist attack.
Now, earlier in the report we’re told that “[Ansar al Sharia] posted a video on YouTube on September 12, 2012, claiming participation in the attacks” and we know that the head of al Qaeda called for attacks on the U.S. in Libya the day before the attack. We know that the attack took place on September 11, what even the most casual observer might note is a significant date. We’re told that the Defense Intelligence Agency said the attacks were pre-planned on September 12.
But you see, man, like a few weeks later the CIA totally thought it just happened to fall on September 11.
Let me be clear, as President Obama might say, if you’re a reporter reading this and think this sounds even remotely plausible and you think that this section is anything other than a great explanation of how idiotic the CIA can be, you are an idiot.
Everything about this section is groan-inducing. Such as that when a cable came from Tripoli to the CIA on September 14 that was the “first indication that there may not have been a protest,” according to deputy director Mike Morell, he wasn’t sure if he’d read it. Nevermind that we later learn that folks in Libya had within hours assessed that there was a lack of protests that day. I just have a hard time believing that the deputy director wouldn’t care if a Tripoli intelligence cable came around. Either way, by September 15, he’d gotten an email specifically saying there’d been no protest.
And when did Susan Rice go on television blaming a YouTube video for sparking a protest that somehow magically transformed into this super-effective double-location onslaught that took four American lives including an American Ambassador’s? That would be September 16.
That was when she said the actions in Benghazi were a “direct result of a heinous and offensive video that was widely disseminated.”
This report that supposedly makes Republicans look bad notes that Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes wrote on September 14 that “one of the goals of Administration public statements should be ‘To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.’”
Exactly the opposite, Ben.
Anyway, this report then claims, more or less completely implausibly, that Rice couldn’t have really known until afterwards that her assessments were incorrect. Um, OK. But maybe when you’re, I don’t know, trying to “underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy” because you’re focusing on campaigning more than truth-telling, you end up underscoring something that isn’t true. I don’t care if we have some difficult-to-swallow bureaucratic BS explanation that avoids tough questions and instead pats Susan Rice on the head as if she couldn’t be expected to do better. Or, rather, I don’t see why we let certain administrations get away with this type of explanatory defense while nailing other people to the wall for the smallest slight.
16. Wait, what’s this about Mike Morell again?
So the same Morell who accidentally didn’t read a memo related to a horrific terror attack and forgot to tell anyone about the cables from Tripoli also was this guy:
“Finding 12: Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell made significant changes to the talking points”
Wait, what? Are you kidding me?
But, the report says, it’s OK because, um, well, you see, he didn’t know Susan Rice or anyone else in the Administration would use talking points he made. And then the report says something about excellent beachfront property for sale cheap. No, actually it says he “made a large number of edits after a September 15 White House Deputies Committee meeting.” Oh dear.
Earlier drafts of the talking points mentioned al Qaeda but by the time Morell was done with them, he didn’t even include “Islamist” in them. Because our CIA is full of people who do not commit intelligence failures but can’t figure out that an al Qaeda attack on September 11 might be related to Islamism.
By the way, the CIA’s office of public affairs also stripped language about attacks and changed it to “demonstrations” and I am sure that had nothing whatsoever to do with it being an election year or their bosses allowing a major attack on the anniversary of September 11.
17. CIA could have done things better? You don’t say.
Finding #14 says “the CIA could have placed more weight on eyewitness sources on the ground and should have challenged its initial assessments about the existence of a protest earlier.” Of course, its initial assessment was right on. Within hours, the CIA noted that the attack was premeditated and there was no protest. It was politics that changed that rather obvious conclusion. And as noted above, the guys in Tripoli specifically told the agency that they had no evidence of a protest before Susan Rice received talking points making contrary claims.
Looking through all of this talking-point changing and reversal of initial assessments, and White House efforts to make sure everyone believed it was a protest, this whole “what difference does it make?” episode from Hillary Clinton sure doesn’t look any better (though I’m sure the media will continue to give her one of their trademarked passes).
18. Wrongly forced to sign NDAs?
Another finding is that no one was improperly forced to sign non-disclosure agreements. This is in response to the claims made by some that they were encouraged to sign multiple non-disclosure agreements.
The report in fact acknowledges that some of those who were told to sign secondary NDAs felt uncomfortable about it. It says “three of the six contractors who signed new NDAs testified that they believed CIA’s request for the new NDAs appeared odd.” But the committee feels strongly that everything was cool about it.
But how does this debunk reporting that contractors were asked to sign further NDAs or that the request felt it odd? The report confirms it. And it seems sensible that some might find it odd. Reporters shouldn’t delight in CIA explanations for why it was totally no big deal over other claims at odds with CIA talking points.
The report goes into twists and turns to explain that these secondary NDAs weren’t really tied to Benghazi, they just super seem like it. And further the report says that Director Brennan was “factually accurate” when he denied it had anything to do with Benghazi but then suggests he didn’t handle it well. What a mess.
19. If you can’t trust the CIA completely, who can you trust?
Finding #16 is “There is no evidence that the CIA conducted any unusual polygraph exams related to Benghazi.”
You’ll note a few things. Namely the word “usual” and the phrase “related to Benghazi.” CNN reported that some people who had been in Benghazi were being polygraphed once a month. They also reported that was an unusual rate.
Does the CIA justify its claim by saying once a month is a totally usual rate? That the polygraphs were done at an unusual rate but weren’t actually related to Benghazi but, instead, something else agency related? Is the distinction related to the difference between the journalistic claim regarding “CIA operative” and the CIA claim that “no officer” was polygraphed? We don’t know. There is no substantiating evidence that would make someone believe the CIA over Jake Tapper on this one. Should journalists jump up and down and make partisan clowns out of themselves before asking these questions?
20. What a waste of two years.
The conclusion to the report claims “This report is the result of nearly two years of intensive investigation.” I’d like to see how they define intensive.
Because if you spend two years to come up with a report that one of our worst failures was not preventable and you don’t even explore, say, whether we were sold out by supposed friends who turn out to be al Qaeda affiliated, what are you doing with your time?
If I wanted to read a bunch of unconvincing explanations for bad behavior, I’d talk to a group of poorly disciplined children. We should expect a bit more from an oversight committee.
And as for the clown show of our reporter class who spent the last couple of years making B-E-N-G-H-A-Z-I acrostics? Joking about dead ambassadors and lacking curiosity are not as good looking as you think.
Well, if their first statement is a complete misunderstanding of how people die in a fire then then it is a good indicator that there is no reason to even entertain their guesses over the (how many different reports by how many investigative bodies) already released.
d-usa wrote: Well, if their first statement is a complete misunderstanding of how people die in a fire then then it is a good indicator that there is no reason to even entertain their guesses over the (how many different reports by how many investigative bodies) already released.
Okay... that's your prerogative.
I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt since they were there.
Anyhoo... nothing will shake out until the House Committee gets cranking.
I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt since they were there.
That doesn't make their statement any more true.
At best they are completely ignorant of what they are talking about, at worst they flat out lied.
Being there doesn't make a difference when they are talking out of their ass.
I will give the benefit of the doubt the experts that compiled the information used in the reports and who had access to the scene to determine the origin of the fire, how it spread, how hot it burned, the fireload of the enclosed space where the bodies were found, the autopsy reports that determine CO levels in the blood, thermal damage to the lungs and possible POC residue inside of them.
If you want to hitch your wagon to the guys going "I have no idea what I'm talking about, but you don't die quickly from smoke inhalation" then be my guest, it's not really that surprising to anybody that follows any of your conspiracy theories.
"There was a woman coughing at the post office. I asked my doctor later if he thought she might have Ebola, and he laughed and said lol, no. But what does he know? I was there, man.":
5. What do military After Action Reviews on Benghazi reveal? If early drafts differ from final drafts in the record, what changes were made and by whom?
The military describes an After Action Review as “a keystone of the evaluation process.” It’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which evaluation is more crucial than after Benghazi. Yet more than two years after the attacks, the After Action Reviews remain secret even to members of Congress who requested copies.
An accurate and unaltered After Action Review could provide keen insight into what went right and what went wrong from a military standpoint. It could shed light on which public claims are correct and which are faulty.
The Benghazi After Action Reports were not even shared with the Benghazi Accountability Review Board (ARB) which nonetheless concluded, “The interagency response was both timely and appropriate but there simply was not enough time given the speed of the attacks for armed U.S. military assets to have made a difference.”
The ARB’s conclusion differs with other official accounts and analyses. It also doesn’t explain how the military could supposedly know there was no point in launching assets because “they wouldn’t get there in time,” when it had no idea how long the assaults would last or whether there would be further attacks in the region on the anniversary of Sept. 11.
When pressed during Congressional testimony as to why he did not personally review any After Action Reports, ARB co-chairman Admiral Mike Mullen stated that he was “read a summary” of an After Action Report and was satisfied with the information. He didn’t elaborate on why—as a lead investigator into what really happened—he wouldn’t have sought a firsthand review of these key, comprehensive documents.
An After Action Review is “a professional discussion of an event, focused on performance standards, that enables soldiers to discover for themselves what happened, why it happened, and how to sustain strengths and improve on weaknesses. It is a tool leaders and units can use to get maximum benefit from every mission or task.”
What specifics could a Benghazi After Action Review provide?
According to the military, an After Action Review provides:
-Candid insights into specific soldier, leader, and unit strengths and weaknesses from various perspectives.
-Feedback and insight critical to battle-focused training.
-Details often lacking in evaluation reports alone.
U.S. Military on After Action Reviews:
“Evaluation is the basis for the commander’s unit-training assessment. No commander, no matter how skilled, will see as much as the individual soldiers and leaders who actually conduct the training. Leaders can better correct deficiencies and sustain strengths by carefully evaluating and comparing soldier, leader, and unit performance against the standard. The AAR is the keystone of the evaluation process.”
4. What do photographs taken at the White House and/or of the President throughout the duration of the Benghazi attacks show and why won’t the White House release them? White House photographer Pete Souza is often on hand to record photographs of President Obama in action. According to the New Yorker, Souza takes an average of 20,000 photos of President Obama per month. Photographs captured the night of the Benghazi attacks–likely hundreds of them–would reveal much information about the executive branch’s actions.
Several weeks after the attacks, when it became clear that the White House was withholding information on the President’s actions and whereabouts, my CBS News producer and I requested copies of any photos taken that night. The White House photo office promised a prompt response, likely by day’s end.
However, release of the photos was apparently blocked by the White House press office. The White House photo office told us that, in this instance, their release would have to be approved by Josh Earnest. Earnest was then a deputy White House press secretary. He has since been promoted to White House press secretary.
We contacted Earnest through the White House press office but he would not return our calls. We attempted this process for days, weeks, and then months, but Earnest would not respond. We asked the photo office to provide an alternate means for us to obtain the photos since the method they required, contacting Earnest, was a dead end. But they simply kept referring us back to Earnest.
According to the White House: “Pete Souza, Chief Official White House Photographer and Director of the White House Photography Office, has access unlike any other. Camera in tow, Souza travels alongside President Obama to visually document each meeting, trip and encounter for historical record. Check out his work on the White House Flickr photo stream and in the photo galleries on WhiteHouse.gov.”
The “most transparent administration in history” should release the Benghazi night photos. The media and Congress should demand them. Earnest and Souza—both paid by tax dollars and working in offices funded by tax dollars and supposedly working on behalf of the public—should be asked about the photos and what they observed that night.
The White House photo office is meant to record historical photos of the President. Yet a number of major news organizations allege it has been turned into a propaganda arm of the administration. In November of last year, more than 30 major news and media organizations, national newspapers and television networks wrote a letter protesting the Obama administration’s unprecedented limits on photo access. The news outlets include ABC, FOX, CBS, CNN, NBC,Bloomberg and the New York Times.
According to the letter:
“Journalists are routinely being denied the right to photograph or videotape the President while he is performing his official duties. As surely as if they were placing a hand over a journalist’s camera lens, officials in this administration are blocking the public from having an independent view of important functions of the Executive Branch of government.”
At the time, Earnest told reporters, “We’ve taken advantage of new technology to give the American public even greater access to behind-the-scenes footage or photographs of the president doing his job…I understand why that is a source of some consternation to the people in this room, but to the American public, that is a clear win.”
Doug Mills, a photographer for The New York Times who has covered the White House since the Reagan administration complained to then-White House press secretary Jay Carney that the “most transparent administration” in history was actually behaving more like the Soviet Union.
“I said, ‘Jay, this is just like Tass,’ Mills said in an interview. “It’s like government-controlled use of the public image of the president.”
3. Why wasn’t surveillance video that was recorded at the U.S. compound in Benghazi ever released, as promised?
In fall of 2012, U.S. officials promised to publicly release a declassified version of surveillance video taken by multiple cameras at the U.S. compound in Benghazi, as well as video recorded by an overhead drone. At one point, officials on behalf of the Director of National Intelligence told the news media the video would be released on or about Thanksgiving of 2012. However, the video was never released and, more than two years later, no explanation for the reversal in plans has been provided.
2. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reportedly told family members of the Benghazi victims that the U.S. was going to find and prosecute whoever made the “awful” Internet video (rather than pledging to catch those who committed the murders), what crime did she envision the video maker had committed? On what information was she relying when she thought that the government could–and should–persecute a filmmaker who was exercising free speech in America? When U.S. officials asked YouTube to remove the video, what was the legal, ethical or policy basis for doing so and who in government was consulted? Had Mrs. Clinton or President Obama watched the entire film prior to disparaging it? What steps, if any, did administration officials take to have Nakoula charged?
The maker of “Innocence of Muslims,” Nakoula Nakoula, describes himself as an Egyptian Christian. He says he made the film about radical extremists who seek to destroy the American culture and way of life. After his film was incorrectly blamed for the Sept. 11, 2012 violence, Nakoula was arrested for violating terms of his probation set after a bank fraud conviction for which he had served one year in jail. The content of film itself broke no U.S. laws.
In the days and weeks after the attacks, top U.S. officials steered fault for the attacks toward the video, though we now know from internal documents that they had almost immediately privately concluded the terrorist group Ansar al Sharia was to blame. The State Department had sent a message to Libyan officials saying so–even as U.S. officials claimed otherwise to the American public.
With whom did Mrs. Clinton and other officials consult before sending the message that the maker of the video would be prosecuted? What crimes did they mistakenly believe had been committed through Nakoula’s free speech act? In asking that the video be withdrawn from YouTube, has the administration set a precedent that dictates any video offensive to some Muslims should not be posted on the Internet? Does that policy extend to videos that offend some Christians or those belonging to other religions — or to no religion? Under what legal basis and on whose specific advice did U.S. officials follow this course of action?
1. Where was President Obama throughout the long night of the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya? What decisions did the Commander-in-Chief make and what actions did he take while Americans were under assault on foreign soil? Considering that the U.S. embassy in Egypt had already been overrun earlier in the day, and that further attacks on other U.S. facilities were anticipated throughout the night, how involved was the President in tracking the volatile, regional developments?
More than two years after the fact, President Obama’s decisions and actions during the Benghazi attacks remain secret with little justification as to why they should be so shrouded. Members of the House Select Committee on Benghazi plan to seek the information. The committee is led by Republican Trey Gowdy of South Carolina. The lead Democrat on the committee is Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland.
The information blackout is in stark contrast to the aftermath of the successful 2011 raid to capture Osama bin Laden when detailed accounts, including a timeline of the President’s briefings, were released to the New York Times and other news media. Then, Obama and his top advisers did not hesitate to reveal details such as:
• The President had received divided advice on whether to move forward with the bin Laden raid.
• President Obama walked into a room adjacent to the Situation Room, said “I need to watch this,” and sat next to Brigadier General Marshall “Brad” Webb, assistant commanding general of Joint Special Operations Command.
• The President said, “We got him,” referring to bin Laden.
• After the raid, the first person the President called was former President George W. Bush. He also called former President Bill Clinton that evening.
In fact, the President’s supposed hands-off approach to the Sept. 11, 2012 Mideast attacks is a divergence from the level of involvement described during the bin Laden raid. By Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s account, Obama told him to “do what he needed to do” to handle Benghazi, then “left [specifics] up to us.” The President reportedly had no further contact with Panetta or Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey during the long night of attacks, deaths and evacuations.
Easy E wrote: I feel this topic needs a GIF of a man beating a dead horse. There is no "THERE" there.
Give it a rest guys.
My problem with the issue is i just don't see anything coming of it. Yes it's a serious issue, just like a lot of serious issues that get the saber rattled and then nothing happens. Call me jaded i guess.
Am I pulling a Hillary when I point out that you have zero interest in any of the findings from any body of any kind as long as the findings don't match what you already decided?
But to satisfy your petty complaint:
Does it matter to you what hey find?
Or will you dismiss it, again, if it doesn't say what you want it to say.
d-usa wrote: Am I pulling a Hillary when I point out that you have zero interest in any of the findings from any body of any kind as long as the findings don't match what you already decided?
So you don't have anything to say except "whembly" is being slowed about this then?
But to satisfy your petty complaint:
Does it matter to you what hey find?
Or will you dismiss it, again, if it doesn't say what you want it to say.
What did I "dismiss" then? I'm sure you can go to Huffington Post, TPM, or the Atlantic to get what you need.
Go ahead... I'll wait.
EDIT: If not, let's wait till the outcome of the Select Committee. Cool?
No, we can close the thread because someone posted a gif of a man beating a dead horse. There is nothing more to be gained from this thread. That GIF is the Alpha and Omega of Benghazi threads.
d-usa wrote: You literally gave reasons for dismissing prior reports a few posts up, and now you are pulling a "what did I dismiss"?
It's a waste of time. We will do the same song and dance when the next report comes out, just like we have done with every other one.
Have fun Dale.
Because you flat out ignored the reasons why I (and many others) dismissed those prior reports. You didn't even choose to engage me on those. This was your response:
You are ignoring reality when you try to tell me what my indented meaning of my posts are.
I'm not defending "my guys". I'm acknowledging the fact that reality and every other investigation disagrees with you and that based on your history you will ignore any future report that doesn't say what you want it to say.
Will you promise today to shut-up about Benghazi if this report has the same findings as the other four?
4. What do photographs taken at the White House and/or of the President throughout the duration of the Benghazi attacks show and why won’t the White House release them?
Really? That's clearly the work of a woman trying to generate hits. I find it especially funny that she spent more time on the topic of photography than the provision of an AAR.
The White House photo office is meant to record historical photos of the President. Yet a number of major news organizations allege it has been turned into a propaganda arm of the administration.
It has always been a propaganda arm for the presiding Administration, that's what recording "...historical photos..." entails.
In fall of 2012, U.S. officials promised to publicly release a declassified version of surveillance video taken by multiple cameras at the U.S.
First “OpsAlert@State.gov” email at 4:07 PM on September 11, 2012, reports, “… diplomatic mission is under attack … 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well … Stevens in the compound safe haven”
Email at 6:06 PM September 11, 2012, states terrorist group, “Ansar al Sharia Claims Responsibility.”
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that on February 11, 2015, it uncovered documents from the U.S. Department of State revealing that top aides for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, including her then-chief of staff Cheryl Mills, knew from the outset that the Benghazi mission compound was under attack by armed assailants tied to a terrorist group. The documents were produced as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State ((No. 1:14-cv-01511). The documents make no reference to a spontaneous demonstration or Internet video, except in an official statement issued by Hillary Clinton.
Judicial Watch lawsuit focused on Mrs. Clinton’s involvement in the Benghazi scandal:
Any and all records concerning, regarding, or related to notes, updates, or reports created in response to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S, Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. This request includes but is not limited to, notes, taken by then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton or employees of the Office of the Secretary of State during the attack and its immediate aftermath.
The chain of internal emails tracks the events surrounding the terrorist attack in real time beginning immediately upon its inception.
On September 11, 2012, at 4:07 PM, Maria Sand (who was then a Special Assistant to Mrs. Clinton) forwarded an email from the State Department’s Operations Center entitled “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi is Under Attack (SBU) [Sensitive But Unclassified]” to Cheryl Mills (then-Chief of Staff), Jacob Sullivan (then-Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy), Joseph McManus (then-Hillary Clinton’s Executive Assistant), and a list of other Special Assistants in the Secretary’s office:
The Regional Security Officer reports the diplomatic mission is under attack. Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four COM [Chief of Mission] personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support.
On September 11, 2012, 4:38 PM, State Department Foreign Service Officer Lawrence Randolph forwarded Mills, Sullivan and McManus an email from Scott Bultrowicz, who was the former director of the Diplomatic Security Service (ousted following review of the attack), with the subject line, “Attack on Benghazi 09112012”:
DSCC received a phone call from [REDACTED] in Benghazi, Libya initially stating that 15 armed individuals were attacking the compound and trying to gain entrance. The Ambassador is present in Benghazi and currently is barricaded within the compound. There are no injuries at this time and it is unknown what the intent of the attackers is. At approximately 1600 DSCC received word from Benghazi that individuals had entered the compound. At 1614 RSO advised the Libyans had set fire to various buildings in the area, possibly the building that houses the Ambassador [REDACTED] is responding and taking fire.
Nearly seven hours later, at 12:04 am, on September 12, Randolph sends an email with the subject line “FW: Update 3: Benghazi Shelter Location Also Under Attack” to Mills, Sullivan, and McManus that has several updates about the Benghazi attack:
I just called Ops and they said the DS command center is reporting that the compound is under attack again. I am about to reach out to the DS Command Center.
This email also contains a chain of other, earlier email updates:
September 11, 2012 11:57 PM email: “(SBU) DS Command reports the current shelter location for COM personnel in Benghazi is under mortar fire. There are reports of injuries to COM staff.”
September 11, 2012 6:06 PM (Subject: “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack (SBU): “(SBU) Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and call for an attack on Embassy Tripoli”
September 11, 2012, 4:54 PM: “Embassy Tripoli reports the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi has stopped and the compound has been cleared. A response team is on site to locate COM personnel.”
The DOS emails reveal the first official confirmation of the death of Ambassador Stevens. On September 12, 2012, 3:22 AM, Senior Watch Officer Andrew Veprek forwarded an email to numerous State Department officials, which was later forwarded to Cheryl Mills and Joseph McManus, with the subject line “Death of Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi”:
Embassy Tripoli confirms the death of Ambassador John C. (Chris) Stevens in Benghazi. His body has been recovered and is at the airport in Benghazi.
Two hours later, Joseph McManus forwards the news about Ambassador Stevens’ death to officials in the State Department Legislative Affairs office with instructions not to “forward to anyone at this point.”
Despite her three top staff members being informed that a terrorist group had claimed credit for the attack, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, issued an official statement, also produced to Judicial Watch, claiming the assault may have been in “a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet.”
Cheryl Mills asks that the State Department stop answering press inquiries at 12:11 am on September 12, despite the ongoing questions about “Chris’ whereabouts.” In an email to State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland, Jacob Kennedy, and Phillipe Reines (then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Strategic Communications and Senior Communications Advisor), Mills writes:
Can we stop answering emails for the night Toria b/c now the first one [Hillary Clinton’s “inflammatory material posted on the Internet” statement] is hanging out there.
Earlier in the chain of emails, Nuland told Mills, Sullivan, and Patrick Kennedy (Under Secretary of State for Management) that she “ignored” a question about Ambassador Steven’s status and whereabouts from a CBS News Reporter.
Another top State Department official is eager to promote a statement from Rabbi David Saperstein, then-Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, a liberal group. The September 2012 statement condemns “the video that apparently spurred these incidents. It was clearly crafted to provoke, offend, and to evoke outrage.” Michael Posner, then-Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, forwarded the statement on September 12, 2012, to Wendy Sherman, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and Jacob Sherman with the note:
This is an excellent statement – our goal should be to get the Conference of Presidents, the ADL etc. to follow suit and use similar language.
(President Obama nominated Rabbi Saperstein to be Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom in July 2014. The U.S. Senate confirmed him in December 2014.)
Also included in the documents are foreign press reports establishing the cause of Ambassador Chris Steven’s death as being from asphyxiation. According to the reports, doctors attending Stevens said he could have been saved had he arrived at the hospital earlier.
The Obama administration has blacked out reactions from White House and top State Department officials to news stories published on September 14, 2012. One of the stories quoted a visitor who criticized the lack of security at the Benghazi Special Mission Compound and another headlined, “America ‘was warned of attack and did nothing.’”
Other emails list well over 20 invited participants in a “SVTC” (secure video teleconference). The invited participants for the September 14, 2012, early morning call include senior White House, CIA, and State Department political appointees.
“These emails leave no doubt that Hillary Clinton’s closest advisers knew the truth about the Benghazi attack from almost the moment it happened,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And it is inescapable that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knowingly lied when she planted the false story about ‘inflammatory material being posted on the Internet.’ The contempt for the public’s right to know is evidenced not only in these documents but also in the fact that we had to file a lawsuit in federal court to obtain them. The Obama gang’s cover-up continues to unravel, despite its unlawful secrecy and continued slow-rolling of information. Congress, if it ever decides to do its job, cannot act soon enough to put Hillary Clinton, Cheryl Mills, and every other official in these emails under oath.”
Islamic terrorists connected to al Qaeda attacked the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi on the evening of September 11, 2012. U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith were both killed. Just a few hours later, a second terrorist strike targeted a different compound about one mile away. Two CIA contractors, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, were killed and 10 others were injured in the second attack.
So why did Clinton, State, and the Obama administration claim for the next two weeks that the attack had been a spontaneous demonstration provoked by a little-known YouTube video?
Oh... right... Obama was trying to win his re-election campaign... so, that director was sacrificed on the alter of political convenience. Not to mention the massive head-fake on the American voters.
Co'tor Shas wrote: I thought the committee had already decided there was no wrongdoing? Or did more info come to light?
The existing Intelligence Committee, was written by 2 members wrote a report that exonerates the intelligence agencies. Nothing about Obama or the States depts... see my previous posts.
This is for the HOUSE Select Committee (similar to a "special prosecutor", but not quite powerful).
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Easy E wrote: No, this is just a political circle jerk.
Several bi-partisan committees, panles, and investigations have all said that there is no there there.
It's not clear who withheld the correspondence.
By RACHAEL BADE 6/15/15 7:56 PM EDT Updated 6/16/15 11:09 AM EDT
House GOP Benghazi investigators have discovered 60 new Libya communications between Sidney Blumenthal and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a congressional source told POLITICO on Monday — suggesting that either the State Department or the 2016 Democratic presidential contender withheld correspondence the panel had requested.
The House Select Committee on Benghazi had quietly subpoenaed Blumenthal’s Libya emails. And on Friday, the longtime Clinton family friend — who is set to testify before investigators behind closed doors Tuesday morning — handed over 120 pages worth of new Libya- and Benghazi-related emails.
“These emails were not previously produced to the Committee or released to the public, and they will help inform tomorrow’s deposition,” panel Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said in a statement late Monday evening. “We are prepared to release these emails.”
Panel Republicans are pushing to release the emails as early as Tuesday but need Democrats to agree to do so under committee rules that require the minority to be given a five-day warning before release.
In the meantime, they’re wondering why they didn’t have them in the first place.
Clinton has said she and her team gave all her work-related correspondence over to State, which was then tasked with going through the emails and giving the panel relevant messages. Department officials turned up about 300 emails related to the attack on the Benghazi diplomatic compound that left four Americans dead.
The congressional source did not know whether Clinton had turned over all the new emails to State and State did not provide them, or whether Clinton failed to hand over the correspondence.
Blumenthal’s attorney, James Cole, and Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A State Department spokesman downplayed the discovery and said the agency gave the panel what it asked for.
“The Department is working diligently to publish to its public website all of the emails received from former Secretary Clinton through the FOIA process,” Alec Gerlach said in a statement. “We provided the Committee with a subset of documents that matched its request and will continue to work with them going forward.”
At the crux of the back-and-forth is whether the committee specifically asked State for all Clinton’s Libya emails or only Benghazi-related correspondence. State says the panel initially asked for Benghazi-only material and only recently expanded that request to include all correspondence on the Middle Eastern nation. The congressional source argued that the initial request for information from Clinton was aimed at all Libya correspondence — and that State was being evasive.
The Dec. 2, 2014, letter to Clinton’s lawyer, which he then forwarded to State, does not seem to limit the scope.
“Please provide, as soon as possible but no later than Dec. 31, 2014, any and all documents and communications referring or relating to a.) Libya (including but not limited to Benghazi and Tripoli), and/or b) weapons located or found in, imported or brought into, and/or exported or removed from Libya, authored by, sent to, or received by the email address ‘hdr22@clintonemail.com’ between Jan. 1, 2011 through Dec. 31, 2013,” it says.
Republicans say that the broader U.S.-Libya policy in the months leading up to the attack could have influenced what happened in Benghazi, when a special diplomatic mission was overrun by terrorists. But Democrats will argue the two are distinct and the committee is on a fishing expedition aimed at making Clinton look bad.
“The Select Committee is now conducting its investigation by selective leaks and press releases, without mentioning that these documents don’t identify any smoking gun about the Benghazi attacks — in fact, they hardly relate to Benghazi at all,” said panel Democrat Elijah Cummings of Maryland in a statement. The deposition, he added, “won’t bring us any new information about the Benghazi attacks because the witness appears not to have any firsthand knowledge about them.”
But the debate may be beside the point: The panel in its statement says some of the emails specifically relate to the Benghazi attacks and, therefore, should have been turned over, even if the State Department read the document request narrowly.
Since Clinton used a personal server when she was secretary, rather than an official State email account as she was supposed to, her lawyer decided which emails constituted “official” communications and provided them to the State Department before they were released to the committee and publicly.
The Clinton-Blumenthal relationship came under scrutiny last month when The New York Times reported that Blumenthal had been passing Clinton unsubstantiated intelligence on Libya, including one email where he blamed the Libya attacks on an anti-Muslim Internet video. Then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice suggested the video was a major cause as well in an initial TV appearance, but critics said the administration was dishonest about the security situation in the fragile country following dictator Muammar Qadhafi’s ousting.
Barred from a State position by the Obama administration but paid $10,000 a month to advise the philanthropic Clinton Foundation, Blumenthal was also engaged in talks about a new Libyan business venture. At the same time, he also passed Clinton information about the security situation in Libya. And Clinton’s responses show she took him seriously enough to forward around his emails to her top aides, though some messages were met with skepticism.
Republicans last week said his advice and intelligence on Libya were mentioned in more than 35 percent of the correspondence Clinton received on Libya.
Tuesday’s deposition with Blumenthal, the panel’s first, is closed to reporters. Due to the latest discovery, the questioning will likely focus on whether more Libya emails are missing.
The GOP on Tuesday also plans to question Blumenthal — who earned a spot in Clinton’s inner circle after his ardent defense of Bill during the 1990s impeachment trial — about their relationship, why he passed Clinton such emails and whether he was getting paid for his work. Republicans question if the advice was really “unsolicited,” as Clinton has said.
So far, Blumenthal and Clinton have dismissed the GOP’s suspicions, and Clinton has said they’re simply “old friends.” Blumenthal has said he sent Clinton information he believed “she might find interesting or helpful,” per the statement he released following news of his subpoena.
The panel will also touch on Blumenthal’s intelligence sourcing. Usually those in decision-making positions at major agencies receive vetted intelligence to ensure accuracy — but Blumenthal circumvented those traditional lines of communication because of his close relationship with Clinton.
Should Clinton get elected... expect more of this.
This is what you get when you act like the rules don't apply to you.
Beating a dead horse doesn't make it alive, but it does make everyone think you assault horses that are no long with us. This thread is pining for the fjords.
Beating a dead horse doesn't make it alive, but it does make everyone think you assault horses that are no long with us. This thread is pining for the fjords.
<translation>
Ok ok ok. Hillary lied. She told the family of slain Americans a lie while standing over the coffins of their loved ones to save herself politically.
Hillary lied about forking over her emails to the government.
But I’m still going to totally believe her when she says she’ll improve the economy, healthcare, education and social ills.
</translation>
Do I have that right?
On more serious note:
I figured this is big news as Sid Blumenthal is testifying today. Ya know... the same Sid that the Obama Administration actually forbade Clinton from having Sid work for her? That, she went behind the Administration's back on by having Sid work at her Foundation while working for her?
So here's the conundrum... did Hillary release all the relevant emails to the States Department? Or did the States Dept err in not releasing all relevant emails to the Select Committee?
Thanks for catching it. 
did 'Age of Extinction' grossed over a billion??!??!?! o.O
According to the letter:
