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Video recording from the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya reveals that militants were highly coordinated and engaged in a “military style” operation, according to the Daily Beast.

Two intelligence officers who viewed the video told the Daily Beast’s Eli Lake that the video “shows an organized group of armed men attacking the compound.”

The militants killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

Lake reports:

    The Obama administration has been studying the videos, taken from closed-circuit cameras throughout the Benghazi consulate’s four-building compound, for clues about who was responsible for the attack and how it played out. The two officials tell The Daily Beast that analysts are hoping to decipher the faces of the attackers and match them up with known jihadists.

    The videos could also play into an expanding investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that is looking at whether security steps could have been taken that would have saved the life of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans killed that day. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who is one of the Republicans leading the House investigation, says he hasn’t been given the footage.

Footage from the night of Sept. 11 might be the clearest evidence yet of a military-style assault on the consulate in Benghazi. Eli Lake reports.

   

Video footage from the United States consulate in Benghazi, Libya, taken the night of the Sept. 11 anniversary attacks, shows an organized group of armed men attacking the compound, according to two U.S. intelligence officials who have seen the footage and are involved in the ongoing investigation. The footage, which was recovered from the site last week by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, offers some of the most tangible evidence yet that a military-style assault took place, according to these officials.
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The Obama administration has been studying the videos, taken from closed-circuit cameras throughout the Benghazi consulate’s four-building compound, for clues about who was responsible for the attack and how it played out. The two officials tell The Daily Beast that analysts are hoping to decipher the faces of the attackers and match them up with known jihadists.

The videos could also play into an expanding investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that is looking at whether security steps could have been taken that would have saved the life of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans killed that day. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who is one of the Republicans leading the House investigation, says he hasn’t been given the footage.

In addition to the footage from the consulate cameras, the U.S. government is also poring over video taken from an overhead U.S. surveillance drone that arrived for the final hour of the night battle at the consulate compound and nearby annex.

Video from the compound’s cameras debunk the initial line from the Obama administration that there was a protest in front of the consulate on the night of the attacks, according to one of the U.S. intelligence officials who has seen the footage, and a senior Obama administration official familiar with what they show.

The videos were filmed from multiple closed-circuit cameras throughout the compound, and are at times grainy and hard to decipher. There are also some gaps. There is no footage, for example, of Ambassador Chris Stevens going into the safe room where he eventually died from smoke inhalation. The footage at the gate of the compound is taken from an angle that filmed the attackers from the side, so the people in the crowd can mostly be seen in profile.

QUESTION: Is it safe to assume that he was targeted by al-Qaida, who may have also a list of all the national – Yemeni national employees at the Embassy?

MS. NULAND: Well, Said, I’m sure you can understand if I stress the fact that the Yemenis are investigating. We are supporting their investigation. It is premature – this happened today – for us to be drawing conclusions about who did it, why it happened, all of those things. But obviously it’s of great concern, and it’s of great concern given the larger issues in the region.

This is a stunning admission by the State Department. By refusing to say whether al Qaeda has a list of Yemenis working with the US embassy in Yemen, she tacitly admits that they could – and that puts all of their lives in danger. In Libya, our failure to secure our Benghazi consulate resulted in the loss of crucial national security intelligence, supposedly including lists of Libyans working with us in the country. Now it appears that a second list may have found its way to al Qaeda in Yemen.

The State Department went on to state that the Yemeni security official killed may have been targeted and murdered for other reasons:

QUESTION: Does that mean that you don’t know if he was targeted because he was an employee? This could have been – as far as you know, this could have been just a random act of crime – criminality?

MS. NULAND: It could – he could have been killed for reasons that had something to do with his job or reasons that had nothing to do with his job.

Libyan al Qaeda ringleader Qumu, hired by Hillary Clinton to overthrow America-cooperative Muammar Qaddafi, in the Obama/Clinton version of the bipartisan-prepared Arab Spring, kills the U.S. field staff engaged in weapons tracking and (one would hope) recovery, on the job in Benghazi, on 9-11-2012

    He and Ambassador Stevens, as well as the two other special operators from Wind Zero, were executing a CIA and State Department mission to track not only Qaddafi’s weapons, but to trace any and all weapons trafficking in the regions. Smith was the information officer at the Benghazi mission and likely was too close to having uncovered intelligence that pinpointed key players both in and outside of Libya. Intelligence was shared with the CIA, which does enforce the drone program, whether inside Libya, stemming from the mission to remove Qaddafi, or in other hot-spots in the Middle East.

The Soviet occupation in Afghanistan was a long and stalwart war to install a subset of an overall communist footprint in the region. Military and ideological defeat were predictable and the CIA aided in the quest against the Soviets. Part of the original objective of the United States (credited to Zbigniew Brzezinski and adopted by Presidents Carter and Reagan) was to arm key factions to fend off the Soviets.

This was successful. But, as the full retreat by the Soviets was underway, al Qaeda and the Taliban were soon in full possession of weapons that the United States had provided over the years to the anti-Soviet opposition. And the greater part of weapons inventories were Soviet, including even tanks, amidst quite a full array of conventional weapons left behind in their hasty exit. The Afghanis being resourceful took full advantage and learned to repair, rebuild and clone weapons and ammunition, both.

This would soon become a major threat to the West. The cure was to dial up big dollars and go on a buy-back mission to get the weapons out of the hands of militants. Everyone in the nation was armed with virtual immunity; no checks and balances of force existed. Mutual failures to contain were nearly locked in. So, at least by the time of the Clinton administration, the U.S. had begun attempts at a buy-back program, to regain weapons sent to Afghanistan.

MANPADS

Looking over to Libya, Qaddafi during his reign, set on a quest to obtain his own arsenal. It came to include not only millions of weapons, from small arms and rocket propelled grenades, to Russian shoulder fired SA-24 missiles; it also carried a nuclear ambition. Foreign leaders pressed Qaddafi only on the nuclear ambition and there he capitulated, but all other weapons including the MANPADS among its surface to air missiles arsenal, was left out of the process and the arrangements made with him.

Last year, as the mission was underway to remove Qaddafi from power, a great deal of confusion set in and all armories were raided by unique militias across Libya. All weapons were stolen and taken to destinations unknown. Qaddafi had spent an estimated $30 billion in the span of twenty-five years, on conventional weapons from the USSR and China, via Algeria and even Belarus.  Included in this stout purchasing campaign were planes and communications equipment.

In the realms of arms trafficking, black markets, and jihad, members of these groups know the movement of weapons and maintain a keen eye upon their vulnerability, either to steal or to purchase them at discounted prices. Such was the case during the regime change objective, to remove Qaddafi from power. Libya experienced a huge infiltration of underworld terror groups such as al Qaeda, Boko Harem, pirates from Somalia, and militias, all sneaking into Qaddafi’s inventory. Weapons did leave Libya, but it is unknown just what remained in country. Of particular importance are the 20,000 MANPADS of which today, only 5,000 have been recovered.

Enter the United States with a large purse of an allocated $40 million, to search for weapons and to buy-back in large numbers, while tracing and tracking the sources and associations of the grou

Under the obamites, working with the US will get you killed.  And they don't care.

Fri, 12 Oct 2012

Fox military analyst Col. David Hunt checked in with us again after the revelation that there were multiple listening posts which heard the cries for help from the US Embassy in Libya and none of them did anything. The State Department says they still do not know what really happened in Libya.

The State Department has released a transcript of a briefing that two high-ranking department officials gave to a number of reporters via conference call on October 9 (Tuesday). I am not certain about this, but I believe the transcript was only made public today. You should read it in its entirety; it is the most detailed description I have seen of the events in Benghazi on September 11.

While this is by no means clear, it appears that the State Department may have released the transcript as part of the escalating conflict between Barack Obama and Joe Biden and the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. In their desperation to avoid responsibility for the Benghazi debacle, Obama and Biden have pointed fingers in two directions: at the intelligence community for reporting incorrectly that the incident was a protest over a YouTube video clip, and at the State Department for not providing adequate security for the Ambassador.

Here are some excerpts from the narrative:

    A few minutes later – we’re talking about 9 o’clock at night – the Ambassador retires to his room, the others are still at Building C, and the one agent in the [Tactical Operations Center]. At 9:40 p.m., the agent in the TOC and the agents in Building C hear loud noises coming from the front gate. They also hear gunfire and an explosion. The agent in the TOC looks at his cameras – these are cameras that have pictures of the perimeter – and the camera on the main gate reveals a large number of people – a large number of men, armed men, flowing into the compound. One special agent immediately goes to get the Ambassador in his bedroom and gets Sean, and the three of them enter the safe haven inside the building. …

    They turn around immediately and head back – or the two of them, from Building B, turn around immediately with their kit and head back to Villa C, where the Ambassador and his colleagues are. They encounter a large group of armed men between them and Building C. I should say that the agent in Building C with the Ambassador has radioed that they are all in the safe haven and are fine. The agents that encounter the armed group make a tactical

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Fox News military analyst Colonel David Hunt laid the blame for the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans at the Benghazi, Libya American mission on Hillary Clinton and the State Department:

    The State Department just allowed our guys to get killed. If you approve no bullets in guns for the mission security guards and an outhouse for a mission, you’re inviting it.

Earlier, on Howie Carr's radio show  (http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2012/09/13/Colonel-Hillary-Responsible-For-Unarmed-Security-Vulnerable-Embassies)Thursday, Colonel Hunt said that the American mission at Benghazi "was like a cardboard building, there wasn't even bullet proof glass." In addition, Hunt said the security guards inside the mission didn't have bullets:

    Howie Carr: They weren't allowed to have bullets, is that correct?

    Colonel Hunt: That's true. They were private security. The rules of engagement were ridiculous.

Hunt told Breitbart News that the new State Department Rules of Engagement for Libya, approved and signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton since the 2011 fall of Khadafi's regime, severely compromised the safety and security of murdered Ambassador Stevens and all American diplomatic staff in Libya.

He also stated that the decision not to staff Benghazi with Marines was made by Secretary of State Clinton when she attached her signature to the State Department Rules of Engagement for Libya document. Breitbart News has subsequently learned that under those rules of engagement, Secretary Clinton prohibited Marines from providing security at any American diplomatic installation in Libya (http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/09/14/State-Department-Rules-of-Engagement-Kept-Marines-Out-of-Tripoli-as-Well-as-Benghazi-in-Libya).

SNIP

Ambassador Stevens was based at the American embassy in Tripoli. According to a spokesperson at the State Department, he would visit the mission at Benghazi sporadically. No one at the State Department has yet answered this key question:

    Why on the anniversary of 9-11 was he at the low security mission in Benghazi when it would obviously have been more prudent for him to have been at the presumably more secure embassy in Tripoli?

At her daily press briefing on Thursday, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland offered a description of the defenses at the Benghazi mission (http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2012/09/197729.htm) that appeared to be in conflict with other press reports. In contrast to some reports that said security within the perimeter of the mission was provided by Libyan nationals, Nuland stated that they provided security on the perimeter and that "there was a robust American security presence inside the compound." [emphasis added]:

    QUESTION: Can you talk a little bit more about the security that was at the Embassy? It seems that for an area such as Benghazi,

where there was a lot of

    . Police Vehicle Outside Consulate "Fled The Scene"; No Response To Libyan Guards' Call For Backup 

    'Ali ... was taken by surprise by the attack, which he said "seemed to come out of nowhere." He said that he first noticed that the police car outside the consulate - an additional layer of security provided by the Libyan government - "took off quickly, fleeing the scene."

    He then saw some 50 men, mostly unarmed, approaching the consulate by foot on the dirt road leading up to it, headed by eight masked men, two of whom carried RPGs. ... Shortly thereafter, one of the attackers fired three (RPG) rounds at the main gate, while others stormed the consulate wall.

    ...the great majority of the attackers were Libyans from Benghazi, and some of them were masked. ... four of the attackers, all apparently masked, were the leaders of the group, because ... all the others seemed to listen to them and to follow their orders.

    ... one of the four leaders had worn a Pakistani-type garment, and carried a golden pistol. A second, whom he described as a "short, fat, irritable" man about 5'4" with a beard visible under his mask carrying an AK-47, asked him about where the Americans were inside the consulate. A third man, he said, who was about 5'7", wore a long robe."

This is the age of the web, and the U.S. State Department must have been following every moment of the six-hour attack.  They knew about September 11.  They knew about Zawahiri's video.  They knew Al-Libi was assassinated on President Obama's direct orders in Pakistan.  They had received distress calls from the U.S. ambassador in Libya.

They knew.  If they didn't know, they should resign en masse.

If the State Department knew, Hillary must have known.  If Hillary knew, Obama must have been told.  This is the age of instant communication.  Didn't somebody have a cell phone?

They knew and did nothing.

It was 3 am, and nobody picked up the phone.

If Americans can't figure this out, the bad guys will.  They already know.  Only the ignorant and foolish don't get it.

The State Department is the latest casualty of the Obama administration’s obfuscation of the events surrounding the Benghazi attack.

Tearing a few pages out of the old Clinton playbook, David Axelrod carefully defined the word “we” this morning for Fox News’ Chris Wallace: when the Vice President said in Wednesday’s debate that “we” weren’t aware of the Benghazi consulate’s requests for increased security, “we” included only the President and the Vice President – not the Obama administration at large or the State Department.  You got that, right?

In response to Wallace’s inquiry about whether the President takes personal responsibility for the denial of security requests in Benghazi, Axelrod said, “these were judgments that were made by security folks at the State Department.”

Office of the Spokesperson
Background Conference Call With Senior State Department Officials
Washington, DC
October 9, 2012

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OPERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the State Department call on Libya. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. Should you require any assistance during the call, please press *, then 0.

I’d now like to turn the conference over to your host, [Moderator]. Please go ahead.

MODERATOR: Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us on such relatively short notice, late on a Tuesday evening. You know that since the beginning, we’ve been working with Congress on trying to ascertain the facts and convey the facts of what happened on 9/11 in Benghazi. In the last 24 hours and in the next 24 hours, we’re going to be engaging with Congress, and we wanted to give you a sense, in the press, of what we’ve been telling them.

So joining us tonight are two Senior State Department Officials, and this will be on background, and they will be Senior State Department Official Number One, who is [Senior State Department Official Number One]; and Senior State Department Official Number Two, [Senior State Department Official Number Two].

So in any case, thank you for joining us, and I’m going to hand it over to Senior State Department Official Number One. And just a reminder before I do, again, this is on background. Thank you.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL NUMBER ONE: All right. Let me proceed. I’m going to give you as much information as possible about the events of that night, but I am going to start with a scene-setter.

So let me set the stage. On April 5th, 2011, a small Department of State team headed by Chris Stevens arrives by chartered boat in Benghazi. They set up shop in a hotel. This is at a time when Benghazi was liberated, Qadhafi was still in power in Tripoli, the war was going on, our Ambassador had been expelled from Tripoli by Qadhafi, the Embassy staff had been evacuated because it was unsafe. So Chris Stevens coming back into Benghazi – coming into Benghazi on April 5th, 2011, is the only U.S. Government people in Libya at this time.

They set up shop in a hotel, as I mentioned. A few weeks later in June, a bomb explodes in the parking lot in front of the hotel. The group in Benghazi makes a decision to move to a new location. They move to a couple of places, and by August they settle on a large compound which is where the actual activity on 9/11 took place. So they’re in a large compound, where they remain.

The compound is roughly 300 yards long – that’s three football fields long – and a hundred yards wide. We need that much room to provide the best possible setback against car bombs. Over the next few months, physical security at the compound is strengthened. The outer wall is upgraded, its height is increased to nine feet.It is topped by three feet of barbed wire and concertina wire all around the huge property. External lighting is increased. Jersey barriers, which are big concrete blocks, are installed outside and inside the gate. Steel drop bars are added at the gates to control vehicle access and to provide some anti-ram protection. The buildings on the compound itself were strengthened.

The compound has four buildings on it, and you guys are going to have to get used to this, because I refer them to – as Building C, Building B, Tactical Operations Center, and a barracks. So Building C is a building that is essentially a large residence. It has numerous bedrooms and it is – it has a safe haven installed in it, and I’ll talk more about that in a minute. Building C ultimately is the building that the Ambassador was in, so keep that in your heads.

Building B is another residence on the compound. It has bedrooms and it has a cantina. That’s where the folks dine. The Tactical Operations Center, which is just across the way from Building B, has offices and a bedroom. That’s where the security officers had their main setup, that’s where the security cameras are, a lot of the phones – it’s basically their operations center. So I’ll call it the TOC from now on.

And then there was a barracks. The barracks is a small house by the front gate, the main gate of the compound. In that barracks is a Libyan security force which I’ll describe in a minute. Security on the compound consists of five Diplomatic Security special agents and four members of the Libyan Government security force, which I will henceforth call the 17th February Brigade. It is a militia, a friendly militia, which has basically been deputized by the Libyan Government to serve as our security, our host government security. In addition to all those, there is an additional security force at another U.S. compound two kilometers away. It serves as a rapid reaction force, a quick reaction security team – a quick reaction security team, okay?

Now we’re on the day of, and before I go into this discussion of the day of the events of 9/11, I’m going to be – I want to be clear to you all. I am giving you this – you my best shot on this one. I am giving you what I know. I am giving it to you in as much granularity as I possibly can. This is still, however, under investigation. There are other facts to be known, but I think I’m going to be able to give you quite a lot, as far as I know it. I have talked to the – to almost all the agents that were involved, as well as other people.

Okay. The Ambassador has arrived in Benghazi on the 10th of September. He does meetings both on the compound and off the compound on that day, spends the night. The next day is 9/11. He has all his – because it is 9/11, out of prudence, he has all his meetings on the compound. He receives a succession of visitors during the day.

About 7:30 in the evening, he has his last meeting. It is with a Turkish diplomat. And at – when the meeting is over, at 8:30 – he has all these meetings, by the way, in what I call Building C – when the meeting is over, he escorts the Turkish diplomat to the main gate. There is an agent there with them. They say goodbye. They’re out in a street in front of the compound. Everything is calm at 8:30 p.m. There’s nothing unusual. There has been nothing unusual during the day at all outside.

After he sees the Turkish diplomat off, the Ambassador returns to Building C, where the information management officer – his name is Sean Smith, and who is one of the victims – the information management officer – I’ll just call him Sean from now on, on this call – and four other – four Diplomatic Security agents are all at Building C. One Diplomatic Security agent is in the TOC, the Tactical Operations Center. All of these agents have their side arms.

A few minutes later – we’re talking about 9 o’clock at night – the Ambassador retires to his room, the others are still at Building C, and the one agent in the TOC. At 9:40 p.m., the agent in the TOC and the agents in Building C hear loud noises coming from the front gate. They also hear gunfire and an explosion. The agent in the TOC looks at his cameras – these are cameras that have pictures of the perimeter – and the camera on the main gate reveals a large number of people – a large number of men, armed men, flowing into the compound. One special agent immediately goes to get the Ambassador in his bedroom and gets Sean, and the three of them enter the safe haven inside the building.

And I should break for a second and describe what a safe haven is. A safe haven is a fortified area within a building. This particular safe haven has a very heavy metal grill on it with several locks on it. It essentially divides the one – the single floor of that building in half, and half the floor is the safe haven, the bedroom half. Also in the safe haven is a central sort of closet area where people can take refuge where there are no windows around. In that safe haven are medical supplies, water, and such things. All the windows to that area of the building have all been grilled. A couple of them have grills that can be open from the inside so people inside can get out, but they can’t be – obviously can’t be opened from the outside.

The agent with the Ambassador in the safe haven has – in addition to his side arm, has his long gun, or I should say – it’s an M4 submachine gun, standard issue. The other agents who have heard the noise in the – at the front gate run to Building B or the TOC – they run to both, two of them to Building B, one to the TOC – to get their long guns and other kit. By kit, I mean body armor, a helmet, additional munitions, that sort of thing.

They turn around immediately and head back – or the two of them, from Building B, turn around immediately with their kit and head back to Villa C, where the Ambassador and his colleagues are. They encounter a large group of armed men between them and Building C. I should say that the agent in Building C with the Ambassador has radioed that they are all in the safe haven and are fine. The agents that encounter the armed group make a tactical decision to turn around and go back to their Building B and barricade themselves in there. So we have people in three locations right now.

And I neglected to mention – I should have mentioned from the top that the attackers, when they came through the gate, immediately torched the barracks. It is aflame, the barracks that was occupied by the 17th February Brigade armed ho

The following is a transcript of President Obama's remarks on Sept. 12, 2012, following attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

OBAMA:  Good morning. 

Every day all across the world, American diplomats and civilians work tirelessly to advance the interests and values of our nation. Often, they are away from their families. Sometimes, they brave great danger.

Yesterday, four of these extraordinary Americans were killed in an attack on our diplomatic post in Benghazi.  Among those killed was our ambassador, Chris Stevens, as well as Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith.  We are still notifying the families of the others who were killed. 

And today, the American people stand united in holding the families of the four Americans in our thoughts and in our prayers. 

The United States condemns in the strongest terms this outrageous and shocking attack.  We're working with the government of Libya to secure our diplomats.  I've also directed my administration to increase our security at diplomatic posts around the world.  And make no mistake, we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people. 

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.

But there is absolutely no justification for this type of senseless violence.  None.  The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts. Already many Libyans have joined us in doing so, and this attack will not break the bonds between the United States and Libya. Libyan security personnel fought back against the attackers alongside Americans.  Libyans helped some of our diplomats find safety, and they carried Ambassador Stevens' body to the hospital, where we tragically learned that he had tied. 

It's especially tragic that Chris Stevens died in Benghazi because it is a city that he helped to save.  At the height of the Libyan revolution Chris led our diplomatic post in Benghazi. With characteristic skill, courage and resolve he built partnerships with Libyan revolutionaries and helped them as they planned to build a new Libya. 

When the Qaddafi regime came to an end Chris was there to serve as our ambassador to the new Libya, and he worked tirelessly to support this young democracy.  And I think both Secretary Clinton and I have relied deeply on his knowledge of the situation on the ground there. 

He was a role model to all who worked with him and to the young diplomats who aspire to walk in his footsteps. 

Along with his colleagues, Chris died in a country that is still striving to emerge from the recent experience of war.  As (ph) today the loss of these four Americans is fresh, but our memories of them linger on. 

I have no doubt that their legacy will live on through the work that they did far from our shores and in the hearts of those who loved them back home. Of course, yesterday was already a painful day for our nation as we marked the solemn memory of the 9/11 attacks. We mourn with the families who were lost on that day.  I visited the graves of troops who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hallowed grounds of Arlington Cemetery, and had the opportunity to say thank you and visit some of our wounded warriors at Walter Reed.  And then last night we learned the news of this attack in Benghazi. 

As Americans let us never, ever forget that our freedom is only sustained because there are people who are willing to fight for it, to stand up for it, and in some cases lay down their lives for it.  Our country is only as strong as the character of our people and the service of those, both civilian and military, who represent us around the globe. 

No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. 

Today we mourn for more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America.  We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done. 

But we also know that the lives these Americans led stand in stark contrast to those of their attackers.  These four Americans stood up for freedom and human dignity.  They should give every American great pride in the country that they served, and the hope that our flag represents to people around the globe who also yearn to live in freedom and with dignity. 

We grieve with their families, but let us carry on their memory and let us continue their work in seeking a stronger America and a better world for all of our children. 

Thank you.  May God bless the memory of those we lost, and may God bless the United States of America.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/12/transcript-president-obama-remarks-following-deadly-attacks-at-us-consulate-in/#ixzz29JGpZxfu

On Sep. 20, for example, when the administration first began to backtrack, White House spokesman Jay Carney suddenly told reporters that it was "self-evident" that the Benghazi attack had been a "terrorist attack"--by which he meant specifically that "Our embassy was attacked violently and the result was four deaths of American officials."

In other words, the attack was "terrorist" because it was violent--but not necessarily because it was carried out by terrorists.

Carney did not allow that the attack had been premeditated, leaving the administration enough wiggle room to continue to blame the video--as President Obama subsequently did again, five days later, at the United Nations on Sep. 25. In his speech, Obama failed to use the word "terror" or "terrorism" to describe the attack.

In the days that followed Obama's speech, the White House and the State Department gradually and grudgingly acknowledged the reality that the attack in Benghazi had nothing to do with the video. Last week, on Oct. 9, the State Department finally stated unequivocally that there had been no protest outside the U.S consulate prior to the attack.

So the Obama White House, and the Obama campaign, had to change their story again. Having relied for weeks on the imaginary distinction between terrorism as a reaction to the anti-Islam video (a meaning that they had embraced), and cause of the attack (a meaning that they had denied), they began pretending that President Obama had referred to terrorism in the latter, broader sense as early as Sep. 12.

Meanwhile, the State Department--which presumably reports to Obama at some level--continues to refuse to call the attacks "terrorism," treating the word as a kind of value judgment rather than a statement of fact.

It is not necessary to examine the whole timeline of events to understand that Obama and his spokespeople are lying yet again. Obama's own words on Sep. 12 are proof enough. He placed the 9/11 attacks in the context of global outrage against an obscure anti-Islam video--making sure to condemn it--and only addressed terror in an abstract sense, never as a description of, or a cause of, the attacks themselves.

Obama and his minions lied more than a month ago, and they are lying to America still.

"Al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat." -- President Barack Obama: Sept 6th, 2012, at the Democratic Convention.

---

Late yesterday afternoon, in an obvious attempt to rescue President Obama from what could and should be a brutal round of Sunday shows examining the cover up the White House is currently engaged in with respect to the sacking of our consulate in Libya, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) released a statement revising its assessment of the attack. It is now the official position of the American intelligence community that what happened in Benghazi was a pre-planned terrorist attack.

The statement comes from Shawn Turner, director of public affairs for National Intelligence -- the office that speaks for the intelligence community as a whole:

As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists. It remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attack, and if extremist group leaders directed their members to participate.

This is not news. In the last few days, the White House and State Department have both made statements saying exactly that. 

This, however, is news and should be read carefully:

In the immediate aftermath, there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo. We provided that initial assessment to Executive Branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available. Throughout our investigation we continued to emphasize that information gathered was preliminary and evolving.

There's no question that what we have here is the DNI (Obama appointee James Clapper) attempting to fall on his sword and to put an end to the drumbeat of scandal coming mostly from Republicans and right-of-center media. What's been exposed, just weeks before a presidential election, is the fact that in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack, the White House and State Department knowingly misled and lied to the American people about what they knew and when they knew it.

But what the DNI statement is really meant to do is muddy the waters.

The statement deliberately omits any information as to exactly when the determination was made that Benghazi was indeed a terrorist attack. Most importantly, nothing in the statement contradicts numerous news reports that U.S. officials were certain within 24 hours that they were dealing with a terrorist attack and not a spontaneous protest gone bad. 

In other words, the DNI statement is so intentionally vague that it could read as confirmation that our government knew within 24 hours that Benghazi was a terrorist attack and still lied about it for days afterward.

And this, my friends, is how a cover up works.

And so, the only response to this cynical muddying of the waters is a 30,000 foot approach that might help connect some dots.

Standing on the shoulders of those who have done the admirable work of digging into and investigating this story (most notably, Brett Baier of Fox News, Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, Jake Tapper of ABC News, and the Daily Beast's Eli Lake), what I want to do is lay out a timeline of known facts that answer a very simple question:

What did our government know and what were we told when they knew it? 

What you'll see below was inspired by the vitally important video-report Brett Baier closed "Special Report" with last night, but this will hopefully go into even greater detail. We'll also look into three specific areas: 1) Security failures. 2) The lies. 3) The attempted cover up of numbers one and two.

---

SECURITY FAILURES

In an attempt to justify that the security at our Libyan consulate in Benghazi was "adequate," the White House laid a narrative along two tracks. The first, obviously, was that there was no way anyone could've predicted that a "spontaneous" protest would go bad. In fact, that defense would be the White House position for a full eight days, until Sept 20th, when White House Spokesman Jay Carney would finally admit it was "self-evident" Benghazi was a terror attack.

The second narrative track, however, is as shaky as the first. Essentially, the Administration's line is that, based on what we knew, security was adequate.

That's a judgment call, I guess, but let's look at what we did know for a fact prior to the sacking of the consulate and determine if having no Marines, no bullet-proof windows, no threat assessment, and no real security other than locks on the doors was indeed adequate…

1. We'll start with what is the most underreported fact of this entire episode: the fact that this very same consulate had been targeted and attacked just a few months earlier, on June 6, in retaliation for a drone strike on a top al-Qaeda operative:

 U.S. mission in Benghazi attacked to avenge al Qaeda

The United States diplomatic office in the Libyan city of Benghazi was attacked Tuesday night, the embassy in the capital Tripoli said Wednesday.

A Libyan security source told CNN a jihadist group that is suspected of carrying out the strike, the Imprisoned Omar Abdul Rahman Brigades, left leaflets at the scene claiming the attack was in retaliation for the death of Libyan al Qaeda No. 2 Abu Yahya al Libi.

"Fortunately, no one was injured" in the improvised explosive device attack, the embassy said.

2. It was the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, a date that should mean heightened security regardless of what our intelligence says. 

3. In the days just prior to the Benghazi attack (September 9 and 10), al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahri….

….posted a 42-minute video on Jihadist forums urging Libyans to attack Americans to avenge the death of Abu Yahya al-Libi, the terror organization’s second-in-command, whom U.S. drones killed in June of 2012 in Pakistan.

In the video, al-Zawahri said al-Libi’s “blood is calling, urging and inciting you to fight and kill the Crusaders,” leading up to a date heralded and celebrated by radical Islamists.

Another version of the video was actually posted on YouTube on September 9[.]

4. Just a couple of months prior to the Benghazi attack….

…an unclassified report published in August that fingers Qumu as a key al Qaeda operative in Libya. The report (“Al Qaeda in Libya: A Profile”) was prepared by the research division of the Library of Congress (LOC) under an agreement with the Defense Department’s Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office.

The report details al Qaeda’s plans for Libya, including the growth of a clandestine terrorist network that has attempted to hide its presence. The U.S military has concluded that al Qaeda is in the final phase of a three-step process for developing a full-blown al Qaeda affiliate.

5. Our assassinated Ambassador, Christopher Stevens, feared al-Qaeda's growing influence in Libya and  believed he was on a hit list.

6. Sean Smith, one of our diplomats killed along with Stevens, also feared for his life prior to the attack:

One of the American diplomats killed Tuesday in a bloody attack on a Libyan Consulate told pals in an online gaming forum hours earlier that he'd seen suspicious people taking pictures outside his compound and wondered if he and his team might "die tonight." …

But hours before the bloody assault, Smith sent a message to Alex Gianturco, the director of "Goonswarm," Smith's online gaming team or "guild."

“Assuming we don’t die tonight,” the message, which was first reported by Wired, read. “We saw one of our ‘police’ that guard the compound taking pictures.”

Within hours of posting that message, Smith, a husband and father of two, was dead. Gianturco, who could not be reached for further comment, got the word out to fellow gamers, according to Wired.

What we have here are six concrete, non-speculative red flags that indicated our consulate and Ambassador were in danger, vulnerable to attack, and targets.

To justify a lack of adequate security, the Obama administration spent a week blaming the attack on a "spontaneous" demonstration they  couldn’t have possibly predicted would occur. We now know that's simply not true. But here are two more justifications we were told:

1. CNN Sept 21: Clinton says Stevens was not worried about being hit by al-qaeda:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday she has "absolutely no information or

Where is CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus? He seems to be the missing man in the unfolding Benghazi debacle. It is his agency, among others, which is being fingered by the White House for getting the Libya attack wrong. However, we know that within a very short time after the murder of our ambassador (an extraordinary occurrence) and others, our intelligence community did have the story straight: This was an organized al-Qaeda attack. Is he to preside over a witchhunt? Or is he, who to date has been one of the most respected national security officials, going to be instrumental in shining light on the Libya fiasco and thereby truly serving the national interest and the memory of those killed?

That’s one of the many pending questions bubbling over in the Libya scandal. But we finally be getting some answers. On Friday Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) announced that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold hearings on the Benghazi debacle. Those hearings can’t come a moment too soon. The questions are multiplying:

snip

3. Was the White House aware of the August Library of Congress report documenting the deteriorating security situation in Libya?

4. Was the Libya security situation included in any presidential briefings?

5. Did the CIA within a day or so determine there had been a planned terrorist attack? What did it do with this information? Why did President Obama continue to insist the attack was a spontaneous reaction to the anti-Muslim movie?

6. When did the president learn there was no mob in Benghazi protesting the film?

7. Who reviewed the president’s U.N. speech delivered on Sept. 25, wherein he continued to connect the attack and the anti-Muslim film?

8. When was the State Department’s Charlene Lamb, who followed the attack in real time, questioned about what she knew? Who did that, and what happened to that information?

Stevens, a registered Democrat, said he isn’t politically active. He declined to say how he’ll vote in the presidential election.

Libyan Ambassador’s Death Not a Political Issue, Says Dad

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-14/libyan-ambassador-s-death-not-a-political-issue-says-dad.html

Pretty much all you need to know about Dad.  You know if this wasn't hurting 0 and hurting Romney instead it would be all OK with the left.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Charlene Lamb testified that on September 11, after the “full-scale assault” in Libya — “unprecedented in its size and intensity” — began about 9:40 p.m. Libyan time (4:40 p.m. Washington time), she was “in our Diplomatic Security Command Center [in Washington] monitoring multiple open lines with our agents [in Libya] for much of the attack.”

On Friday, a CNN reporter asked Hillary Clinton what she was doing as the attack occurred, and Clinton responded with a 400-word answer that avoided the question. Here was the colloquy:

    QUESTION: … could you tell us a little bit about what you were doing when that attack actually happened? I know Charlene Lamb, who as the State Department official, was mentioning that she back here in Washington was monitoring electronically from that post what was happening in real time. Could you tell us what you were doing? Were you watching? Were you talking with the President? Any details about that, please.

    SECRETARY CLINTON: … I think that it is very important to recognize that we have an investigation going on. [Blah, blah for 222 words]. So that’s what an investigative process is designed to do: to try to sort through all of the information, some of it contradictory and conflicting. [Blah, blah for 76 words]. So I’m going to be, as I have been from the very beginning, cooperating fully with the investigations that are ongoing, because nobody wants to know more about what happened and why than I do. And I think I’ll leave it at that.

    QUESTION: Mrs. Secretary, if you could, the question was –

    SECRETARY CLINTON: I know, but I’m going to leave it at that.

Later on Friday, the State Department spokesperson was asked why Clinton hadn’t answered, and provided this response:

    As you know, she’s not that interested in focusing on herself. But obviously, she was here very late that night. She was getting regular updates from both the DS

Sources have told the Daily Telegraph that just five unarmed locally hired Libyans were placed on duty at the compound on eight-hour shifts under a deal that fell outside the State Department's global security contracting system.

Blue Mountain, the Camarthen firm that won a $387,000 (£241,000) one year contract from the US State Department to protect the compound in May, sent just one British employee, recruited from the celebrity bodyguard circuit, to oversee the work.

The compound was overrun by a mob of Islamic extremists on the morning of September 12 in an apparent planned attack that resulted in the death by asphyxiation of the ambassador, Chris Stevens.

Blue Mountain, which is run by a former member of the SAS, received paper work to operate in Libya last year following the collapse of Col Muammar Gaddafi's regime. It worked on short term contacts to guard an expatriate housing compound and a five-star hotel in Tripoli before landing the prestigious US deal.

Schieffer challenged Graham to explain where he go the information to challenge the credibility of the administration's statements about what happened in Libya.

"Where did you get this information that led you to this conclusion?" asked Schieffer. "Did you talk to officials there? Did you talk to people in the CIA? Did you talk to people in the administration? How are you so convinced of what you have just stated?"

Graham said that the U.S. intelligence commmunity in Libya had told both him and Sen. Bob Corker (R.-Tenn.) that they had informed Washington within 24 hours that the attack in was a terrorist attack.

"The intelligence community on the ground in Libya has told Senators Corker and myself that within 24 hours, they communicated up to Washington that this was a terrorist attack," said Graham. "The president of Libya on the same date said it was a terrorist attack. The video of the compound shows that there was nobody at the Benghazi consulate. There was never a group to riot. And the evidence is overwhelming, and the idea that it was spawned by a video and a riot would hold the administration blameless. They said it was a copycat of Cairo. It wasn`t a copycat, it was a sustained attack that lasted for six or eight hours using heavy weapons, which undercut the idea that al Qaeda has been dismantled and on the run. And it certainly undercuts the idea that our policy choices in Libya have not going after the militia, not helping the Libyans train a national army were good choices.

Those attacks began in April when two Libyans threw an improvised explosive device into the consulate compound. In June, postings on a pro-Gaddafi Facebook page encouraged Libyans to attack Ambassador Stevens during one of his early morning runs around Tripoli. And in the weeks leading up to September 11th, Libyan guards were being warned by their family members to quit their consulate jobs because of rumors about an impending attack. These are but a few of the escalating series of incidents. There were also carjackings, shoot-outs, and even a rocket-propelled grenade being shot at a convoy carrying the British ambassador.

It is now evident that al-Qaeda hit four, not just one, embassies last month, with none of the other three ever attributable to a video either. The Weekly Standard reports that in addition to the American Consulate in Libya, terrorists tied to the same group that attacked our homeland on 9/11 were also behind U.S. Embassy sieges in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen. All were timed around the 9/11 anniversary.

One of the most ironic and inexcusable aspects of the fatal Benghazi tragedy is that Ambassador Stevens, who after recognizing and communicating the special 9/11 security threat, was denied protection he requested. Yet remarkably, Vice President Joe Biden claimed during last Thursday’s debate that the administration was unaware of security requests. This seemingly contradicted evidence presented to the Congressional Oversight and Government Reform Committee just a day earlier. Biden said “We weren’t told they wanted more security, we did not know they wanted more security.”  But if so, why wouldn’t the president, vice president and secretary of state have been be briefed?

“Tens of thousands of Libyans poured into the streets to mourn Ambassador Stevens who had been a steadfast champion of their revolution” in the days following the Benghazi attack,” Clinton said. “You saw the signs. One read: ‘Thugs and killers don’t represent Benghazi or Islam.’"

Hillary: Benghazi After 9/11/12 Attack Was 'Inspiring Sight'

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/hillary-benghazi-after-91112-attack-was-inspiring-sight

Delusional....Hillary the haj is 10 or so days away. Why don't you show up with a drink in your hand and see what Islam really is.

“Hillary Clinton stood next to her friend Chris’ coffin and went on about this video, even though she knew it was nothing to do with that,” Steyn continued. “Aside from anything else, it’s a wonderful example of how shriveling and corrupting politics is — that in the end, her great friend Chris, his coffin, his body, assuming they’re not lying to us about the body being in there. They lost that, along with all the names of those in Benghazi who are assisting the United States consulate there. Assuming she’s not lying to us about the body being in there, she used his body as prop to peddle a false narrative.”

I have studiously avoided those tasteless damn pictures of the ambassador, and I wish to hell that I hadn't run into them here

President Obama’s campaign spokeswoman said that he “takes responsibility” for the security of U.S. diplomats, less than a day after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the blame.

“President Obama takes responsibility for the safety and security of all diplomats serving overseas,” said Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Fox News today. “Secretary Clinton of course has a great amount of responsibility as Secretary of State.”

Psaki denied that Clinton’s remarks were a “coordinated roll-out” to shelter Obama ahead of the debate, as Fox’s Shepard Smith suggested.

By Obama standards, it's been his team's finest hour.

The White House and Obama's media cohort believe they now have the Benghazi consulate attack story under control. They have, they think, established two foundation points of the narrative that relieve Obama of any responsibility for the events and their aftermath.

The two points are, first, that the deaths of Ambassador Stevens and three others were the result of bad decisions by low-level people in the State Department, not bad policy choices by Obama. The second point is that by doing nothing about the attack -- leaving it to the FBI to investigate and Libya to prosecute the perpetrators in non-existent Libyan courts -- is preferable to doing anything like, well, turning whatever terrorist cells we can find in Libya into smoking holes in the ground. Both points are patently false.

To say that the deaths of the four Americans aren't the result of Obama's bad policy choices is such a quantum leap over fact and logic that it requires us to spend a microsecond resetting our brains before responding. Let's start with the fact that none of the four would have been in Libya had Obama not chosen to follow Nicolas Sarkozy into war there despite the advice of then-defense secretary Robert Gates that we had no national security interest there.

If we hadn't intervened, it's not likely that the small and not very capable French-British force would have been able to topple Gaddafi, so there would have been no U.S. ambassador in Libya, nor would his staffer have been there to be murdered with him.

And if we hadn't intervened, there would have been no need to send the two former SEALs who were killed into Libya to try to locate the thousands of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles Gaddafi had which have now gone missing. The four men's deaths were a proximate result of Obama's decision to intervene.

The second bad policy choice by Obama is the one that led to the cover-up that is exploding in Obama's face. Obama has chosen to prostitute U.S. foreign policy on the bed of the so-called "Arab spring." Obama would have the world believe that the toppling of the Egyptian and Libyan governments of Mubarak and Gaddafi are leading to an outburst of Jeffersonian democracy in the Middle East, the Arab nations blooming with freedoms hitherto unknown

cramdy crowlady saved obama's ass on this question last night.  mittens was moving in for the kill, and cramdy used her weight advantage to throw a block that obama used to wriggle off the hook.

President Obama’s attempts to wriggle free from his own words and actions on Libya are making things worse.

American Crossroads, taking exception to Obama’s announcement last night that he really had declared Benghazi to be an act of terrorism, has sent out a memo, which reads:

    The President clearly misled the American people with this claim, because if Obama’s Rose Garden speech was indeed the White House position, it did not inform any subsequent statement by the White House press office — and was even directly contradicted by his own spokesman several days later.

    On September 20 — eight days after Obama claims to have called the Benghazi attack an “act of terror” — Jay Carney affirmed to reporters that the White House had never called it “a terrorist attack.”

    From the gaggle on Air Force One, en route to Miami, 9/20/2012:

    Q: Can you — have you called it a terrorist attack before? Have you said that?

    MR. CARNEY: I haven’t, but — I mean, people attacked our embassy. It’s an act of terror by definition.

    Q: Yes, I just hadn’t heard you —

    MR. CARNEY: It doesn’t have to do with what date it occurred.

    Q: No, I just hadn’t heard the White House say that this was an act of terrorism or a terrorist attack. And I just —

    MR. CARNEY: I don’t think the fact that we hadn’t is not — as our NCTC Director testified yesterday, a number of different elements appear to have been involved in the attack, including individuals connected to militant groups that are prevalent in eastern Libya, particularly in the Benghazi area. We are looking at indications that individuals involved in the attack may have had connections to al Qaeda or al Qaeda’s affiliates, in particular al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

    Here, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney actually affirmed Gov. Romney’s position that the White House did not call the Benghazi attack an act of terrorism. Carney also said the now infamous video “precipitated some of the unrest in Benghazi” the day before.

The memo goes on to argue that Obama’s position on Libya is “untenable.” That’s about the shape of things. Did he call it an act of terror and go around misleading the country for two weeks that it was a spontaneous reaction to the anti-Muslim movie? Or did he not call it terror on Sept. 12 and lie to the voters last night?

There is another problem with Obama’s response. Recall this part of his answer: “So as soon as we found out that the Benghazi Consulate was being overrun, I was on the phone with my national security team, and I gave them three instructions. Number one, beef up our security and — and — and procedures not just in Libya but every embassy and consulate in the region. Number two, investigate exactly what happened, regardless of where the facts lead us, to make sure that folks are held accountable and it doesn’t happen again. And number three, we are going to find out who did this, and we are going to hunt them down, because one of the things that I’ve said throughout my presidency is when folks mess with Americans, we go after them”

So there was no actual meeting of the National Security Council at which everyone could share information and get on the same page? (David Axelrod has refused to say.) It doesn’t sound like it. But you know Obama was busy that day — flying to Las Vegas for a campaign event. So really, why have a meeting? Well, the weeks of confusion and dissembling that followed should answer that.

Moreover, if he actually did instruct his team to heighten protection for the Libya Consulate, why was the consulate left unsecured so that CNN

AN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) — The head of the U.S. Senate’s Intelligence Committee said Wednesday that it appeared an intelligence mistake along with inadequate security were to blame for the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the American Embassy in Benghazi, Libya that claimed the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens, a Bay Area native, and three others.

“I can tell you this, I think we do know what happened now. There’s no question but that it was a terrorist attack, there is no question but that the security was inadequate and I think that there is no question that we need to work on our intelligence,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) during an exclusive interview with CBS 5.

Feinstein’s comments came one day after a spirited back-and-forth exchange between President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney in their second debate over the assault on the consulate. Romney claimed the attack was a symptom of weakness in Obama’s foreign policy.

Carr: Colonel Hunt, thanks for being with us again today. What did you think when you heard Joseph Biden talking ragtime right out of the box last night?

HUNT - The second time in my public career I get to call a public figure a liar --- that’s what I thought. Joseph Biden, right off the bat, lied.

He said that what happened in Libya recently… The administration looked so inept is because of an intelligence failure.

Howie, When Pakistan blew up an atomic bomb, and we didn’t know about it, that was an intelligence failure. When 9/11 happened, that was an intelligence failure. When India blew up an atomic bomb and we didn’t know about it, that was an intelligence failure.

When the Iraqi military lined up on the Kuwaiti border, and we didn't see it coming – didn’t know they were attacking until they did it, that’s an intelligence failure.

This is a flat leadership problem.

What happened is that a woman named Lamb, Undersecretary of State for DSS (Department of State Security), 2 days ago, told Issa's committee that she listened, was talking to, and recorded an almost six hour fight that resulted in the death of four Americans. She was at the State Department's Operations Center in Foggy Bottom in DC.

When that happens, there are a bunch of people that get informed. President of the US gets found---- the embassy is being attacked---Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Director of CIA, and on and on.

What also happens is that their command centers, National Command Center (CIA), White House Situation Room--- twelve [Command Centers] that I won't bore you with. At least twelve separate Command Centers are listening to the same conversation. It went on for six hours. The question I think, besides the fact that Biden is lying about it, is Why didn't we do anything? Why didn't the United States government react?

Here we are, listening to an attack, and we didn't do a thing. We've got aircraft in Europe, aircraft in the in the Gulf, and we have the capability of doing something, and we did nothing. But for the Vice President...My point is everybody, from the moment the attack happened, in our government, and the decision-making capability, knew that it was an attack, that it was organized, that it was violent, and that it had nothing, nothing to do with a riot, an assembly of people, or a film.

This was not even close to an intelligence failure. This was prescient, actionable information. And this woman testified to it, and everyone's giving everyone a pass.

We sat by and watched the Embassy fall, and four Americans died.

Carr: Who was on the radio in the consulate in Benghazi?

HUNT: Department of State Security employee -- a DSS agent was at the operation center in Benghazi. They had a room with radios and cameras. And he makes the call; he punches the alert button. Does everything correct and calls his boss in DC.

Then he describes the attack for the whole time, until that the command center is overcome. But when she [Lamb] gets the phone call….

Carr: He's killed. He's killed. He's at the radio when he gets killed. Is that right?

HUNT: The radio stays open. It's still being recorded until it gets destroyed.

Lamb, who is in DC listening to all of this--- Clinton gets called, the President gets called, the Joint Chiefs---everybody gets called about this. This is an embassy under attack. Period. It's an automatic phone call.

And the fact that we have this recording, instantly. We know exactly the picture. By the way, he sent pictures back because he had cameras.

So, the administration knew; they watched it, let it happen, and then for eight days lied about it. And then yesterday, last night, unfortunately, the Vice President of the US just lied. He knows it was not an intelligence failure. No one ever said that, by the way. This is a case where we have information and didn't act. It wasn't a case where we weren’t provided [info]. We had instant knowledge, accurate description, and just sat by and did nothing.

Carr: You said there were a dozen posts listening to this play by play account.

HUNT: Sure

Carr: Just give me a few examples of what kind of agencies would have been involved in this listening or monitoring.

HUNT: National Military Command Center in the Pentagon (that's the military head), the White House Situation Room, the CIA Operations Center, the Counterterrorism Center, EUCON (European Command). Africa Command, Special Operations Command, SOC-EUR [?] Special Operations Command Europe), Atlantic Command, NATO. Everybody.

Once this call is made, and a button is pushed, saying, oh by the way, we have an attack going on, everybody listens in --- this is old tech, an old procedure that’s been going on for years. Anybody who has ever been on a watch listening in the military knows what I am talking about. And it is amazing to me that this is not even being discussed. It is the elephant in the living room for me. We knew this was going on and did nothing.

Carr: Let's say, let's say there's the African Command and some sergeant is monitoring it, and you know, he's there and he listens to what's going on, and he says, captain come over and listen to this. And the captain listens to it, and I guess the captain would have to call his superior officer, right? And then at some point , wouldn't all these people be calling the Pentagon or the State Department in Foggy Bottom and say, Hey there's a problem in Benghazi. What are we gonna do?

HUNT: Within minutes that happens. It's instantaneous notification of an entire chain of command. An embassy is under attack and falling.

And oh, by the way, turn to channel 27, and here's the information. And then these separate places are asking for – some cases begging for--- guidance. What do you want us to do? Because the military guys, whether it's in Bahrain or Europe, or any place else, can't on their own just go in there, but we have the means available. The point is that nobody pushed the button to say "GO." Nobody had the guts. Nobody cared enough. Six hours, Howie [Carr].

The last time this happened was Mogadishu, when we stood by and watched a ten hour fire fight go on and did nothing. For ten hours that happened, during the Clinton administration. We watched this in Bosnia ....and other places, where an administration fails to act.

But this one. To have the vice president this late in the game --- over four weeks since this has happened---to lie about it and to say it was an intelligence failure is outrageous. And nobody, nobody caught him, nobody backed him up. And it's hardly being mentioned at all, but it's, I think, very serious. And what you said yesterday I think is going to come to pass. This is going to turn out to be a Watergate-sized scandal.

Carr: So you think you think some of these commands in the area or in Europe and elsewhere that they actually did go to the their civilian superiors in Washington or made contact with them and asked them what do you want us to do. And apparently there was no response?

HUNT: Howie, there are digital and written logs that will be produced that will show that each one of these places, automatically---it is not a question of, Do you have a choice. Whoever is on the watch; whoever was in command center, when an incident like this happens, HAS to do certain things, inform certain people, and it's all logged in. It's a matter of record.

So once Lamb testified that she's listening to this, what she just said was that our entire Government was listening, not just Lamb and the State Dept. What I realized when I read the testimony and heard it was that if this phone call actually happened, all of these other headquarters were involved, and a whole bunch of people said NO to wanting some kind of attack to help save Benghazi. That begins and ends at the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon. And there's logs, and hopefully Congress will say, We want people to testify. We want the watch officer. We want the senior guy in charge there. Bring you records, and tell us who you talked to. It’s all procedural…

Carr: Is it the Pentagon's fault, or is it the State Department's fault?

HUNT: No, no, no. State and the White House. The National Military Command Center would not have been able, allowed, to launch---I don't believe---an attack without political permission because they would be launching into a country. I don't think the NMCC could make that call on their own. And it wouldn't be State; it would be the White House.

But again, Howie, during this attack, Clinton is informed---that is part of the procedure---and the President of the US is informed, as is the Vice President, as is the Chief of Staff, and on and on. A six hour firefight in Benghazi is not classified. It is not a secret. It's an event, and it's a serious event. And when the ambassador dies, when they know he has been captured, it even goes up higher. And we couldn't get an FBI team in there for three weeks.

We had CNN reporters in there picking up the Ambassador's diary. This was ineptness, incompetence, and lying. I think Biden ought to be called on it, just like we did with Clinton when she said she was being shot at. People were there Mr. Vice President. You are lying. This was not an intelligence failure, and he knows that.

Carr: Who should have made the call? Who should have ordered the troops? Who should have ordered some kind of scrambling? send in the jets, helicopters, Marines?

HUNT: The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs could have easily called the Secretary of Defense. The Secretary of Defense could have done this, easily…Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff. Howie, they are never out of contact with each other. It's not like, Oh, go find Leon Panetta or where’s the President?

Anyone in that chain, from the Secretary of State…could have asked or told the Dept of Defense, We need help in Benghazi now. What are the closest assets we have? That’s a simple phone call. Just simple operation military can do that, but they never would have done that on their own.

There are incidents in our lifetime where we wish we would we had done it on our own. Bosnia is just one of them. Africa, remember the Congo, and a whole bunch of other places where we didn’t. But this is an example where we watched four Americans die and a consulate fall. We had 320 incidents leading up to this, and while the attack was going on for 6 hours, we watched it. Not just Ms Lamb, but the entire operational arm of the US government was watching and listening to this, and we did nothing.

Carr: Where are the reporters? This is like Watergate.

HUNT: Yes

Carr: When Watergate broke, every newspaper in the country, every network in the country was all over this. Now, it Daryl Issa and Jason Chafetz, and a few Republican congressmen and staffers. Where are the reporters? Are they too busy looking for somebody Mitt Romney gave a haircut to when he was in prep school?

HUNT: I can’t answer that, but for me, they are so in the bag. And, by the way, this is so obvious…this is such an obvious thing, that it is being missed. If the operational center at the State Dept is hearing this, all these other operational commands are hearing this as well.

Carr: So there's got to be a lot of people reporters could talk to---there’s people who are assigned to the Pentagon---they haven't had that many cutbacks. There's got to be people who know what happened that could provide them with the documentation and the records, and it wouldn't take long to blow the story out of the water.

HUNT: It should have been blown out two days ago. I’m not the only one who thinks this is crazy thinking about this. Any guy who’s ever pulled watch, any NCO, any enlisted officer---anybody who’s ever been in these Command Centers knows exactly what I’m talking about.

And, Howie, this is after 911. Fifteen years ago we did this. And since 911, since we’ve been at war for eleven years, in Afghanistan, our communications is staggeringly quick. Look at the White House situation room during the killing of Bin Laden.

Carr: And it's and it is the anniversary of 9/11 that this is all happening on. You’d think they'll be even more on their toes.

HUNT: Yes. The communications is sophisticated and instantaneous. They had satellites looking at this.

Carr: They had drones…there was a drone looking at this, right?

HUNT: Thank you. And our reaction---three weeks…. We’ve got an ambassador dead, two retired Navy Seals, who weren’t even assigned there---they were assigned to a classified annex down the street--- and another man. And the place is decimated for six hours, and our response is zero.

And then the Vice President gets on, and the first words out of his mouth is a lie --- Well, it’s an intelligence failure. No, it is not, Mr. Vice President. It’s not even close to an intelligence failure. This was inaction on the part of your administration who watched this guy die and did nothing.

I don’t know what they are investigating, it’s so… My only concern is…Well, there’s too people, just too many people that were watching this. I honestly don’t see how they get to cover this up, unless the press doesn’t do its job.

But I didn’t even hear Issa’s committee ask her [Lamb] the question. Maybe the people were in shock when Lamb made her statement, but that’s staggering.

I can't believe that people don't know what I'm saying… that all these other….

Carr: This like something out of a movie, where some non-com says, “Colonel, colonel, our men are getting slaughtered there.” And no one has any interest in following it up.

It seems like fiction; it doesn’t seem like it would happen in real life.

HUNT: It's happened a lot in my time, unfortunately. Like I said, we saw it in the Congo: we saw it in Bosnia. We've seen a lot of incidents where an organization will not act. It’s frozen, and this is the case. And that sergeant you are talking about is actually a general. This is immediately communicated that this embassy is under attack violently, and generals are looking on their IPADS at the pictures, and that’s how good this stuff is. Those images are all over the place. And we knew this was bad, getting worse, and did nothing, and then lied about it for 8 days?

Carr: So how many people do you know…

HUNT: -- Rice’s statement now, along with the President’s, by the way, and the Secretary of State’s and everybody else, there’s a bunch of people lying. It’s not just Rice. She just got stuck on the Sunday news 5 times. And everybody, on top….[interrupted by Carr]

Carr: How many people actually---give me a number of people who knew what was going on while it was happening, or all around the world. How many people would have known?

HUNT: Oh, it’s in the hundreds---those staffs---anywhere---NMCC, maybe 60-70 people at one time; CIA Operations Center, about forty plus; the Terrorism Center could have 60-70 on duty at that moment: the White House situation room, 12. It goes on and on. I mean it's hundreds of people, Howie, that knew what was going on at the time---not later.

It's to me such a huge thing that maybe it’s just so big and so obvious that people are just letting it go. I have no explanation for it.

Except what I'm telling you is not a revelation. This is day-to-day operational information that this administration has been lying about for all this time.

You don't need an investigation. There are straight up procedures that, I promise you. were followed. And in those procedures, people like the Sec of State, the Pres of the US---within minutes---within minutes are told, We have an embassy under attack.

Carr: And yet Stephanie Cutter says that this is just a political issue that’s being blown out of proportion by the Romney/Ryan campaign.

HUNT: I wish this was being blown out of proportion by the press.

Romney was right when he said it. it's a very, very awkward defense. Cutter’s a PR person

But the vice president---people have to call him out on this.

He should, not should, he does know better. He’s just lying. It’s the second time I have had to call a public figure a liar….

It's outrageous. We had people dying. And, by the way Howie, it’s not just one phone call. During the six hours, all of these decision makers are being updated by their staffs. General, this just happened. General, we just found out this guy died. The fight’s still going on. There are now 60 people---these are constant. Video, written, digital, audio updates to the chain of command that did not function. It just seized up. That to me---Why did it seize up? Because there are a whole bunch of people need to go to jail….[Carr interrupts]

Carr: Surely there was somebody --- surely there must have been several people trying to get something done, trying to get some relief to the these people that were in mortal peril, right?

HUNT: Of course; there are really good people in these organizations. Why the decision was not made to, at least, attempt to do a flyover, to put jets in the air, Marines moving, something. I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for it. I’ve been in those rooms when decisions were not made, and they were always political, as to why they were not being done. But this, this one….Our capability to record things is so sophisticated, this will come out.

I just…No news organization has---because I have talked to a couple of them --- has gone on this angle. They are still going on the Romney vs Obama, versus Biden laughing too much. Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. How about he lied--- in his opening remark. He flat lied. It was not an intelligence failure. That a lie, and he knows better. He knows it wasn’t an intelligence failure. He’s been in the government, what, for 40 years?

Carr: Yea, 40 years.

HUNT: Like I said, Pakistan blowing up a nuke, that was an intelligence failure. 911, big intelligence failure. What happened in Benghazi was an operational, leadership failure on an entire government chain of command. It did not act and had six hours to do so and did nothing.

Carr: It certainly seems like it's gonna come out if they have the former head of the CIA and Michael Chertoff and these guys issuing statements today saying that Biden was way out of line, and he lied, and he knows better. These guys can point any reporter that’s interested in the right direction, who to talk to to get the information, I would think it.

HUNT: It’s a huge…. Howie, standard operating procedures of how our government operates---There’s books, huge, huge books. And every one of these Commands I have mentioned was on that call, was listening, and followed their procedures, and were never given the words to go. It never happened. That’s all…It’s simple. It’s a very simple question and a very straightforward answer. I talked to this General: I talked to this Secretary. The Sec of Defense said this. The Chief of Staff at the WH said this. It’s not hard. This is all recorded.

And somebody needs to explain why, for all this time---6 hours went by and Americans died---and all this time for the FBI to get there, and, oh by the way, Why is it that the heads of our government are lying about this.

The official position is that the US has refused to allow heavy weapons into Syria.

But there's growing evidence that U.S. agents—particularly murdered ambassador Chris Stevens—were at least aware of heavy weapons moving from Libya to jihadist Syrian rebels.

In March 2011 Stevens became the official U.S. liaison to the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan opposition, working directly with Abdelhakim Belhadj of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group—a group that has now disbanded, with some fighters reportedly participating in the attack that took Stevens' life.

In November 2011 The Telegraph reported that Belhadj, acting as head of the Tripoli Military Council, "met with Free Syrian Army [FSA] leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey" in an effort

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/us-syria-heavy-weapons-jihadists-2012-10#ixzz29lKTHm4d

WASHINGTON The CIA station chief in Libya reported to Washington within 24 hours of last month's deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate that there was evidence it was carried out by militants, not a spontaneous mob upset about an American-made video ridiculing Islam's Prophet Muhammad, U.S. officials have told The Associated Press.

It is unclear who, if anyone, saw the cable outside the CIA at that point and how high up in the agency the information went.

The Obama administration maintained publicly for a week that the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans was a result of the mobs that staged less-deadly protests across the Muslim world around the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on the U.S.

Those statements have become highly charged political fodder as the presidential election approaches. A Republican-led House committee questioned State Department officials for hours about what GOP lawmakers said was lax security at the consulate, given the growth of extremist Islamic militants in North Africa.

And in their debate on Tuesday, President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney argued over when Obama first said it was a terror attack. In his Rose

Across 166 pages of internal State Department documents -- released Friday by a pair of Republican congressmen pressing the Obama administration for more answers on the Benghazi terrorist attack -- slain U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and the security officers assigned to protect him repeatedly sounded alarms to their superiors in Washington about the intensifying lawlessness and violence in Eastern Libya, where Stevens ultimately died.

On Sept. 11 -- the day Stevens and three other Americans were killed -- the ambassador signed a three-page cable, labeled "sensitive," in which he noted "growing problems with security" in Benghazi and "growing frustration" on the part of local residents with Libyan police and security forces.  These forces the ambassador characterized as "too weak to keep the country secure." 

In the document, Stevens also cited a meeting he had held two days earlier with local militia commanders.  These men boasted to Stevens of exercising "control" over the Libyan Armed Forces, and threatened that if the U.S.-backed candidate for prime minister were to prevail in Libya's internal political jockeying, "they would not continue to guarantee security in Benghazi." 

Roughly a month earlier, Stevens had signed a two-page cable, also labeled "sensitive," that he entitled "The Guns of August: Security in Eastern Libya." Writing on Aug. 8, the ambassador noted that in just a few months' time, "Benghazi has moved from trepidation to euphoria and back as a series of violent incidents has dominated the political landscape." He added, "The individual incidents have been organized," a function of "the security vacuum that a diverse group of independent actors are exploiting

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/19/documents-show-stevens-worried-about-libya-security-threats-al-qaeda-before/#ixzz29lyLHnA9

On the day after the attack, transcripts show, senior administration officials, briefing reporters, declined in response to three direct questions to link the Benghazi assaults to protests over the video. One senior official told reporters during the briefing that “unidentified Libyan extremists” launched what was “clearly a complex attack.” The official isn’t named because such briefings typically come on the condition of anonymity.

At campaign stops in Colorado and Nevada the next day, Sept. 13, Obama referred to the Benghazi assault as “an act of terror.” At the State Department press briefing that day, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland was asked directly and repeatedly whether there was a link between the video protests and the attack on the U.S. consulate.

While she mentioned that commentary on social media was making the link “to this reprehensible video,” Nuland emphasized several times that there wasn’t enough information for officials to make that leap, even though some news reports, including those of The New York Times and Agence France Presse, were citing unnamed witnesses in Libya who said that anger over the video was the reason the consulate was targeted.

“We are very cautious about drawing any conclusions with regard to who the perpetrators were, what their motivations were, whether it was premeditated, whether they had any external contacts, whether there was any link, until we have a chance to investigate along with the Libyans,” Nuland said.

That evening, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presided over a State Department reception marking an Islamic holiday; her remarks made no mention of a protest and made only passing reference to reports that listed “inflammatory material posted on the Internet” as a possible motive.

One of the speakers, Ali Suleiman Aujali, the Libyan ambassador to the United States, told Clinton and the other attendees in no uncertain terms that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.

“I hope that this sad incident which happened, this terrorist attack which took place against the American consulate in Libya, it will tell us how much we have to work closely,” Aujali said, according to the official transcript.

The story, however, began to change the next day, Sept. 14.

With images of besieged U.S. missions in the Middle East still leading the evening news, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney became the first official to back away from the earlier declaration that the Benghazi assault was a “complex attack” by extremists. Instead, Carney told reporters, authorities “have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack.” He added that there was no reason to think that the Benghazi attack wasn’t related to the video, given that the clip had sparked protests in many Muslim cities.

“The unrest that we’ve seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that Muslims, many Muslims, find offensive,” Carney said.

When pressed by reporters who pointed out evidence that the violence in Benghazi was preplanned, Carney said that “news reports” had speculated about the motive. He noted again that “the unrest around the region has been in response to this video.”

Carney then launched into remarks that read like talking points in defense of the U.S. decision to intervene in last year’s uprising against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi: that post-Gadhafi Libya, he said, is “one of the more pro-American countries in the region,” that it’s led by a new government “that has just come out of a revolution,” and that the lack of security capabilities there “is not necessarily reflective of anything except for the remarkable transformation that’s been going on in the region.”

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/10/18/171933/obama-administration-officials.html#storylink=cpy

Thu Sep 13, 2012 2:41am IST

* U.S. rescue mission to Benghazi hit by 'professional' ambush

* Two diplomats killed at consulate, two at 'safe' house fight

* Rescue raid for diplomats dogged by miscommunication

By Hadeel Al Shalchi

BENGHAZI, Libya, Sept 12 (Reuters) - A squad of U.S. troops despatched by helicopter across the Libyan desert to rescue besieged diplomats from Benghazi on Wednesday ran into a fierce overnight ambush that left a further two Americans dead, Libyan officials told Reuters.

Accounts of the mayhem at the U.S. consulate, where the ambassador and a fourth American died after a chaotic protest over a film insulting to Islam, remain patchy. But two Libyan officials, including the commander of a security force which escorted the U.S. rescuers, said a later assault on a supposedly safe refuge for the diplomats appeared professionally executed.

Miscommunication which understated the number of American survivors awaiting rescue - there were 37, nearly four times as many as the Libyan commander expected - also meant survivors and rescuers found themselves short of transport to escape this second battle, delaying an eventual dawn break for the airport.

Captain Fathi al-Obeidi, whose special operations unit was ordered by Libya's authorities to meet an eight-man force at Benghazi airport, said that after his men and the U.S. squad had found the American survivors who had evacuated the blazing consulate, the ostensibly secret location in an isolated villa came under an intense and highly accurate mortar barrage.

"I really believe that this attack was planned," he said, adding to suggestions by other Libyan officials that at least some of the hostility towards the Americans was the work of experienced combatants. "The accuracy with which the mortars hit us was too good for any regular revolutionaries."

Obeidi's Libya's Shield Brigade was formed by civilians during last year's U.S.-backed uprising against Muammar Gaddafi and is now part of the ad hoc government militia forces which the fledgling democratic administration uses to keep order.

Other Libyan officials cited the possible involvement of former soldiers still loyal to Gaddafi's family or Islamist fighters, some of whom have trained and fought in Afghanistan.

U.S. officials have noted it was "complex attack". Several Libyan officials and witnesses said an initial demonstration at the consulate appeared to be largely unarmed, though some elements of an Islamist militia were spotted.

At some point, the crowd became incensed, believing they were under attack from within the consulate, many fetched weapons and the consular villa ended up in flames, with most of the Americans fleeing to the safe house after two, including ambassador Christopher Stevens, had been fatally injured.

"RAINING DOWN FIRE"

Of the eight American troops who had come from Tripoli, one was killed and two were wounded, Obeidi said. A Libyan deputy interior minister said a second American was also killed in the attack

Libya’s fledgling national army is a “national chicken,” Mr. Abu Khattala said, using an Arabic rhyme. Asked who should take responsibility for apprehending the mission’s attackers, he smirked at the idea that the weak Libyan government could possibly do it. And he accused the leaders of the United States of “playing with the emotions of the American people” and “using the consulate attack just to gather votes for their elections.”

Mr. Abu Khattala’s defiance — no authority has even questioned him about the attack, he said, and he has no plans to go into hiding — offered insight into the shadowy landscape of the self-formed militias that have come to constitute the only source of social order in Libya since the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

A few, like the militia group Ansar al-Shariah that is linked to Mr. Abu Khattala and that officials in Washington and Tripoli agree was behind the attack, have embraced an extremist ideology hostile to the West and nursed ambitions to extend it over Libya. But also troubling to the United States is the evident tolerance shown by other militias allied with the government, which have so far declined to take any action against suspects in the Benghazi attack.

Although Mr. Abu Khattala said he was not a member of Al Qaeda, he declared he would be proud to be associated with Al Qaeda’s puritanical zeal for Islamic law. And he said that the United States had its own foreign policy to blame for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “Why is the United States always trying to impose its ideology on everyone else?” he asked. “Why is it always trying to use force to implement its agendas?”

Owing in part to the inability of either the Libyans or the Americans to mount a serious investigation, American dissections of the assault on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi have become muddled in a political debate over the identities and motivations of the attackers. Some Republicans have charged that the Obama administration initially sought to obscure a possible connection to Al Qaeda in order to protect its claim to have brought the group to its knees.

Mr. Abu Khattala, 41, wearing a red fez and sandals, added his own spin. Contradicting the accounts of many witnesses and the most recent account of the Obama administration, he contended that the attack had grown out of a peaceful protest against a video made in the United States that mocked the Prophet Muhammad and Islam

Almost everything we have been told about Libya over the last two years is untrue.

A free Libya was supposed to be proof of President Obama?s enlightened ?reset? Middle East policy. When insurgency broke out there, the United States joined France and Great Britain in bombing Moammar Qaddafi out of power ? and supposedly empowering a democratic Arab Spring regime. Not a single American life was lost.

Libyans, like most in the Arab world, were supposed to appreciate the new, enlightened American foreign policy. Obama?s June 2009 Cairo speech had praised Islam and apologized for the West. A new ?lead from behind? multilateralism was said to have superseded George W. Bush?s neo-imperialist interventions of the past.

Obama?s mixed racial identity and his father?s Muslim heritage would also win over the hearts and minds of Libyans after the Qaddafi nightmare. During this summer?s Democratic convention, Obama supporters trumpeted the successes of his Middle East policy: Osama bin Laden dead, al-Qaeda defanged, and Arab Spring reformers in place of dictators.

To keep that shining message viable until the November election, the Obama administration and the media had been willing to overlook or mischaracterize all sorts of disturbing events. We had asked for a United Nations resolution for humanitarian aid and a no-fly zone to intervene in Libya, but then deliberately exceeded it by bombing Qaddafi?s forces ? after bypassing the U.S. Congress in favor of a go-ahead from the Arab League.

Libya was not so much liberated as descending into the chaos of tribal payback. Former Qaddafi supporters and African mercenaries were executed by those we helped. Islamists began consolidating power, desecrating a British military cemetery and driving out Westerners.

On the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, a radical Islamist hit team with heavy weapons stormed the American consulate in Benghazi, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

In response, White House press secretary Jay Carney, National Intelligence Director James Clapper, and U.N. ambassador Susan Rice desperately insisted that the murders were a one-time, ad hoc demonstration gone awry, without much larger significance. Supposedly, a few Muslim outliers ? inflamed over one American?s anti-Islamic Internet video ? had overreacted and stormed the consulate. Such anger was ?natural,? assured the president.

But why would furor over an obscure, months-old Internet video just happen to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary attack? Do demonstrators customarily bring along rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, and heavy machine guns? Why did the Libyan government attribute the killings to an al-Qaeda affiliate when the Obama administration would not?

Forget those questions: For most of September, desperate administration officials still clung to the myth that the Libyan catastrophe was a result of a single obnoxious video. At the United Nations, the president castigated the uncouth film. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lamented the senseless spontaneous violence that grew out of one American?s excesses, as she spoke beside the returning coffins of the slain Americans.

Nonetheless, more disturbing facts kept emerging: Ambassador Stevens repeatedly had warned his State Department superiors in vain of impending Islamist violence. Security personnel ? to no avail ? had also urged beefing up the protection of the consulate, prompting former regional security officer Eric Nordstrom to say in exasperation that ?the Taliban is on the inside of the building.? Video of the attack revealed that there had been no demonstration at all, but rather a

During an appearance on NBC’s Today Show Friday morning, Meet the Press host David Gregory called the Obama administration’s response to the September 11th violent attacks in Benghazi, Libya, “sluggish, sloppy, and incoherent at some times.”

Host Savannah Guthrie had asked Gregory to assess each candidate’s chances in next Monday’s foreign policy-focused president debate. Gregory mentioned that Romney had several “missteps” in the previous debate regarding the Libya question, but also noted that Obama is facing criticism for “his talking points on this, on Jon Stewart saying when four Americans are killed it’s ‘not optimal.’”

“There’s still some confusion,” he noted, “about how the administration response on this was both sluggish, sloppy, and incoherent at some times.”

Watch below, via NBC:

House Armed Services chairman blocked from getting answers from senior military about threat warnings prior to Benghazi consulate attack

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is demanding answers from four senior United States military officers about whether there was advance warning of terrorist threats and the need for greater security prior to last month’s terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

However, an aide to the chairman, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, (R., Calif.), said the office of secretary of defense Leon Panetta blocked the senior officers from providing the answers last night.

“The chairman is disappointed that the administration won’t respond to this basic request for information,” the aide said.

“It is nearly unprecedented that the office of the secretary of defense would prohibit a member of the uniformed military from answering direct questions posed by the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.”

Pentagon spokesman George Little told the Free Beacon: “We received the letters last night and are working expeditiously to provide a response.”

The chairman’s letters are dated Thursday. They were sent to Gen. Carter F. Ham, commander of the U.S. Africa Command, which is responsible for military activities in Africa; Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command; Vice Adm. Kurt W. Tidd, director for operations at the Pentagon’s Joint Staff; and Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn,

US drones were in the skies over Benghazi during last month’s fatal attack on US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, a new report claims.

Defense Department officials weighed sending troops to rescue Stevens and more than 30 other Americans whose compound was surrounded by an angry mob on Sept. 11, says the report by CBS News.

But no US counterattack or rescue effort was carried out.



The drone and other reconnaissance aircraft observed the final hours of the protracted, seven-hour battle at the US Consulate.

The Obama administration appears to be mounting yet another version of its campaign to push back on claims that it misled on the intelligence related to the attacks in Benghazi on 9/11/12. But the new offensive by the administration, which contradicts many of its earlier claims and simply disregards intelligence that complicates its case, is raising fresh questions in the intelligence community and on Capitol Hill about the manipulation of intelligence for political purposes.
obamaheaddown

The administration's new line takes shape in two articles out Saturday, one in the Los Angeles Times and the other by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. The Times piece reports that there is no evidence of an al Qaeda role in the attack. The Ignatius column makes a directly political argument, claiming that "the Romney campaign may have misfired with its suggestion that statements by President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice about the Benghazi attacks weren't supported by intelligence, according to documents provided by a senior intelligence official."

If this is the best the Obama administration can offer in its defense, they're in trouble. The Times story is almost certainly wrong and the central part of the Ignatius "scoop" isn't a scoop at all. We'll start there.

    and the U.S. surely knew about it.

    Furthermore there was a CIA post in Benghazi, located 1.2 miles from the U.S. consulate, used as “a base for, among other things, collecting information on the proliferation of weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, including surface-to-air missiles” … and that its security features “were more advanced than those at rented villa where Stevens died.”

    And we know that the CIA has been funneling weapons to the rebels in southern Turkey. The question is whether the CIA has been involved in handing out heavy weapons from Libya.

    In any case, the connection between Benghazi and the rise of jihadists in Syria is stronger than has been officially acknowledged.

“You follow this? The guy we worked with is the guy doing these deals. Our ally Turkey is ‑‑ knows all about it. Our ally, the prime minister, who’s the best friend of Barack Obama? Who’s the one he was the first one to call? He didn’t call, not Tony Blair, he didn’t call Gordan Brown. He didn’t call anybody. The first guy he called was Turkey’s leader. He’s the closest to Turkey’s leader,” Glenn said.

“Turkey is taking the arms from Libya and shipping them into Syria. Reuters also reports that satellite photos exposed a CIA post in Benghazi located 1.2 miles from the consulate. It was used as a base, among other things, for collecting information on the proliferation of weaponry looted from the Libyan government, including surface‑to‑air missiles. And that its security features were more advanced than those at the rented villa where Stevens died. We also know that a dozen CIA operatives and contractors left the Benghazi base after it was exposed. Could the two CIA groups be connected as a start‑and‑end points to help funnel heavy weapons to the Syrian opposition. The answer is yes. We know that the CIA has been funneling weapons to the rebels in southern Turkey. CNN reports that FSA members are cutting their own deals to get weapons from well‑armed extremists.”

“So it raises questions on who the CIA is arming. We also know that U.S. weapons are now ending up in the hands of hardline Islamists in Syria. It turns out that many of the jihadists are the same ones, the same people that Stevens helped arm to topple Muammar Gaddafi.”

“Now here we go. Who was he having dinner with? On September 11th. September 11th he was having a meeting with the Turkish ambassador, the guy who’s involved in the gun‑runnings.  He’s having d

The Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi targeted more than just a State Department consulate. One of the buildings hit was a covert CIA installation, U.S. officials told Fox News.

The now-abandoned American consulate in Benghazi was set a little more than a mile away from the CIA base. Up to this point, that separate base was described by administration officials only as a "safe house" or "annex" to the nearby consulate. In reality, CIA agents and other intelligence officials were operating out of Benghazi conducting delicate missions, including the search for over 20,000 deadly shoulder-fired missiles previously owned by Muammar Qaddafi's Libyan forces.

The work they conducted to seize those deadly weapons, known as MANPADS, was part of a broader and public effort by the State Department to secure them. The major concern is those weapons could be used to bring down a commercial jet.

These officials added that the number of CIA operatives in Benghazi clearly outnumbered that of the diplomatic staff.  It took two military cargo aircraft to lift everyone out of Benghazi when the fighting was over.

Both the CIA outpost and the consulate were attacked on Sept. 11.  Two of the men killed, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, were hit by indirect fire while defending the intelligence post, not the consulate.

One witness told Fox News that Doherty and Woods were found on the roof of the intelligence base manning a single machine gun that was caked in blood, suggesting they continued firing after they were hit by a mortar round approximately seven hours after the attack began.

U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and information analyst Sean Smith were also killed in the attack hours earlier at the consulate.

In general, U.S. officials also say the consulate is better described as a diplomatic mission. It didn't carry out all the traditional roles of a consulate, such as issuing visas.

Revelations concerning just how sensitive operations were in Benghazi began to trickle out during the House oversight committee hearing two weeks ago with witnesses Charlene Lamb, a State Department official who heads diplomatic security, and Ambassador Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary for management at State. As part of their testimony, the two presented a map of Benghazi that clearly labeled and located the

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/22/cia-installation-hit-in-libya-terror-attack/#ixzz2A3UZMhU7

Defenses at the second site largely held and unlike the temporary consulate, its grounds were not overrun. However, two U.S. security officials, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, were killed there in what U.S. officials described as an unlucky mortar strike. The rest of the contingent eventually escaped to Benghazi's airport.

The assertions that the second site had relatively sophisticated defensive measures could raise additional questions about why the nearby consulate was not further reinforced given the volatile security environment in Benghazi.

Rex Ubben, whose son David was badly wounded in the attack on the second site and is being treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, said his son had described an intense, sophisticated attack there.

The mortar fire's accuracy "indicates to me that someone was either very, very good, highly trained and skilled, or that the mortar was already set up and pointed at the 'safe house' and only minor adjustments were needed," Ubben, a 24-year Air Force veteran, told Reuters by email last week, relaying his son's account.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other top U.S. officials have defended security measures in place at the temporary consulate, although those claims came under harsh attack by committee Republicans on Wednesday.

Officials investigating the attacks say there is evidence the State Department wanted to maintain a low security profile at the temporary consulate - which was the public face of the U.S. presence in the city - to project an appearance of normality in U.S. dealings with Libya.

Because Benghazi was regarded as lawless and violent, with a heavy presence of Islamic militants, the second compound's security measures included cameras and sensors and its security force included well-trained Americans like Doherty and Woods, the two former Navy SEALs who died in

wrote already on July 30, 2012 that what was happening in Libya and across the Middle East was nothing less than a comeback for al-Qaida, which had created "its largest safe havens and operational bases in more than a decade across the Arab world." He specifically pointed to AQIM, which he said was now "the best armed al-Qaida franchise in the world."

Thus AQIM is on the rise. The commander of the U.S. Army's African command said this July that it was al-Qaida's "wealthiest affiliate." The new AQIM network has been at war with Mauritania, but it also directly threatens Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and whatever government arises in Libya. Their operatives have been caught in Spain and will eventually pose a threat to France and Western Europe. Given this background, it is understandable how Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, who headed the U.S. security assistance team in Libya, could conclude in recent Congressional testimony about al-Qaida in Libya: "Their presence grows every day. They are certainly more established than we are."

While the debate rages in America over whether there was a cover-up of what actually happened in the U.S. compound in Benghazi, there are important trends being missed. There are considerable signs that al-Qaida elements are on the rise in much of the Middle East, and especially in the area of Benghazi in eastern Libya. Indeed, in the first half of 2012, attacks on foreigners in Benghazi escalated: The British ambassador's convoy was assaulted in June by terrorists who used rocket propelled grenades.

Al-Qaida has techniques which it has used to build up its capabilities through local jihadi organizations. These groups, which identify with aspects of its ideology, start out as local militias in the Gaza Strip or in Libya, but nonetheless come into contact with global jihadi networks which provide weapons, combat skills, and finally recruit them into the al-Qaida network. Clearly what happened in Libya did not stay a local phenomenon but radiated out to the entire region and beyond.

Democrats are battling against the Benghazi story by claiming House Republicans compromised the safety of a human-rights activist in posting documents related to the U.S. mission in Libya online.

One of the unclassified cables released by Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) names a Libyan who was detained in Benghazi, had been leading an anti-violence campaign, and has been critical of the government. An administration official told Foreign Policy the woman “isn’t publicly associated with the U.S. in any other way but she’s now named in this cable. It’s a danger to her life.”

“The wholesale release of State Department documents by the House Oversight Committee has exposed Libyan nationals working with the United States to possible danger. This is irresponsible and inexcusable, and perhaps worst of all it was entirely avoidable. It is profoundly against America’s interests in a difficult region,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) said Saturday.

“I know how to run a real investigation,” Kerry sniped. “…I don’t say casually that this release of sensitive materials was a moment of real incompetence and irresponsibility.”

He accused the GOP of turning the Benghazi probe into a “political sideshow presumably driven by the calendar of Monday’s upcoming presidential debate.”

“The Republicans with Chairman Issa, with Mitt Romney statements trying to make political hay out of a national tragedy — quite frankly, I think the way Governor Romney acted after the ambassador was killed was despicable,” House Foreign Affairs Committee member Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said on CNN this morning. “…President Obama is no more responsible for what happened in Benghazi than President Bush was for 9/11 or President Reagan was for the Marines being killed in Beirut.”

“One of the things that I found interesting is Darrell Issa dumped out all of those documents, and it occurred to me that, you know dumping that out the Friday before a foreign policy debate, was really all about politics,” Obama’s deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, said on MSNBC this morning.

The United States had an unmanned Predator drone over its consulate in Benghazi during the attack that slaughtered four Americans — which should have led to a quicker military response, it was revealed yesterday.

“They stood, and they watched, and our people died,” former CIA commander Gary Berntsen told CBS News.

The network reported that the drone and other reconnaissance aircraft observed the final hours of the hours-long siege on Sept. 11 — obtaining information that should have spurred swift action.

But as Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three colleagues were killed by terrorists armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, Defense Department officials were too slow to send in the troops, Berntsen said.
VIEW TO A KILL: As terrorists attacked the consulate in Benghazi, a US Predator drone was reportedly observing from above.
EPA
VIEW TO A KILL: As terrorists attacked the consulate in Benghazi, a US Predator drone was reportedly observing from above.

“They made zero adjustments in this. You find a way to make this happen,” he fumed.

“There isn’t a plan for every single engagement. Sometimes you have to be able to make adjustments.”

The Pentagon said it moved a team of special operators from Central Europe to Sigonella, Italy — about an hour flight from Libya — but gave no other details.

Fighter jets and Specter AC-130 gunships — which could have been used to help disperse the bloodthirsty mob — were also stationed at three nearby bases, sources told the network.

When the attack began, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta “looked at available options, and the ones we exercised had our military forces arrive in less than 24 hours, well ahead of timelines laid out in established policies,” a Whit

A U.S. ambassador is missing and his diplomatic team is desperately fighting off terrorist attacks. Our commander-in-chief and his national-security team in Washington are listening to the phone calls from the Americans under attack and watching real-time video from a drone circling overhead. Yet the U.S. military sends no aid. Why?

On September 11, at about 10 p.m. Libyan time (4 p.m. in Washington), Ambassador Chris Stevens and a small staff were inside our consulate in Benghazi when terrorists attacked. The consulate staff immediately contacted Washington and our embassy in Tripoli. The White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and numerous military headquarters monitored the entire battle in real time via the phone calls from Benghazi and video from a drone overhead.

Our diplomats fought for seven hours without any aid from outside the country. Four Americans died while the Obama national-security team and our military passively watched and listened. The administration is being criticized for ignoring security needs before the attack and for falsely attributing the assault to a mob. But the most severe failure has gone unnoticed: namely, a failure to aid the living.

By 4:30 p.m. Washington time, the main consulate building was on fire and Ambassador Stevens was missing. In response, the embassy in Tripoli launched an aircraft carrying 22 men. Benghazi was 400 miles away.

At 5 p.m., President Obama met with Vice President Biden and Secretary of Defense Panetta in the Oval Office. The U.S. military base in Sigonella, Sicily, was 480 miles away from Benghazi. Stationed at Sigonella were Special Operations Forces, transport aircraft, and attack aircraft — a much more formidable force than 22 men from the embassy.

In the past, presidents had taken immediate actions to protect Americans. In 1984, President Reagan had ordered U.S. pilots to force an airliner carrying terrorists to land at Sigonella. Reagan had acted inside a 90-minute window while the aircraft with the terrorists was in the air. The Obama national-security team had several hours in which to move forces from Sigonella to Benghazi.

Fighter jets could have been at Benghazi in an hour; the commandos inside three hours. If the attackers were a mob, as intelligence reported, then an F18 in afterburner, roaring like a lion, would unnerve them. This procedure was applied often in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Conversely, if the attackers were terrorists, then the U.S. commandos would eliminate them. But no forces were dispatched from Sigonella.

In the meantime, while untrained and poorly led by American standards, the terrorists at Benghazi were proving to be lethal. They forced the Americans to abandon the

JewishWorldReview.com | The operational, intelligence and political fiascos that led to and followed the September 11 jihadist assault on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya all derive from the same problem. That problem is the failure of US President Barack Obama's conceptual framework for understanding the Middle East.

The Islamic revolutionary wave sweeping across the Arab world has rent asunder the foundations of the US alliance system in the Middle East. But due to Obama's ideological commitment to an anti-American conceptual framework for understanding Middle Eastern politics his administration cannot see what is happening. That framework places the blame for all or most of the pathologies of the Muslim world on the US and Israel.

What Obama and his advisors can see is that there are many people who disagree with them. And so they adopted a policy of delegitimizing, discrediting and silencing their opponents. To this end, his administration has purged the federal government's lexicon of all terms that are necessary to describe reality.

"Jihad," "Islamist," "radical Islam," "Islamic terrorism," and similar phrases have all been banned. The study of Islamist doctrine by government officials has been outlawed.

The latest casualty of this policy was an instructor at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, VA. Until he was sacked this week, the i

Showing what the MSM can do when it does its job, the L.A. Times actually tracked down the militia members who were tasked with security on the night of the Benghazi attack:

    Face down on a roof inside the besieged American diplomatic compound, gunfire and flames crackling around them, the two young Libyan guards watched as several bearded men crept toward the ambassador’s residence with semiautomatic weapons and grenades strapped to their chests.

    “We are finished,” one of the guards says he remembers thinking.

    Both are veterans of the ragtag revolutionary forces that toppled Moammar Kadafi. Over the last year, while assigned by their militia to help protect the U.S. mission in Benghazi, the pair had been drilled by American security personnel in using their weapons, securing entrances, climbing walls and waging hand-to-hand combat.

    They were the “quick reaction force” for a compound that was also protected by about five armed Americans and five Libyan civilians hired through a British firm and equipped only with electric batons and handcuffs.

Words fail.

BENGHAZI, Libya — Face down on a roof inside the besieged American diplomatic compound, gunfire and flames crackling around them, the two young Libyan guards watched as several bearded men crept toward the ambassador's residence with semiautomatic weapons and grenades strapped to their chests.

"We are finished," one of the guards says he remembers thinking.

Both are veterans of the ragtag revolutionary forces that toppled Moammar Kadafi. Over the last year, while assigned by their militia to help protect the U.S. mission in Benghazi, the pair had been drilled by American security personnel in using their weapons, securing entrances, climbing walls and waging hand-to-hand combat.

They were the "quick reaction force" for a compound that was also protected by about five armed Americans and five Libyan civilians hired through a British firm and equipped only with electric batons and handcuffs.

PHOTOS: U.S. ambassador killed in attack on consulate in Libya

But nothing, they say, had prepared them for this. They had practiced for an attack by 10 or 15 people; now there were scores of professional-looking militants who moved methodically and used well-practiced hand signals. To make matters worse on the night of Sept. 11, instead of four militiamen who were supposed to be on guard, there were only two inside the compound.

The militiamen say they initially fought back, but when one attacker lobbed a grenade into their bungalow near the compound's entrance, they fled to the roof without their radios and with only one magazine of ammunition between them. The American security officers were nowhere in sight.

As the raid continued — eventually killing Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and another American inside the facility, and two other Americans at a separate location hours later — the two Libyans say that they survived by lying on the roof silently for about an hour, too stunned, scared and overmatched to fight back.

"We were not expecting such a massive attack," the guard says. "We were not ready for it."

The two militiamen, who spoke to The Times in separate interviews in the last week in Benghazi and Tripoli, the capital, say they are telling their story publicly for the first time in part because FBI investigators are raising questions about their role. One of the militiamen and a civilian guard say investigators asked them why the guards didn't fight "to the death," and were looking for signs that the attackers had collaborators within the militia.

The militiamen flatly deny supporting the assailants but acknowledge that their large, government-allied force, known as the Feb. 17 Martyrs Brigade, could include anti-American elements.

American officials have declined, as a matter of protocol, to discuss security arrangements at the outpost in eastern Libya . But the attack — the worst to strike a U.S. diplomatic mission since 1998 — grimly underscored the chaos in post-revolutionary Libya, where an array of heavily armed but unevenly trained militias is serving as a sort of substitute army and is responsible for virtually all security, including at diplomatic outposts. The Feb. 17 brigade is regarded as one of the more capable militias in eastern Libya.

The assault also raised questions about why Stevens, a high-value target who was known to venture into the streets, would have spent the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks at the Benghazi mission instead of the more fortified embassy in Tripoli.

The guards bristle at accusations that they shrank from the fight and say they had repeatedly warned American officials about flawed security arrangements.

"They called me a liar. They said we didn't see you on the [security] cameras fighting," says the second militiaman, who was questioned by the FBI recently in Tripoli and who, like others interviewed for this story, asked not to be identified out of fear for his safety.

"I told them that we fired our weapons in the beginning but when we got to the roof, there were 100 enemies and two of us. We could do nothing."

Under an agreement with U.S. officials — who describe the post in Benghazi as a "special mission" and not a consulate, as it's often been called — four Feb. 17 fighters were supposed to be posted at the compound around the clock. They trained and worked closely with a rotating cast of American security personnel and slept in the sand-colored bungalow closest to the main entrance and the ambassador's residence.

But commanders still hadn't replaced one of the four who left his post for personal reasons about a month before the attack. A second was patrolling outside the compound when the attackers arrived, and it's unclear whether he engaged in the battle.

The militia members as well as two civilian guards employed by Blue Mountain, a British firm that in

A Tunisian national with suspected ties to extremist groups including Al Qaeda's North Africa affiliate is being held in Tunisia in connection with the Libya terror attack -- a development that comes as some question recent efforts by administration sources to downplay the possibility that the attack was pre-planned.

Ali ani al-Harzi was arrested in Turkey, Fox News has confirmed, and has since been transferred to Tunisian authorities. He is one of about two-dozen individuals on a list that is being worked through by the U.S. intelligence community and the FBI. That list was compiled from intercepts as well as the remaining surveillance camera video from the compound of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

Al-Harzi is believed to be a participant in the attack but is not characterized as a ringleader. He is part of a North African Islamist network, with family ties to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and other extremists.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/23/tunisian-held-in-connection-with-libya-terror-attack/?test=latestnews#ixzz2A9vxxF23

A series of internal State Department emails obtained by Fox News shows that officials reported within hours of last month's deadly consulate attack in Libya that Al Qaeda-tied group Ansar al-Sharia had claimed responsibility.

The emails provide some of the most detailed information yet about what officials knew in the initial hours after the attack. And it again raises questions about why U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, apparently based on intelligence assessments, would claim five days after the attack that it was a "spontaneous" reaction to protests over an anti-Islam film.

Ansar al-Sharia has been declared by the State Department to be an Al Qaeda-affiliated group. A member of the group suspected of participating in the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi has been arrested and is being held in Tunisia.

The emails obtained by Fox News were sent by the State Department to a variety of national security platforms, whose addresses have been redacted, including the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon, the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence.

Fox News was told that an estimated 300 to 400 national security figures received these emails in real time almost as the raid was playing out and concluding. People who received these emails work directly under the nation’s top national security, military and diplomatic officials, Fox News was told.

The timestamps on the emails are all Eastern Time and often include the subheading SBU, which is shorthand for “Sensitive But Unclassified.”

The third email came at 6:07 p.m. ET and was sent to a different email list but still includes the White House Situation Room address and a subject line of “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack (SBU).”

“Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli," the email reads.

Earlier emails did not go into who might have been responsible for the attack.

The first email indicates that U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and other personnel were “in the compound safe haven.” Officials later discovered

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/23/state-dept-emails-from-day-libya-attack-show-al-qaeda-tied-group-on-radar/#ixzz2AEeiNuzp

Washington (CNN) -- Two hours after first being notified of an attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, a government e-mail to the White House, the State Department and the FBI said an Islamist group had claimed credit, according to a copy obtained by CNN.

An initial e-mail was sent while the attack was still underway, and another that arrived two hours later -- sent from a State Department address to various government agencies including the executive office of the president -- identified Ansar al-Sharia as claiming responsibility for the attack on its Facebook page and on Twitter.

The group denied responsibility the next day.

However, the e-mails raise further questions about the seeming confusion on the part of the Obama administration to determine the nature of the September 11 attack that left U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead.

Two White House officials, speaking on condition of not being identified on Wednesday, said the government e-mails about the attack were not an intelligence assessment. They also noted that there was conflicting information about Ansar al-Sharia denying responsibility.

"They were a part of the many different reports we were receiving that day," one of the White House officials said of the e-mails. "There are always multiple and conflicting reports in the initial hours of an attack. That's why you have an investigation."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton advised reporters to wait until a review panel she appointed to investigate what happened

The White House pushed back against reports in CBS, Reuters and CNN that they knew immediately that the attack in Benghazi was the work of terrorists.

"There was a variety of information coming in," White House press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday on Air Force One. "The whole point of an intelligence community and what they do is to assess strands of information and make judgements about what happened and who was responsible."

"This is an open source, unclassified email about a posting on a Facebook site," Carney said. "I would also note that within a few hours the organization itself claimed that it had not been responsible. Neither should be taken as fact. That is why there is an investigation."

News outlets obtained emails from administration officials showing that a State Department report identified the group Ansar al-Sharia taking credit for the Benghazi attack almost immediately.

(CBS News) It was six weeks ago on Tuesday that terrorists attacked the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Now, CBS News has obtained email alerts that were put out by the State Department as the attack unfolded. Four Americans were killed in the attack, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

These emails contain the earliest description so far of what happened at Benghazi the night of the attack.

Read the emails (PDF)
Ambassador warned Libya was "volatile and violent"
Why no one has been right about Libya
CIA saw possible terror ties day after Libya hit: AP

At 4:05 p.m. Eastern time, on September 11, an alert from the State Department Operations Center was issued to a number government and intelligence agencies. Included were the White House Situation Room, the office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the FBI.

"US Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack" -- "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/embassy) personnel are in the compound safe haven."

At 4:54 p.m., less than an hour later, another alert: "the firing... in Benghazi...has stopped...A response team is on site attempting to locate COM (embassy) personnel."

Then, at 6:07 p.m., State sent out another alert saying the embassy in Tripoli reported the Islamic military group "Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibilty for Benghazi Attack"... "on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli."

The emails are just a few in what are likely a large number traded throughout the night. They are likely to become part of the ongoing political debate over whether the administration attempted to mislead in saying the assault was an outgrowth of a protest, rather than a planned attack by terrorists.

Fourteen hours after the attack, President Obama sat down with Steve Kroft of "60 Minutes" for a previously scheduled interview and said he did not believe it was simply due to mob violence.

"You're right that this is not a situation that was -- exactly the same as what happened in Egypt and my suspicion is that there are folks involved in this who were looking to target Americans from the start," Mr. Obama said.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed back Wednesday on the suggestion that Sept. 11 emails implicating an Al Qaeda-tied group in the Libya consulate attack were proof of terrorist involvement, saying their claims of responsibility on Facebook and Twitter were not "evidence."

Though social media was vital in driving -- and monitoring -- the so-called Arab Spring that overthrew longtime dictators in Libya and other countries, Clinton dismissed it as an unreliable source after a series of internal emails sent by Clinton's State Department staff surfaced in which officials reported within hours of the attack that militant group Ansar al-Sharia claimed responsibility in Internet postings.

"Posting something on Facebook is not in and of itself evidence," Clinton said. "And I think it just underscores how fluid the reporting was at the time and continued for some time to be."

She suggested those producing the emails were "cherrypicking" documentation, as the White House noted the organization reportedly had denied responsibility in other settings.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/24/clinton-downplays-emails-implicating-al-qaeda-tied-group-within-hours-libya/#ixzz2AEuWw0B7

Is the man the Obama administration appointed on October 4 as key investigator for the terror attacks in Benghazi an Islamist-sympathizer? According to recently published reports, the new chairman of a State Department’s “Accountability Review Board,” which is heading the federal investigation into the Benghazi terror attacks, has been accused of being an “apologist for Islamic terrorism who has a cozy relationship with Iran.”

What’s more, the man in question — former Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering — has documented ties with the controversial group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR, of course, is a documented Muslim Brotherhood affiliate and was named unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial — the largest terror-funding trial in U.S. history.

To make matters worse, Pickering is also co-chairman of the board of George Soros’ International Crisis Group who has ties to other Islamic organizations as well, including the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which has been described as pro-Iran “front group.”

NIAC lost what Matthew Vadum at FrontPageMag describes as ”an important defamation case in federal court last month in which it unsuccessfully argued the group was not a tool of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Pickering, who is a member of NIAC’s advisory board, formerly served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (1997 to 2000). He was featured in a report “Rise of the Iran Lobby,” by former CIA officer Clare M. Lopez, who was recently featured on the Glenn Beck Program to discuss the motivations behind the terror-attacks on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.

CNSNews.com) - The White House is declining to say when President Barack Obama first learned of three e-mails that the State Department sent to the White House on Sept. 11, 2012, directly notifying the Executive Office of the President that the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was under attack, that U.S. Amb. Chris Stevens was at the Benghazi mission at the time of the attack, and that the group Ansar al-Sharia had taken credit for the attack.

The White House also declined to say when the president first met with the National Security Council after the Benghazi attack.

“I have been asked by one of our spokespeople to relay ‘that we decline to comment,’” said White House National Security Staff aide Debbie Bird in a written response to CNSNews.com.

CNSNews.com had asked Bird: 1) “When did the President first meet with the National Security Council after the Benghazi attack on 9/11/12?” 2) “When did White House staff first discuss the substance of the e-mails that went to the White House with the President or with the National Security Advisor?”

Carney also took a question about the e-mails today during a press gaggle held aboard Air Force One at 9:34 a.m. A reporter asked: “Jay, there are some emails that have emerged, which suggest that the White House and other areas of the government were told within hours of the Benghazi attack that an extremist group had claimed responsibility. How is that compatible with the idea that it was a spontaneous attack?”

Carney downplayed the significance of the State Department emails.

“There were emails about all sorts of information that was becoming available in the aftermath of the attack,” Carney said. “The email you’re referring to was an open-source, unclassified email referring to an assertion made on a social media site that everyone in this room had access to and knew about instantaneously. There was a variety of information coming in.

“The whole point of an intelligence community and what they do is to assess strands of information and make judgments about what happened and who was responsible,” said Carney, “and I would refer you to what we’ve already said about, and what the DNI [Director of National Intelligence] has already said about, the initial assessments of the intelligence community, and the fact that throughout this process, I and others made very clear that our preliminary assessments were preliminary, that an investigation was underway, and that as more facts became available, we would make the American people aware of them.

“Again,” said Carney, “this was an open-source, unclassified email about a posting on a Facebook site. I would also note I think that within a few hours, that organization itself claimed that it had not been responsible. Neither should be taken as fact. That’s why there’s an investigation underway.”

The NSC is chaired by the president, and includes Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. A NSC meeting would allow the leader of the intelligence community to communicate directly with the leader of the State Department in the presence of the president and for all of them to weigh any conflicting information.

The three emails in question, which were obtained by CBS News, were sent by the State Department to various government officials, including two officials in the Executive Office of the President, on Sept. 11, 2012, while the attack on the Benghazi was taking place and immediately after it had taken place.

Each of the emails has been redacted so that the suffixes of most of the email addresses are intact—showing where the people who sent them and received them work—but the prefixes are blacked out, so the personal identities of the senders and receivers is obscured.

The first email was sent by a State Department officials at 4:05 PM on Sept. 11, 2012. It carries the subject line: “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack.” The text of the email says: “The Regional Security Officer reports the diplomatic mission is under attack. Embassy 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.”

Fox News has chronicled how the Al Entisar, a Libyan-flagged vessel carrying 400 tons of cargo, docked on Sept. 6 in the Turkish port of Iskenderun. It reportedly supplied both humanitarian assistance and arms — including deadly SA-7 man-portable surface-to-air missiles — apparently destined for Islamists, again including al Qaeda elements, in Syria.

What cries out for further investigation — and debate in the remaining days of this presidential election — is whether this shipment was part of a larger covert Obama effort to transfer weapons to our enemies that could make the Iran-Contra scandal, to say nothing of Operation Fast and Furious, pale by comparison.

Investigative journalist Aaron Klein has reported that the “consulate in Benghazi” actually was no such thing. He observes that although administration officials have done nothing to correct that oft-repeated characterization of the facility where the murderous attack on Stevens and his colleagues was launched, they call it a “mission.” What Mr. Klein describes as a “shabby, nondescript building” that lacked any “major public security presence” was, according to an unnamed Middle Eastern security official, “routinely used by Stevens and others to coordinate with the Turkish, Saudi and Qatari governments on supporting the insurgencies in the Middle East, most prominently the rebels opposing Assad’s regime in Syria.”

We know that Stevens‘ last official act was to hold such a meeting with an unidentified “Turkish diplomat.” Presumably, the conversation involved additional arms shipments to al Qaeda and its allies in Syria. It also may have involved getting more jihadi fighters there. After all, Mr. Klein reported last month that, according to sources in Egyptian security, our ambassador was playing a “central role in recruiting jihadists to fight Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.”

It gets worse. Last week, Center for Security Policy senior fellow and former career CIA officer Clare Lopez observed that there were two large warehouse-type buildings associated with the so-called “consulate” whose purpose has yet to be disclosed. As their contents were raided in the course of the attack, we may never know for sure whether they housed — and were known by the local jihadis to house — arms, perhaps administered by the two former Navy SEALs killed along with Stevens.

What we do know is that the New York Times — one of the most slavishly pro-Obama publications in the country — reported in an Oct. 14 article, “Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster.”

In short, it seems President Obama has been engaged in gun-walking on a massive scale. The effec

Well well well what do we have here?

I've talked a bit about rumors that just won't die that our real purpose in being in Libya with that "Diplomatic Mission" was more related to trying to buy back portable anti-aircraft missiles that we sold or gave to Gaddafi (or was it the "Rebels" -- or both?) and then went "missing."

Now it appears that we have national media that are talking about it and have uncovered proof that these are not just rumors.

Our national hubris in handing a thug anti-aircraft missiles that are both man-portable and not secured is pretty far over the line.  What's worse is that when we discovered they had "disappeared" we apparently then turned around and stuck a ****load of cash in what amounted to an unguarded CIA outpost-cum-"safehouse" and tried to buy them back.

Ok, it wasn't quite unguarded.  But it was damn close, and it was certainly not sufficiently guarded, as we now know.

The ugly of course is that this adds materially to the coverup attempt that Obama and his administration attempted to pull when the attack happened.  Not only are there emails that form hard documentation that the White House knew that this was a raid and not in response to some "Youtube video" in addition they knew damn well what they were doing there and that the "mission" was a high-value military target in that it held both large sums of cash and weapons.

This is damn close to treason folks, and I do not use that word lightly.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered additional security for the U.S. mission in Benghazi ahead of the terrorist attack but the orders were never carried out, according to “legal counsel” to Clinton who spoke to best-selling author Ed Klein. Those same sources also say former President Bill Clinton has been “urging” his wife to release official State Department documents that prove she called for additional security at the compound in Libya, which would almost certainly result in President Obama losing the election.

Appearing on TheBlazeTV’s “Wilkow!” on Wednesday night, Klein told host Andrew Wilkow that Bill and Hillary Clinton have been having “big fights” for “two or three weeks” about the issue, according to his two sources on Clinton’s legal counsel. While Bill Clinton wishes his wife would “exonerate” herself by releasing the documents that show she wasn’t at fault for the tragic security failure in Libya, the secretary of state refuses to do so because she doesn’t want to be viewed as a traitor to the Democratic party.

On Glenn Beck’s radio show earlier on Wednesday, Klein said his information comes from two “very good” sources.

Wilkow pointed out the obvious, that the Obamas and the Clintons have a “very behind the scenes, tense relationship” — to put it lightly.

“I said to you last night, and I think I stand corrected,

Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. Consulate and subsequent attack several hours later was denied by officials in the CIA chain of command -- who also told the CIA operators twice to "stand down" rather than help the ambassador's team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

Former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were part of a small team who were at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. Consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When they heard the shots fired, they radioed to inform their higher-ups to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to "stand down," according to sources familiar with the exchange. An hour later, they called again to headquarters and were again told to "stand down."

Woods, Doherty and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the Consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The quick reaction force from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the Consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.

At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Specter gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/26/cia-operators-were-denied-request-for-help-during-benghazi-attack-sources-say/#ixzz2AQDcpBpT

The grieving father also described his brief encounter with President Obama during the ceremony for the Libya victims.

“When he finally came over to where we were, I could tell that he was rather conflicted, a person who was not at peace with himself,” Woods said. “Shaking hands with him, quite frankly, was like shaking hands with a dead fish. His face was pointed towards me but he would not look me in the eye, his eyes were over my shoulder.”

“I could tell that he was not sorry,” he added. “He had no remorse.”

Beck said he wanted to give the president “the benefit of the doubt,” and asked Woods how he could be sure that Obama wasn’t just uncomfortable or nervous during their conversation. Woods said it was Obama’s “demeanor.”

Hillary Clinton’s comments to Woods raise even more questions about the White House’s official story on the Benghazi attack, which has already been extremely inconsistent.

After apologizing for his loss, Woods said Clinton told him that the U.S. would “make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.”

One of the unanswered questions about the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi is why the US military didn’t intervene.  Rumors had swirled that the US asked the Libyan government in Tripoli for permission to fly into Benghazi to break up the attack but had been refused, although no one has claimed that on the record.  Defense Secretary Leon Panetta put that rumor to rest yesterday by telling reporters that the US never planned to intervene at all, thanks to a lack of intel on the ground:

    US military leaders ruled out sending in forces during the attack on an American consulate in Libya last month because of a lack of reliable intelligence, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday.

    Although forces were on alert and ready to launch an operation if needed, the US military commander for Africa, General Carter Ham, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, and Panetta all decided against any intervention as they had no clear picture of events unfolding in Benghazi, he said.

    “There’s a basic principle here, and the basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on, without having some real-time information about what’s taking place,” Panetta told a news conference.

Now we know who is taking responsibility for denying support to the consulate and the safe house.

The photo, which is the official one put out by DOD, from the press conference held by Panetta and General Dempsey is horribly eloquent in terms of body language.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta defended the failure to go in by claiming that the issue was a lack of reliable intel, despite the fact that they had multiple distress calls and a drone overhead.

Blaming a lack of reliable intel is fine if you want to pull away from intervening in Syria, but not when a US diplomatic facility and its personnel are under sustained attack. And how much intel was really needed to send two jets to buzz the area and possibly scare off some of the attackers, who would not have posed any threat to the aircraft?

    Although forces were on alert and ready to launch an operation if needed, the US military commander for Africa, General Carter Ham, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, and Panetta all decided against any intervention as they had no clear picture of events unfolding in Benghazi, he said.

So the buck has been passed to Panetta and Dempsey and Ham. Dempsey is a soulless administration toady and Ham is deeply invested in Libya. Panetta is a Clintonite who is completely expendable, especially if the charges get pinned to Hillary. But Panetta still seems filled with self-loathing and Dempsey looks disgusted with him.

Not doing something because there is no intel is a common excuse in these circles when they don’t want to do something. Just as with Iran, there would never have been enough intel.

And how much intel was needed really? Benghazi had an extended profile and was the cause of the entire Libyan war. The consulate had an extensive intelligence apparatus and the declassified cables we’ve seen are a fraction of the actual classified cables that would have been at Panetta, Dempsey and Ham’s disposal.

They knew about the Islamist militias and had descriptions of their armament from the RSO’s reports. They didn’t know the exact number of attackers or every single possible detail, but you can never really know everything before going in.

    “There’s a basic principle here, and the basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on, without having some real-time information about what’s taking place,” Panetta told a news conference.

But there were already forces in harm’s way, who were trying to provide some real time intel from their point of view. What Panetta means is that the decision was made not to send aid to them, and it wasn’t about risking more lives, but about the politics of intervening in Libya and offending the Libyans. It was done for the same reason that US soldiers have at times been abandoned without air

A mysterious Libyan ship -- reportedly carrying weapons and bound for Syrian rebels -- may have some link to the Sept. 11 terror attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Fox News has learned.

Through shipping records, Fox News has confirmed that the Libyan-flagged vessel Al Entisar, which means "The Victory," was received in the Turkish port of Iskenderun -- 35 miles from the Syrian border -- on Sept. 6, just five days before Ambassador Chris Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith and former Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed during an extended assault by more than 100 Islamist militants.

On the night of Sept. 11, in what would become his last known public meeting, Stevens met with the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin, and escorted him out of the consulate front gate one hour before the assault began at approximately 9:35 p.m. local time.

Although what was discussed at the meeting is not public, a source told Fox News that Stevens was in Benghazi to negotiate a weapons transfer, an effort to get SA-7 missiles out of the hands of Libya-based extremists. And although the negotiation said to have taken place may have had nothing to do with the attack on the consulate later that night or the Libyan mystery ship, it could explain why Stevens was travelling in such a volatile region on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

When asked to comment, a State Department spokeswoman dismissed the idea, saying Stevens was there for diplomatic meetings, and to attend the opening of a cultural center.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/25/was-syrian-weapons-shipment-factor-in-ambassadors-benghazi-visit/#ixzz2AQvEi4gF

This is an amazing phone call from a retired Lt. Col. and Special Operations Planner for 15 years who knows the inside baseball of what goes on in the White House. He told Rush that protocol dictates that as soon as the situation room got the email about the Benghazi attack, someone marched up to the president and informed him of the attack. He says it’s a bald faced lie if they say otherwise.

He also says that it was the president who gave the order at his 5pm meeting that day to not respond to the Libya attack in progress.

He explains it all below and I’m calling this is a MUST WATCH:

From Megyn Kelly’s “America Live” today, Charlie Woods, who lost his son in the attack on the Benghazi consulate, reacts to the latest news that CIA command refused to send help. Speaking very calmly, Woods said his son deserves the same moral courage from the country’s leaders that he displayed in giving his life to save his fellow Americans:

    “This is not about politics … if it were about politics, it would dishonor my son’s death. It’s about honor, integrity and justice,” he said.

    “This news that he disobeyed his orders does not surprise me. My son was an American hero, and he had the moral strength to do what was right … even if it would have professionally cost him his job, even if it would have cost him his life.”

    Woods went on to say that while he forgives those who gave the orders that indirectly led to his son’s death, he wishes they would take a lesson from the young former SEAL’s courage.

The interview speaks for itself, so I’ll let it. I honor Tyrone Woods’ sacrifice, and after hearing his

Breaking news on Benghazi: the CIA spokesman, presumably at the direction of CIA director David Petraeus, has put out this statement: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. ”

“President Obama was directly asked twice whether pleas for help on the ground in Libya were denied during the attack. Both times, he repeated his standard call for a thorough investigation,” 9News reports.

Here is Obama’s full response to the question:

    “Well, we are finding out exactly what happened. I can tell you, as I’ve said over the last couple of months since this happened, the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to. Number two, we’re going to investigate exactly what happened so that it doesn’t happen again. Number three, find out who did this so we can bring them to justice. And I guarantee you that everyone in the state department, our military, the CIA, you name it, had number one priority making sure that people were safe. These were our folks and we’re going to find out exactly what happened, but what we’re also going to do it make sure that we are identifying those who carried out these terrible attacks.”

Watch Obama’s interview with 9News here:

The President was also asked about the loss of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars in the failure of Abound Solar, a Fort Collins company connected to one of the President's billionaire fundraisers.

"These loans that are given out by the Department of Energy for clean energy have created jobs all across the country," President Obama said. "Some of them have failed but the vast majority of them are pushing us forward into a clean energy direction."

"These are decisions, by the way, that are made by the Department of Energy, they have nothing to do with politics," President Obama said.

President Obama was asked, in light of his calls for increased civility in politics, why he recently called Governor Mitt Romney a "bullsh-----" in an interview appearing in Rolling Stone magazine.

"This was a conversation after an interview in a casual conversation with a reporter," President Obama said. "A major issue in any election is can you count on the person that you're putting into the Oval Office?"

Excerpts of the full interview appear below:

Jake Tapper

By Jake Tapper
@jaketapper
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Oct 26, 2012 6:31pm
President Obama Begs Off Answering Whether Americans in Benghazi Were Denied Requests for Help
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In an interview with a Denver TV reporter Friday, President Obama twice refused to answer questions as to whether the Americans under siege in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012, were denied requests for help, saying he’s waiting for the results of investigations before making any conclusions about what went wrong.

After being asked about possible denials of requests for aid, and whether it’s fair to tell Americans that what happened is under investigation and won’t be released until after the election, the president said, “the election has nothing to do with four brave Americans getting killed and us wanting to find out exactly what happened. These are folks who served under me who I had sent to some very dangerous places. Nobody wants to find out more what happened than I do.”

President Obama told KUSA-TV’s Kyle Clarke large that “we want to make sure we get it right, particularly because I have made a commitment to the families impacted as well as to the American people, we’re going to bring those folks to justice. So, we’re going to gather all the facts, find out exactly what happened, and make sure that it doesn’t happen again but we’re also going to make sure that we bring to justice those who carried out these attacks.”

Clark pressed again.

“Were they denied requests for help during the attack?” he asked.

“Well, we are finding out exactly what happened,” the president again said. “I can tell you, as I’ve said over the last couple of months since this happened, the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to. Number two, we’re going to investigate exactly what happened so that it doesn’t happen again. Number three, find out who did this so we can bring them to justice. And I guarantee you that everyone i

apples, you have done a great job setting down all of the benghazi events into a single thread.

How much more information did they need?

* * * * *

Then there’s this bombshell at BlackFive (http://www.blackfive.net/main/2012/10/bigger-than-watergate-proof-that-the-president-is-lying-about-benghazi.html) from a former Delta operator:

    Having spent a good bit of time nursing a GLD (ground Laser Designator) in several garden spots around the world, something from the report jumped out at me.

    One of the former SEALs was actively painting the target. That means that Specter WAS ON STATION! Probably an AC130U. A ground laser designator is not a briefing pointer laser. You do not “paint” a target until the weapons system/designator is synched; which means that the AC130 was on station.

    Only two places could have called off the attack at that point; the WH situation command (based on POTUS direction) or AFRICOM commander based on information directly from the target area.

    If the AC130 never left Sigonella (as Penetta says) that means that the Predator that was filming the whole thing was armed.

    If that SEAL was actively “painting” a target; something was on station to engage! And the decision to stand down goes directly to POTUS!

This is HUGE.
It should be obvious by now that someone is not telling the truth.

The new claims come as Republican senators demanded that the Obama administration make public the surveillance video taken during and just after the attacks.

Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire wrote to the defense secretary, CIA director and attorney general demanding that the video from Sept. 11 and 12 be declassified. Pentagon and CIA officials declined to comment on the senators' request. Justice Department officials did not respond to requests for comment.

U.S. intelligence officials this week turned over intelligence reports to Congress showing what officials at the CIA and other agencies knew and when. U.S. officials who have reviewed the material say it shows confusion during and in the days following the attack. Members of Congress have complained that the White House and the intelligence community stuck to the analysis that an angry mob started the attack long after it had become more clear that it was an organized militant operation.

We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video,” said Hillary Clinton. No, not the person who made the video saying that voting for Barack Obama is like losing your virginity to a really cool guy. I’ll get to that in a moment. But Secretary Clinton was talking about the fellow who made the supposedly Islamophobic video that supposedly set off the sacking of the Benghazi consulate. And, indeed, she did “have that person arrested.” By happy coincidence, his bail hearing has been set for three days after the election, by which time he will have served his purpose. These two videos — the Islamophobic one and the Obamosexual one — bookend the remarkable but wholly deserved collapse of the president’s reelection campaign.

You’ll recall that a near-month-long attempt to blame an obscure YouTube video for the murder of four Americans and the destruction of U.S. sovereign territory climaxed in the vice-presidential debate with Joe Biden’s bald assertion that the administration had been going on the best intelligence it had at the time. By then, it had been confirmed that there never had been any protest against the video, and that the Obama line that Benghazi had been a spontaneous movie review that just got a little out of hand was utterly false. The only remaining question was whether the administration had knowingly lied or was merely innocently stupid. The innocent-stupidity line became harder to maintain this week after Fox News obtained State Department e-mails revealing that shortly after 4 p.m. Eastern, less than a half hour after the assault in Benghazi began, the White House situation room knew the exact nature of it.

We also learned that, in those first moments of the attack, a request for military back-up was made by U.S. staff on the ground but was denied by Washington. It had planes and special forces less than 500 miles away in southern Italy — or about the same distance as Washington to Boston. They could have been there in less than two hours. Yet the commander-in-chief declined to give the order. So Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods fought all night against overwhelming odds, and died on a rooftop in a benighted jihadist hellhole while Obama retired early to rest up before his big Vegas campaign stop. “Within minutes of the first bullet being fired the White House knew these heroes would be slaughtered if immediate air support was denied,” said Ty Woods’s father, Charles. “In less than an hour, the perimeters could have been secured and American lives could have been saved. After seven hours fighting numerically superior forces, my son’s life was sacrificed because of the White House’s decision.”

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Why would Obama and Biden do such a thing? Because to launch a military operation against an al-Qaeda affiliate on the anniversary of 9/11 would have exposed the hollowness of their boast through convention week and the days thereafter — that Osama was dead and al-Qaeda was finished. And so Ty Woods, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith, and Chris Stevens were left to die, and a decision taken to blame an entirely irrelevant video and, as Secretary Clinton threatened, “have that person arrested.” And, in the weeks that followed, the government of the United States lied to its own citizens as thoroughly and energetically as any totalitarian state, complete with the midnight knock on the door from not-so-secret policemen sent to haul the designated fall-guy into custody.

This goes far beyond the instinctive secretiveness to which even democratic governments are prone. The Obama administration created a wholly fictional story line, and devoted its full resources to maintaining it. I understand why Mitt Romney chose not to pursue this line of argument in the final debate. The voters who will determine this election are those who voted for Obama four years ago and this time round either switch to the other fellow or sit on their hands. In electoral terms, it’s probably prudent of Mitt not to rub their faces in their 2008 votes. Nevertheless, when the president and other prominent officials stand by as four Americans die and then abuse their sacrifice as contemptuously as this administration did, decency requires that they be voted out of office as an act of urgent political hygiene.

At the photo-op staged for the returning caskets, Obama et al. seem to have been too focused on their campaign needs to observe even the minimal courtesies. Charles Woods says that at the ceremony Joe Biden strolled over to him and by way of condolence said in a “loud and boisterous” voice, “Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?” One assumes charitably that the vice president is acknowledging in his own inept and blundering way the remarkable courage of a man called upon to die for his country on some worthless sod halfway across the planet. But the near-parodic locker-room coarseness is grotesque both in its inaptness and in its lack of basic human

Obama Fiddled While Benghazi Burned–
Earlier today Barack Obama told Denver’s WUSA TV this in regard to the Benghazi 9-11 terror attack,

    “I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to. Number two, we’re going to investigate exactly what happened to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Number three, find out who did this so we can bring them to justice.”

Tonight however, Bing West, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, told Greta Van Susteren,

    “If that actually happened the way President Obama said it happened, there’s a paper trail and I think people reasonably enough can say, “Can we see the order?” because hundreds of others supposedly saw this order.

Obama just got caught. He lied about his securing our personnel in Benghazi. And now the world will know about it.
There was no order to protect our men on the ground.

Saturday, October 27 at 1 p.m. ET

Sunday, October 28 at 3 p.m, and 10 p.m. ET

Hosted by Bret Baier

On Sept. 11, 2012, terrorists overran the United States consulate in Benghazi, Libya and murdered our ambassador along with three other Americans.

Now, more than six weeks after the attack, some of the most important questions remain unanswered:

Who did this and why?

Could the attack have been prevented or repelled after it began?

What did the White House know and when?

And, as we enter the final stretch of the race for the White House, which side is closer to the truth: Those who argue this terrible tragedy was largely unforeseeable or those who say we're seeing President Obama's foreign policy unraveling right on our TV screens?

Fox News has been on this story from the very beginning. Tune in this weekend, Bret Baier reveals explosive new details that you haven't heard.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-reporting/transcript/special-report-investigates-benghazi-new-revelations#ixzz2AWaf6PMM

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — It began around nightfall on Sept. 11 with around 150 bearded gunmen, some wearing the Afghan-style tunics favored by Islamic militants, sealing off the streets leading to the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. They set up roadblocks with pick-up trucks mounted with heavy machine guns, according to witnesses.

The trucks bore the logo of Ansar al-Shariah, a powerful local group of Islamist militants who worked with the municipal government to manage security in Benghazi, the main city in eastern Libya and birthplace of the uprising last year that ousted Moammar Gadhafi after a 42-year dictatorship.

There was no sign of a spontaneous protest against an American-made movie denigrating Islam's Prophet Muhammad. But a lawyer passing by the scene said he saw the militants gathering around 20 youths from nearby to chant against the film. Within an hour or so, the assault began, guns blazing as the militants blasted into the compound.

Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/news/politics/article/Libyan-witnesses-recount-organized-Benghazi-attack-3987075.php#ixzz2AXnHHbqr

The White House on Saturday flatly denied that President Barack Obama withheld requests for help from the besieged American compound in Benghazi, Libya, as it came under on attack by suspected terrorists on September 11th.

"Neither the president nor anyone in the White House denied any requests for assistance in Benghazi," National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told Yahoo News by email.

Fox News Channel reported Friday that American officials in the compound repeatedly asked for military help during the assault but were rebuffed by CIA higher-ups. At a press briefing one day earlier, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, asked why there had not been a quicker, more forceful response to the assault, complained of "Monday-morning quarterbacking." Panetta said he and top military commanders had judged it too dangerous to send troops to the eastern Libyan city without a clearer picture of events on the ground.

The "basic principle is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on; without having some real-time information about what's taking place," he said during a joint question-and-answer session with Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff General Martin Dempsey.

"As a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, General Ham, General Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation," Panetta said. General Carter Ham commands the U.S. Africa Command.

And the CIA has denied that anyone in its chain of command rejected requests for help from the besieged Americans.

Obama did not deny requests for help in Benghazi: Aide

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-did-not-deny-requests-help-benghazi-aide-182415488--election.html

The latest rumor making the rounds is that Barack Obama replaced General Carter Ham at Africom after the general made a move to help the US security officials at the Benghazi consulate and annex. Ham was replaced by Gen. David Rodriquez on October 18.
Tiger Droppings reported:

    The information I heard today was that General [Carter] Ham as head of Africom received the same e-mails the White House received requesting help/support as the attack was taking place. General Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had a unit ready.

    General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow. Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.

    The story continues that now General Rodiguez would take General Ham’s place as the head of Africom.

Sure enough Obama nominated Gen. David Rodriguez to replace Gen. Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command.
The Stars and Stripes reported:

    President Barack Obama will nominate Army Gen. David Rodriguez to succeed Gen. Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command and Marine Lt. Gen. John Paxton to succeed Gen. Joseph Dunford as assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced Thursday.

    Both appointments must be confirmed by the Senate.

    Rodriguez is the commander of U.S. Army Forces Command and has served in a “variety of key leadership roles on the battlefield,” Panetta said.

    He’s “a proven leader” who oversaw coalition and Afghan forces during the surge in Afghanistan, and “was the key architect of the successful campaign plan that we are now implementing,” Panetta said.

    In announcing Ham’s successor, Panetta also praised the work Ham has done with Africa Command.

    “Gen. Ham has really brought AFRICOM into a very pivotal role in that challenging region,” Panetta said. “I and the nation are deeply grateful for his outstanding service.”

Hat Tip Tom

More…
The Obama Administration also relieved the admiral in command of an aircraft carrier strike group in the Middle East, Rear Adm. Charles M. Gaouette. It is highly unusual for the Navy to replace a carrier strike group commander during its deployment.
The Stars and Stripes reported:

    The Navy said Saturday it is replacing the admiral in command of an aircraft carrier strike group in the Middle East, pending the outcome of an internal investigation into undisclosed allegations of inappropriate judgment.

    Rear Adm. Charles M. Gaouette is being sent back to the USS John C. Stennis’ home port at Bremerton, Wash., in what the Navy called a temporary reassignment. The

great job putting it on one thread

"What my attitude on this is is if we find out there was a big breakdown and somebody didn’t do their job, they’ll be held accountable," he said in an interview with "Morning Joe

He is responsible? That's a laugh. What was he doing during the 7 hour fight in Libya? Was he even notified or did he outsource it like he does everything else? Who made the decision to do nothing? We know he lied on the 12th and flew off to Vegas. Looked solemn at the photo op with the coffins but when the cameras went down reverted back to cant be bothered routine. He continued to perpetuate the lie with the media's assistance and now it's unraveling. He is a selfish, cold, hard politician who puts his political survival ahead of everything else. He lied to protect his bumper sticker. He blamed this tragedy on am American citizen who sits in jail on a simple parole violation after being outed by the United States govt. as the man who caused the death of 4 Americans. The president knew this to be untrue but repeated it to the world for 2 weeks putting this man's life at risk. This should put fear in every citizen, that the govt. could abuse it's power in that way. If Obama is re elected look for hearings where more damaging information is found. Obama could and should be impeached. ...


They Drag a United States Ambassadors lifeless body down the pavement.three other americans that were seal or military BEG THE WHITE HOUSE LEADERSHIP FOR HELP.Who really believes that the president was not made aware of this attack minutes after the Navy Seal or other now dead American Begged them for help? WHO? Answer No one, because they need to cover there asses.The response Teams were ORDERED NOT to HELP or Stand down.ALL THESE MEN WANTED TO GET OVER THERE AND HELP THEM.
What's wrong with people these days? If This were BUSH they media WOULD CRUCIFY HIM, Hell maybe in real time.I tell you the men in this country need to stand up Now.If this guy gets in there again maybe we deserve Sharia law lifestyle...

This is the first article on Benghazi in POLITICO in the past 3 days, and all Jennifer does is to parrot Obama's lame excuses. If this were a Republican President, 50% of POLITICO's articles would have been on the new revelations that the White House situation room was aware this was an organized terrorist attack on the ground in real time, that requests for relief were denied 3 times, that the Administration lied or obscured the real events for weeks, that Hillary told the father of one of the slain that the Administration would arrest and prosecute the movie maker (who was only exercising freedom of speech) but said nary a word about finding and killing the terrorists. They took 3 weeks to just send in FBI agents while CNN reporters and others were wandering around the destroyed consulate and safe house picking up evidence like the ambassador's private journal. A NY Times reporter interviewed one of the leaders of the attack who was sipping on a strawberry frappe at a local restaurant. And was the Ambassador in Benghazi to secretly meet with a Turkish diplomat to continue an IRAN-CONTRA type exchange of Libyan arms for Syrian rebels? Jennifer - if you ever want to be a journalist, you won't get there just creating a smokescreen for your favorite Liberal politician.''

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer said tonight that his sources tell him that Obama was one of the people in the room watching the Benghazi attack go down and both he and Col. David Hunt agree it would have taken an order by the president to intervene. Further, Col. Hunt said that we were only 20 min away by jet and a couple of hours away by AC-130 gunships and special forces, and the decision not to intervene had to be political.

Watch:

Central Intelligence Agency director David Petraeus has emphatically denied that he or anyone else at the CIA refused assistance to the former Navy SEALs who requested it three times as terrorists attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on the night of Sep. 11. The Weekly Standard and ABC News report that Petraeus's denial effectively implicates President Barack Obama, since a refusal to assist "would have been a presidential decision."

Earlier today, Denver local reporter Kyle Clarke of KUSA-TV did what the national media largely refuses to do, asking Obama directly whether the Americans in Benghazi were denied requests for aid. Obama dodged the question, but implied that he had known about the attacks as they were "happening."

Emails released earlier this week indicated that the White House had been informed almost immediately that a terror group had taken responsibility for the attack in Benghazi, and Fox News reported this morning that the two former Navy SEALs, Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, had been refused in requests for assistance they had made from the CIA annex.

Jake Tapper quoted Petraeus this afternoon denying that the CIA was responsible for the refusal: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate."

As William Kristol of the Weekly Standard notes, that leaves only President Obama himself to blame:

    So who in the government did tell “anybody” not to help those in need? Someone decided not to send in military assets to help those Agency operators. Would the secretary of defense make such a decision on his own? No.

    It would have been a presidential decision. There was presumably a rationale for such a decision. What was it? When and why—and based on whose counsel obtained in what meetings or conversations—did President Obama decide against sending in military assets to help the Americans in need?

The mainstream media's silence on the Benghazi disaster reached deafening levels on Sunday, as hosts of four out of the five major news shows--with the exception of Fox News Sunday--failed to raise the issue. Only Bob Schieffer of CBS gave it serious consideration, and only after it was raised by Sen. John McCain.

When the Benghazi issue did surface, other than on Fox, it was invariably brought up by Republican guests, and then deflected by the hosts, who largely ignored new stories this week that implicated the White House in the decision not to intervene to save the life of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and other American staff.

Here is how the Sunday shows covered the issue:

NBC: Meet the Press with David Gregory

The Benghazi issue was not raised at all, save by panelist Carly Fiorina, who was interrupted by Gregory. He promised, "We'll get to that a little bit later," but did not return to the issue before the show's end. (The show was interrupted in some markets, in the final minute, with breaking news about Hurricane Sandy.)

ABC: This Week with George Stephanopoulos

The Benghazi issue was raised by Newt Gingrich, in response to a question about the Romney campaign's prospects in Ohio. Stephanopoulos failed to ask a follow-up and steered the conversation back to polls.

CNN: State of the Union with Candy Crowley

The Benghazi issue was raised twice, once by Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus in response to a question about U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's views on abortion, and once by Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell in response to a question about whether Romney would win the state in November. Crowley did not raise the issue independently in a show largely focused on polls and voting.

CBS: Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer

The Benghazi issue was raised in an exchange between Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama's former chief of staff. After McCain brought up the issue, Schieffer asked a follow-up question about whether the administration had engaged in a "deliberate cover-up." McCain said it had either been a cover-up or "the worst kind of incompetence." Schieffer responded with another question about whether drones had produced images of the attacks. Emanuel responded with the Obama campaign's standard talking points, and Schieffer followed up with a question about what he would have done in the White House. Emanuel ducked the question, instead praising Obama's foreign policy record in general.

FOX: Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace

The Benghazi issue was first raised by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) in describing issues of concern to Wisconsin voters. Wallace replied that he had planned to address the issue later, which he did, addressing questions to Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) about recent revelations. Warner responded by expressing sympathy with the families of the dead and wounded and promised: "We're going to get to the bottom of this. The intelligence is going to hold

Chicago Mayor and former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel defended President Obama's handling of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya on Sunday.

Emanuel, appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” said that Obama "took control and he said exactly what needs to be done" following the Sept. 11 attack, which claimed the lives of four Americans.

Earlier on the program, Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) McCain charged that the Obama administration's handling of the situation amounted to either a "massive cover-up" or incompetence, but Emanuel insisted the conflicting reports following the assault were simply the result of shifting intelligence.

"You have an event, a changing event, you don't have people on the ground, in a sense, with that information. The intelligence community, many different

President Obama and his administration deception continues of who knew what, who denied security requests and military intervention, and ignoring vile warnings that resulted in the tragedy in Benghazi, Libya where U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others, including former Navy Seals, died at the hands of Islamic terrorists.

After a report came out three days ago that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had asked for more security in Benghazi and President Obama said no, research conducted by the Paulding County Republican Examiner revealed that warnings were present and written about but was largely ignored or unheeded.

While the mainstream media, with the exception of Fox News and conservative third party reporters, have largely ignored or pushed aside reports of the Obama administration's involvement in Benghazi; warnings, predictions and the dangers for the CIA were found by the Paulding County Republican Examiner by former CIA officer and counter-intelligence expert and author of “Willing Accomplices”, Kent Clizbe, who as early as last year told NewsMax that the Obama administration is “incompetent at best and subversive at worst,” in dealing with the Middle East and North Africa [Libya].

Clizbe said, “The Muslim Brotherhood is using U.S. aid to bolster itself, just as the Bolsheviks did in the Russian revolution. The Obama administration is falling right into that trap.”

Clizbe presented warnings on his website this past summer that revealed dire warnings that actions by the Obama administration would spell disaster but was largely overlooked.

Clizbe pointed out, ”Obama and his clique love covert operations. They've demonstrated that in the Global War on Terror (or “overseas contingency operations building bridges to Islamic extremists”). Instead of actually pursuing the war in Afghanistan with the tools in place—soldiers and Marines—they prefer Predator strikes in the hinterlands of Pakistan. The number of these covert action killings has soared from 2009 to 2011—with estimates of 5 dead in 2009 under Bush growing to several hundred dead in 2010 under Obama.”

Clizbe stated, “No exit strategy?” Remember the progressive geniuses who constantly chided the

CATHERINE HERRIDGE TELLS HUCKABEE AMB STEPHENS WAS IN #BENGHAZI TO FACILITATE MOVEMENT OF ARMS FRM LIBYA TO SYRIA!! SHE HAS DOCUMENTS!!

There were many security cameras at the Benghazi US Consulate.  One camera was positioned to (and did) record Ambassador Stevens, on September 11, saying good night at 8:40pm Libya time to a Turkish Diplomat.

The video from this camera – I am told – shows (and proves) there was NO PROTEST outside our Consulate.  The Obama Administration had that tape immediately and they knew what it showed and knew it immediately.  Anyone who watched the video observed the obvious.

Don’t you think the Obama Administration should release that video so that the American people can see for themselves what REALLY happened and not what the Obama Administration tried to feed them in the weeks after the terrorist attack?   They won’t release the tape – in fact, they are hiding the video tape from you by classifying it so that it remains out of our reach.  Frankly, that is the oldest trick in the book – classify it.  They don’t want you to see the tape and they don’t want you to know what THEY KNEW RIGHT AWAY.

The Obama Administration doesn’t even have to release the entire tape (although they should) — I just want to see the few minutes before our Ambassador and the Turkish Diplomat walked out of the Consulate….and a few minutes after the Turkish Diplomat leaves and the Ambassador returns insides.

If the Obama Administration won’t release the video — how about still frames from the video?  How could they deny the American people at least that now?

Releasing the video (or stills from the video) now would in no way jeopardize the Obama Administration’s internal investigation.  The video is what the video is.  If someone appears in the who might have reason not to have his identity disclosed (security), his of her face can be blurred.  That is simple.

Appearing on Sunday's edition of Fox & Friends, Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) blasted President Barack Obama and his administration for playing politics with the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, dead.

Complaining about the lack of candor emanating from the Obama White House, Kelly said, "I am appalled by the dereliction of duty that’s taken place by this administration. We’ve got to get to the bottom of this and we’ve got to get it fixed.” Kelly, a first-term congressman, serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Rep. Kelly claims that in a May 3, 2012, email, the State Department denied a request by a group of Special Forces assigned to protect the U.S. embassy in Libya to continue their use of a DC- 3 airplane for security operations throughout the country.

The subject line of the email, on which slain Ambassador Chris Stevens was copied, read: “Termination of Tripoli DC-3 Support.”

"Four days later, on May 7, the State Department authorized the U.S. embassy in Vienna to purchase a $108,000 electric vehicle charging station for the embassy motor pool’s new Chevrolet Volts. The purchase was a part of the State Department’s Energy Efficiency Sweep of Europe initiative, which included hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on green program expenditures at various U.S. Embassies," Kelly stated.

While the embassy in Vienna was going green, the consulate in Benghazi was getting bombed, and little was done to stop it, according to Kelly.

According to Rep. Issa, the Oversight Committee will expand the focus of the investigation of the attack -- that left four men dead, including Amb. Chris Stevens -- to include officials in the Obama White House, as well as the Hillary Clinton-led U.S. State Department.

Following the testimony of State Department staffers about the lack of diplomatic security at the Benghazi consulate, Issa sent President Obama an official letter demanding to know why the administration reduced U.S. security in Libya while the country was still emerging from a civil war. The State Department contracted a small security firm to provide untrained and ill-prepared

On Sunday's political talk shows, several Republicans criticized the Obama administration's response to the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. Here's Senator John McCain of Arizona on CBS's Face the Nation:

    You know, this administration is very good at touting and giving all the details like when they got Bin Laden. But now, we know that there were tapes, recordings inside the consulate during this fight, and they've gotten—they came—the F.B.I. finally got in and took those, and now they're classified as "top secret." Why would they be top secret? So the president went on various shows, despite what he said he said in the Rose Garden, about terrorist acts, he went on several programs, including "The View" including "Letterman" including before the U.N., where he continued to refer, days later, many days later, to this as a spontaneous demonstration because of a hateful video. We know that is patently false. What did the president know? When did he know it? And what did he do about it?

McCain said for "literally days and days" the White House "told the American people something that had no basis in fact whatsoever."

Newt Gingrich, on ABC's This Week:

Last night on Geraldo at LargeCharles Woods, the father of murdered Benghazi SEAL Tyrone Woods, sent this message to Barack Obama:
“It’s better to die a hero than live a coward.”
Well said.

Yesterday, former National Security Adviser Bud McFarlane added this on Obama’s non-response to the Benghazi 9-11 terrorist attack:

    “To have known what he had available, to have known that Americans were under fire, and to have done nothing, is dereliction of duty that I have never seen in a Commander in Chief from a president of any party. Outrageous.”

The men on the ground called for help – Obama did nothing.
It Was Dereliction of Duty

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Former National Security Adviser Bud McFarlane told FOX News today:

    “You don’t just passively allow Americans to remain under attack for eight hours at a time when you have forces within range and do nothing. The Secretary of Defense was in the White House at five o’clock within an hour of when the attacks started. He could have told him, “Yes. We have special operations peope and F18 aircraft that could be deployed right away. To have known what he had available, to have known that Americans were under fire, and to have done nothing, is dereliction of duty that I have never seen in a Commander in Chief from a president of any party. Outrageous.”

More… This comes from reader Tom.

    Yesterday, a California radio show called The Dark Secret Place, hosted by Bryan Suits–a combat veteran of Desert Storm, Kosovo, and Iraq–interviewed a former member of the Combatant Commanders In-Extremis Force (CIF), which was in Italy. These are the “firefighters” of the U.S. military, who are always on call. Their gear and weaponry are always packed, and they’re used for precisely what happened in Benghazi. They could’ve been in Benghazi very quickly.

    This veteran says Panetta is lying about deciding that it was too risky to send in troops because they didn’t have enough information. The CIF is always sent in,

(Reuters) - A Libyan Salafi group which has denied it was involved in a deadly assault on the American consulate in Benghazi said on Tuesday Libya would turn into "an inferno for U.S. troops" if the U.S. military retaliated.

Yousef Jehani, a senior member of Ansar al-Sharia, told Reuters that the armed group, which espouses an austere form of Islam, wanted to avoid confrontation but was ready for a showdown if Washington acted "foolishly".

Any U.S. military intervention could push Libyans to wage a holy war, or "jihad", to defend their nation, said Jehani, whose group is a powerful force in Benghazi, a stronghold for Islamists and cradle of the revolution which toppled Muammar Gaddafi last year.

"If one U.S. soldier arrives, not for the purpose of defending the embassy, but to repeat what happened in Iraq or Afghanistan, be sure that all battalions in Libya and all Libyans will put aside all their differences and rally behind one goal of hitting America and Americans," Jehani said.

The consulate attack was part of wider anti-American protests that erupted across the Middle East over an obscure, amateurish U.S.-made video that insulted the Prophet Mohammad.

Libya closed its air space over Benghazi airport temporarily due to heavy anti-aircraft fire by Islamists aiming at U.S. reconnaissance drones flying over the city, days after the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans died in the attack.

The closure of the airport prompted speculation that the United States was deploying special forces in preparation for an attack against the assailants of the consulate. Two U.S. warships headed for the coast off Libya.

DRONES OVER BENGHAZI

A Libyan official said the spy planes flew over the embassy compound and the city, where Ansar al-Sharia controls a major security compound and a hospital, taking photos and inspecting locations of radical militant groups suspected of planning and staging the attack on the U.S.

Clare Lopez: You mean as far as the Administrations characterization of the attack?

 

GA: Yes, I uploaded a video less than 24 hours after the attack on YouTube, thank God YouTube has dates, I uploaded a video saying that Al-Qaeda was behind this.

 

CL: Yes, I wrote an article that night as a matter of fact, which ran the very next day on September the 12th on RadicalIslam.org. I was up late the night of 9/11 writing that article, so it was obvious to me too.

 

GA: I have heard from 3 people and tell me if you are aware of this as well, that The White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and our military monitored the battle in real time starting with the first phone calls directly from Benghazi.

 

CL: Yes.

 

GA: When the CIA annex requested permission to go to the aid of the consulate they were told two times to “stand down”.

 

CL: Correct.

 

GA: Two SEALs went in against orders…

 

CL: Former SEALs, former SEALs that were on contract to the CIA.

 

GA: Correct, former SEALs, they went anyway, against orders and died about 4 hours later.

 

CL: They died at the annex building after they saved everyone that was still alive at the first compound; they went back with all of them to the annex building, it was there that the attack continued; it never stopped. They were fired upon during the entire ride running the gauntlet through the streets back to the annex and the attack then continued at the annex and that’s where they were eventually killed.

 

GA: Right, so they arrived back at the annex at about midnight which would have been about three hours after the initial attack began.

 

CL: Yes.

 

GA: Okay, that’s important because of some other things that have come out. At that point they again called for military support and help and a third time were denied.

 

CL: Yeah.

 

GA: Regardless that they were taking fire at the CIA safe house or annex, that request was denied. There were no communication problems at the annex according to those that were present on the ground.

 

CL: That’s right.

 

GA: The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters and in fact at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun while mortars were being fired on them and the CIA compound.

 

CL: Yes, Woods was up there. Tyrone Woods, he was the one on the roof.

 

GA: Now Tyrone Woods father has come out and is saying that his son had taken a position with a laser to guide in what would have been planes, drones or missile support. So he was there honed in on a target waiting for back up that never arrived?

 

CL: Yeah.

 

GA: The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than 4 hours and now here’s the point, the Sigonella Naval Air base in Italy is only 480 miles away…

 

CL: Yeah, they could have gotten there in time.

 

GA: Okay, so by f-18 it’s under an hour but even with a C-130 carrying commandos it’s 2 hours away.

 

CL: I’d say even less maybe, but yeah. I was thinking a Spectre AC-130 gunship.

 

GA: Yes, the AC-130 gunship that has the Gatling gun in the side, it’s like a tornado…

 

CL: Yeah, it’s unbelievably lethal, devastating power and accuracy, I mean pinpoint accuracy, the technology is amazing.

 

GA: I read yesterday that two Tier One Special Operations groups were at Sigonella including Delta Force which happened to be training in Europe.

 

CL: Yes, I read that too.

 

GA: More information has come out that no less than two drones were overhead during the attack and one of those drones was actually ordered in from Tripoli and sending back images in real time.

 

CL: Yes, my understanding is that the one was replaced by the other, maybe it ran out of fuel and the second one came in and took its place.

 

GA: Okay, so this battle was sent on video directly to the ‘Situation Room’ at the White House, would that not be a proper assumption?

 

CL: Yes, yes it was.

 

GA: Just the other day, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said,
There was no “real-time information” to be able to act on, “and you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on. We felt we could not put forces at risk in that situation”.
Isn’t that what the military does?

 

CL: That’s what their supposed to do. And that’s one of the things that the military does, everywhere, everywhere around the world, whether they be land based or on a ship, whatever it may be, they practice over and over again repeatedly the rescue of civilians and the rescue of embassy personnel in each area wherever it is that they’re posted. They have drills, they have plans, they have practice situations, and they have

Two days after the deadly Libya terror attack, representatives of the FBI and National Counterterrorism Center gave Capitol Hill briefings in which they said the evidence supported an Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda-affiliated attack, Fox News has learned.

The description of the attack by those in the Sept. 13 briefings stands in stark contrast to the now controversial briefing on Capitol Hill by CIA Director David Petraeus the following day -- and raises even more questions about why Petraeus described the attack as tied to a demonstration.

The Sept. 13 assessment was based on intercepts that included individuals, believed to have participated in the attack, who were celebratory -- as well as a claim of responsibility.

FBI and NCTC also briefed that there were a series of Al Qaeda training camps just outside of Benghazi, where the attack occurred and resulted in the deaths of four Americans. The area was described as a hotbed for the militant Ansar al-Sharia as well as Al Qaeda in North Africa.

Fox News is told there was no mention of a demonstration or any significant emphasis on the anti-Islam video that for days was cited by administration officials as a motivating factor.

Fox News is told that the Petraeus briefing on Sept. 14 conflicted with that of the FBI and NCTC.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/29/early-briefing-on-libya-strike-focused-on-al-qaeda-before-story-changed/#ixzz2Ajklm0Oi

By JAMES ROSEN

'I do not think," Nixon campaign aide Jeb Magruder told the Senate Watergate committee in the spring of 1973, "there was ever any discussion that there would not be a coverup." Mr. Magruder's lament aptly described the bureaucratic impulse to hide inconvenient facts that seizes every modern White House at some point. His testimony was brought to mind by the growing number of high-profile Republicans accusing the Obama White House of engaging in a coverup in the Benghazi case.

Much remains unknown about the terrorist attacks that killed U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans on Sept. 11. To fill in those gaps, three separate probes—by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department's Accountability Review Board, and various congressional committees—are now under way. But in our warp-speed information age, enough evidence has already accrued to the record to lead even dispassionate observers to ponder whether the term "coverup" applies.

William Safire, the late New York Times columnist—and one of the few senior Nixon aides to escape Watergate unsullied—once defined coverup broadly to include "any plan to avoid detection of wrongdoing . . . an act to conceal a mistake."

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Reuters

The U.S. Consulate in Benghazi after being attacked on September 11.

Today, the issue is not so much the withholding of information as the denial of the obvious: The stubborn insistence by top Obama administration officials on an interpretation of events starkly at odds with the plainly correct conclusion of terrorism. When White House Press Secretary Jay Carney finally acknowledged that the terrorism conclusion was "self-evident" after he had spent the previous eight days pressing a wholly different account of events, Mr. Carney's admission carried strong echoes of Nixon-era Press Secretary Ron Ziegler declaring that his earlier Watergate statements were "inoperative."

Any coverup is attended by competing timelines: the acts of transgression, and the subsequent efforts to conceal or mislead or delay knowledge regarding those events. A famous theme of the Watergate hearings was the quest of investigators into the coverup to find out, as the saying became, what did they know and when did they know it?

The Benghazi episode is best viewed as a series of three timelines. When fully exposed, the facts of the "pre" period before the attacks will tell us how high up the chain, and in which agencies, fateful decisions were made about security precautions for the consulate and annex in Benghazi. We also stand to learn how the planning for the attacks could have been put in motion without being detected until too late.

Assistant Secretary of State Charlene Lamb, who oversees diplomatic security, testified before the House on Oct. 10 that she and her colleagues had placed "the correct number of assets in Benghazi at the time of 9/11 for what had been agreed upon." While not the stuff of a perjury charge, this testimony cannot be true, given the known outcome of the Sept. 11 attack on the consulate and the pleas for enhanced security measures that we now know Foggy Bottom to have rebuffed.

The second Benghazi timeline encompasses the five or six hours on the evening of Sept. 11 when the attacks transpired. A State Department briefing on Oct. 9 offered an account that was riveting but incomplete. When all of the facts of these hours are compiled, we will have a truer picture of the tactical capabilities of al Qaeda and its affiliates in North Africa. We will also learn what really happened to Amb. Stevens that night, and better appreciate the vulnerabilities with which our diplomatic corps, bravely serving at 275 installations across the globe, must still contend.

The third and final Benghazi timeline is the one that has fostered charges of a coverup. It stretches eight days—from 3:40 p.m. on Sept. 11, when the consulate was first rocked by gunfire and explosions, through the morning of Sept. 19, when Matthew G. Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, publicly testified before the Senate that Benghazi was a terrorist attack.

Mr. Olsen's testimony effectively ended all debate about whether the attacks had grown out of a protest over an anti-Islam video. Three days before Mr. Olsen put a stop to the blame-YouTube storyline, U.N. Amb. Susan Rice, echoing Mr. Carney, had gone on five Sunday TV chat shows and maintained that the YouTube video has spurred the violence.

If the Obama White House has engaged in a coverup in the Benghazi case, the ostensible motivation would bear some similarity to that of all the president's men in Watergate. Mr. Obama faces a rendezvous with the voters on Nov. 6, and in a race much tighter than the Nixon-McGovern contest of 1972. In such a circumstance, certain kinds of disclosure are always unwelcome.

“There appears to be a discrepancy between your directive and the actions taken by the Department of Defense," said in his letter to Obama. "As we are painfully aware, despite the fact that the military had resources in the area, the military did not deploy any assets to secure U.S. personnel in Benghazi during the hours the consulate and the annex were under attack. I find it implausible that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Commander of U.S. Africa Command, and the Commander of U.S. European Command would have ignored a direct order from the Commander in Chief.”

McKeon than listed four questions he is demanding that Obama answer:

1) “To whom did you issue this first directive and how was this directive communicated to the military and other agencies--verbally or in writing?“

2) "At any time on September 11, 2012, did you specifically direct the military to move available assets into Libya to ensure the safety of U.S. personnel in Benghazi? If so, which assets did you order to Libya?

3) "At any time on September 11, 2012, other than ISR assets, did you provide the authority for the military to take any and all necessary measures to secure U.S. personnel, including specifically the authority to enter Libyan airspace?

4) "Did you have any communication with the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or any Commanders of regional Combatant Commands regarding military support to U.S. personnel in Benghazi on September 11th? If so could you please describe any recommendations provided to you regarding available military support and any orders you gave them?"

The meeting between Obama, Panetta and Biden had been scheduled before the attack took place, and the Department Defense is not commenting now on whether the three men were aware when they met that day of the ongoing Benghazi attack or whether Obama used that meeting to discuss with his defense secretary what should be done to defend the U.S. personnel in Benghazi.

“Secretary Panetta met with President Obama, as the White House-provided scheduled indicates,” Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale told CNSNews.com on Tuesday. “However, neither the content nor the subject of discussions between the President and his advisors are appropriate for disclosure.”

The fact that the president had been scheduled to meet with Vice President Biden and Defense Secretary Panetta at 5:00 p.m. on Sept. 11 had been publicized on the Washington Daybook--a planning service to which news orgnizations subscribe--and included on the official White House schedule posted online by the White House itself.

The State Department email notifying the White House and Pentagon of the Sept. 11 Benghazi attack was obtained and reported by CBS News.

The terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi began at about 9:40 p.m. Benghazi time—or about 3:40 p.m. Washington, D.C. time. “The attack began at approximately 9:40 p.m. local time,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Charlene Lamb told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in written testimony submitted Oct. 10.

About 25 minutes after the attack started—at 4:05 p.m. Washington, D.C. time—the State Department sent an email that went to multiple recipients, including two at the White House and one at the Pentagon.

The subject line on this email said: “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack.” The text of the email said: “The Regional Security Officer reports the diplomatic mission is under attack. Embassy Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and our COM personnel are in the compound safe haven.” It went on to say: “The Operations Center will provide updates as available.”

In her testimony to the Oversight Committee, Charlene Lamb indicated that not long after the attack started, she was able to monitor it from Washington, D.C., in “almost real time.”

“When the attack began, a Diplomatic Security agent working in the Tactical Operations Center immediately activated the Imminent Danger Notification System and made an emergency announcement over the PA,” Lamb testified. “Based on our security protocols, he also alerted the annex U.S. quick reaction security team stationed nearby, the Libyan 17th February Brigade, Embassy Tripoli, and the Diplomatic Security Command Center in Washington. From that point on, I could follow what was happening in almost real-time.”

According to Lamb, three U.S. agents used an armored car to approach the safe haven at the U.S. consulate to rescue a U.S. security agent on the roof of the facility and also to try to retrieve Amb. Chris Stevens and Sean Smith, an Air Force veteran and State Department communications specialist.

“Despite thick smoke, the agents entered the building multiple times trying to locate the Ambassador and Mr. Smith,” Lamb testified. “After numerous attempts, they found Sean Smith and, with the assistance of members of the U.S. quick reaction team, removed him from the building. Unfortunately, he was already deceased. They still could not find the Ambassador.”

It was not until 11:00 p.m. Benghazi time—or just as Obama’s 5:00 p.m. meeting with Panetta and Biden was starting in Washington, D.C.—that the U.S. security agents in Benghazi decided to abandon the main consulate facility there.

“At 11 p.m. members of the Libyan 17th February Brigade advised they could no longer hold the area around the main building and insisted on evacuating the site,” Lamb testified. “The agents made a final search for the Ambassador before leaving in an armed vehicle.

But the battle was far from over.

“Upon arriving at the annex around midnight, they took up defensive positions, including on the roof,” Lamb testified. “Shortly after their arrival, the annex itself began taking intermittent fire for a period of time.”

The battle continued, with the attackers now using mortars, and it was only in the “early morning” that two more Americans were killed and two more were wounded.

“In the early morning, an additional security team arrived from Tripoli and proceeded to the annex,” Lamb testified. “Shortly after they arrived, the annex started taking mortar fire, with as many as three direct hits on the compound. It was during this mortar attack that Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed and a Diplomatic Security agent and an annex quick reaction security team member were critically wounded.”

Doherty and Woods were both former Navy Seals who served in both the Iraq and Afghan wars. They were working as U.S. security personnel in Libya.

When exactly did Obama learn that U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi was under attack and who did he order to do something about it? The White House is not saying.

“I can tell you, as I've said over the last couple of months since this happened, the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives,” Obama told KUSA TV in Denver on Friday. “Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to.”

On Tuesday night’s “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren” on the Fox News Channel, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that major news networks might have secret emails proving that the White House canceled plans to assist the besieged U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

Gingrich said that the bombshell emails could be revealed within the next two days.

“There is a rumor — I want to be clear, it’s a rumor — that at least two networks have emails from the National Security Adviser’s office telling a counterterrorism group to stand down,” Gingrich said. “But they were a group in real-time trying to mobilize marines and C-130s and the fighter aircraft, and they were told explicitly by the White House stand down and do nothing. This is not a terrorist action. If that is true, and I’ve been told this by a fairly reliable U.S. senator, if that is true and comes out, I think it raises enormous questions about the president’s role, and Tom Donilon, the National Security Adviser’s role, the Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who has taken it on his own shoulders, that he said don’t go. And that is, I think, very dubious, given that the president said he had instructions they are supposed to do everything they could to secure American personnel.”

After noting that the rumor, if true, would have a substantial impact on the presidential election, Gingrich pointed to another possible “October surprise” in the coming days.

“The other big story, I think, that is going to break is

UPDATE: Facebook Manager Andrew Noyes emailed the following to Breitbart News this morning: We wanted to follow up on the Special Operations Speaks PAC (SOS) article published on Breitbart.com last night. I assure you that removing the image was not an act of censorship on our part. This was an error and we apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused.

Over the weekend, Facebook took down a message by the Special Operations Speaks PAC (SOS) which highlighted the fact that Obama denied backup to the forces being overrun in Benghazi.

The message was contained in a meme which demonstrated how Obama had relied on the SEALS when he was ready to let them get Osama bin Laden, and how he had turned around and denied them when they called for backup on Sept 11.

I spoke with Larry Ward, president of Political Media, Inc -- the media company that handles SOS postings and media production. Ward was the one who personally put the Navy SEAL meme up, and the one who received the warning from Facebook and an eventual 24 hour suspension from Facebook  because Ward put the meme back up after Facebook told him to take it down.

Here's what Ward told me:

We created and posted this meme on Saturday after news broke that Obama had known and denied SEALS the backup they requested.

There is (or was) audio recording of them asking for help

Libya: As the father of a former Navy SEAL slain at Benghazi wonders why our secretary of state lied to him, we wonder why our CIA director abetted a lie that contradicted counterterrorism officials and the FBI.

During the 2004 presidential campaign, a media eager to deny George W. Bush a second term made Cindy Sheehan, who lost a son in Iraq, a national heroine and reported virtually her every word and move.

"Cindy Sheehan," gushed NBC News, "is single-handedly bringing the Iraq debate to Mr. Bush's doorstep."

But nobody in a mainstream media eager to see President Obama get a second term is bringing the Benghazi debate to the White House doorstep. On all the Sunday talk shows, when Benghazi was brought up, the moderator quickly changed subjects.

On CNN's "State of the Union," Candy Crowley, who came to the aid of President Obama on Benghazi during the second presidential debate, sloughed off attempts by two GOP officials to broach Benghazi.

When Newt Gingrich raised Benghazi on ABC's "This Week," host George Stephanopoulos quickly changed topics. NBC's David Gregory cut off GOP panelist Carly Fiorina when she brought up Benghazi, promising to "get to that a little later." Of course, he never did.

Where is the Benghazi media feeding frenzy?

I don’t think there’s a conspiracy at work. Rather, I think journalists tend to act on their instincts. And, collectively, the mainstream media’s instincts run liberal.

In 2000, a Democratic operative orchestrated an “October surprise” attack on George W. Bush, revealing that 24 years earlier, he’d been arrested for drunken driving. The media went into a feeding frenzy.

“Is all the 24-hour coverage of Bush’s 24-year-old DUI arrest the product of a liberal media almost drunk on the idea of sinking him, or is it a legitimate, indeed unavoidable news story?” asked Howard Kurtz on his CNN show “Reliable Sources.” The consensus among the guests: It wasn’t a legitimate news story. But the media kept going with it.

One could go on and on. In September 2004, former CBS titan Dan Rather gambled his entire career on a story about Bush’s service in the National Guard. His instincts were so powerful, he didn’t thoroughly check the documents he relied on, which were forgeries.

Oh, there have been conservative feeding frenzies: about Barack Obama’s pastor, John Kerry’s embellishments of his war record, etc. But the mainstream media usually tasks itself with debunking and dispelling such “hysteria.”

Last week, Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin reported that sources on the ground in Libya say they pleaded for support during the attack on the Benghazi consulate that led to the deaths of four Americans. They were allegedly told twice to “stand down.” Worse, there are suggestions that significant military resources were available to counterattack, but requests for help were denied.

If true, the White House’s concerted effort to blame the attack on a video crumbles, as do several other fraudulent claims. Yet, last Friday, the president boasted, “The minute I found out what was happening” in Benghazi, he ordered that everything possible be done to protect our personnel. That’s either untrue, or he’s being disobeyed on grave matters.

Yet Fox News is alone in treating the story like it’s a big deal. During the less significant Valerie Plame scandal, reporters camped out on the front lawns of Karl Rove and other Bush White House staff. Did Obama confiscate those journalists’ sleeping bags?

Of the five news shows last Sunday, only “Fox News Sunday” treated this as a major story. On the other four, the issue came up only when Republicans mentioned it.

The U.S. Mission in Benghazi convened an “emergency meeting” less than a month before the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, because Al Qaeda had training camps in Benghazi and the consulate could not defend against a “coordinated attack,” according to a classified cable reviewed by Fox News.

Summarizing an Aug. 15 emergency meeting convened by the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Aug. 16 cable marked “SECRET” said that the State Department’s senior security officer, also known as the RSO, did not believe the consulate could be protected.

“RSO (Regional Security Officer) expressed concerns with the ability to defend Post in the event of a coordinated attack due to limited manpower, security measures, weapons capabilities, host nation support, and the overall size of the compound,” the cable said.

According to a review of the cable addressed to the Office of the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Emergency Action Committee was also briefed "on the location of approximately ten Islamist militias and AQ training camps within Benghazi … these groups ran the spectrum from Islamist militias, such as the QRF Brigade and Ansar al-Sharia, to ‘Takfirist thugs.’” Each U.S. mission has a so-called Emergency Action Committee that is responsible for security measures and emergency planning.

The details in the cable seemed to foreshadow the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. compound, which was a coordinated, commando-style assault using direct and indirect fire. Al Qaeda in North Africa and Ansar al-Sharia, both mentioned in the cable, have since been implicated in the consulate attack.

In addition to describing the security situation in Benghazi as “trending negatively,” the cable said explicitly that the mission would ask for more help. “In light of the uncertain security environment, US Mission Benghazi will submit specific requests to US Embassy Tripoli for additional physical security upgrades and staffing needs by separate cover.”

As for specific threats against the U.S., the cable warned the intelligence was not clear on the issue, cautioning that the militias in Benghazi were not concerned with any significant retaliation from the Libyan government, which had apparently lost control in Benghazi. A briefer explained that they “did not have information suggesting that these entities were targeting Americans but did caveat that (there was not) a complete picture of their

Did Barack Obama have a "Mission Accomplished" moment with dreadful consequences in Libya? Libya's former Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril believes he did.

Perhaps you'll recall when George W. Bush stood on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln and a banner positioned behind him read "Mission Accomplished" regarding Iraq on May 1, 2003. It was a moment that haunted him throughout the rest of his presidency and beyond, as the Iraq War continued on for eight and a half more years.

And just as many Democrats say Bush made a premature call after the sacking of Baghdad and the toppling of the Hussein regime, so too the former Libyan PM says Obama counted his eggs before they hatched.

Jibril has "accused the United States and its NATO allies of high-tailing it out of [Libya] as soon as dictator Moammar Gadhafi was disposed a year ago." He says the quick departure created "a power vacuum" that has allowed radicals, like those who attacked the Benghazi

The few media that are covering the abandonment of Americans in Benghazi have focused — and not without merit — on the four Americans that perished over the course of the seven-hour battle.

Ambassador Chris Stevens and diplomat Sean Smith were not the only Americans in the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, however, a fact some of us have lost sight of in our focus on the dead. Nor were Glen Doherty and Ty Woods the only casualties among the forces that disobeyed orders from the Obama administration not to rescue the consulate staff.

When terrorists surrounded the consulate at approximately 8:00 p.m. Benghazi time with 150 men and “technicals” — pickup trucks with heavy machine guns, bearing the logo of Ansar al-Shariah — Stevens and Smith were part of a larger American delegation numbering somewhere between 7-24.

We’re forced to say “approximately” because it has been difficult to determine through media accounts the exact number of Americans inside the consulate.

We do know that at least three other consulate staff members [1] were seriously injured enough in the initial attack that they were treated at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Two more consulate staff members were apparently injured in the attack on the CIA safe house which also killed Glen Doherty and Ty Woods.

What we can be sure of is that as the consulate was under fire from a large terrorist force, the lives of a minimum of seven American diplomats were put at risk as President Barack Obama allegedly watched the attack live [2] in the White House Situation Room via the satellite video link to an unarmed Predator drone circling overhead.

We now know that the small CIA force on a separate mission, occupying a safe house a mile away, called in to their superiors for reinforcements. We know that this force twice asked for permission to attempt a rescue mission. We know that they were twice told to “stand down.”

Ty Woods, a former SEAL who was part of the CIA force in Benghazi, was among those in this team of operators who disobeyed their orders and put honor over political cowardice to carry out a rescue mission to evacuate the survivors.

Once the consulate staff had been evacuated back to the safe house, they were protected by Woods’ local CIA team, the eight-man CIA team that had flown in from Tripoli, and a force of Libyans that had driven Doherty and the rest of his team from the airport and which would cover the extraction.

We don’t know the exact breakdown of which Americans belonged to each specific group beyond the size of the eight-man team to which Doherty belonged, but the total number of Americans in the CIA safe house was at least 24, and may have been as high as 32 when the attack on that position began.

Once again, at least one Predator drone was overhead, transmitting video of the attack in real time to the White House and State Department for at least part of the time.

We know that CIA operators defending the site “lased” a terrorist mortar crew more than six hours into the attack. Military experts not on-site have asserted (but we cannot confirm) that the mortar team appears to have been targeted with a ground laser target designator [3] (GLTD). The GLTD can direct laser-guided munitions from Predator drones, AC-130 and MC-130 airborne gunships, such as the one that a Fox News source [4] may have been referring to with a reference to repeated requests for supporting fore from a “Spectre.”

A former military fighter pilot tells PJ Media that if a GTLD were used, it could have provided exact GPS coordinates for precision guided bombs, called JDAMS, carried by Air Force and Navy fighter aircraft which could have been on-site over Benghazi within an hour of the initial assault, and which could have been dropped with little threat of collateral damage and very low risk to the aircraft itself, since they can be dropped from stand-off distances.

The White House has not been forthcoming in explaining why at least seven American diplomats were abandoned in the Benghazi consulate to die while the president allegedly watched video of the attack.

The White House has refused to explain why they denied close air support to two dozen or more Americans and additional government forces at the CIA safe house who were under mortar fire, had the mortar team fixed with a laser, and repeatedly called for the terrorist position to be struck.

American lives were abandoned while a sitting U.S. president allegedly watched.

The American people deserve to know why, before the 2012 election.

The Obama White House released a similar photo from the Situation Room, said to have been snapped during the mission that killed Osama bin Laden.

But we haven’t seen a similar photo from Sept. 11, 2012, the night terrorists murdered four Americans during an assault on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Why?

We now know that he was in the White House that day, and met with his vice president and defense secretary as the battle was going on. We know that emails came into the White House Situation Room from the field detailing the attack and its origins.

What did President Barack Obama know and when did he know it? Why has the Obama administration kept changing its story about how Ambassador Chris Stevens, security officials Tyrone Woods of Imperial Beach and Glen Doherty of Encinitas, and information officer Sean Smith, who grew up in San Diego, died on Sept. 11 in Benghazi, Libya? Why won’t the mainstream media treat the incontrovertible evidence of the White House’s dishonesty and incompetence like the ugly scandal it obviously is?

These are all questions that demand to be answered after revelations that demolished the tidy narrative the president has been offering about Benghazi.

Until last week, the White House had taken a moderate hit over the fact that for two weeks after it happened, officials had fostered the impression that the four Americans were killed Sept. 11 in a spontaneous protest triggered by a blasphemous anti-Islam video posted on YouTube – not by a coordinated terrorist attack on the 11th anniversary of 9/11. But administration officials pushed back by saying the “fog of war” had left them uncertain about events, and that when White House press secretary Jay Carney and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice had cited the video, they were only repeating the best available information they had. The president’s repeated comments conveyed the impression that he wasn’t aware of the attacks as they were unfolding, saying only that the next day, he ordered increased security for embassies in the area.

But after a torrent of leaks of official emails and communiqués – likely coming from CIA officials who refuse to participate in a cover-up and/or who won’t accept the role of scapegoat – the “fog of war” narrative looks like damage control: a determined attempt to keep the facts from the public until after the Nov. 6 election. After the leaks, the president suddenly changed his story to say he was aware of the attacks as they unfolded and had quickly issued an order to “make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to.”

There was no “fog.” There was no spontaneous uprising. Thanks to a drone and other surveillance technology, the White House’s national security team knew in real time that the U.S. consulate and a “safe house” a mile away in Benghazi were under coordinated attack by a well-armed group, not from a protest that unexpectedly escalated. Over a seven-hour span on Sept. 11, the besieged Americans made at least two urgent requests for help; the U.S. military has considerable assets in the area that could have been deployed to Benghazi.

Who told the besieged Americans they were out of luck?

A
 Libyan policeman was caught photographing the inside of the US Consulate in Benghazi on the morning of September 11, hours before US Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed in a terror attack there, and worried US consular staff complained to the Libyan Foreign Ministry over the security breach, an Arabic TV station reported on Thursday, quoting from letters found at the consulate after it was attacked.


A document shown in the Alaan TV report broadcast November 1. (photo credit: MEMRI screenshot)

Alaan TV, a channel based in the United Arab Emirates, said the letters also showed that the Americans had been urging the Libyan authorities to provide special security arrangements for Stevens’ visit — including a 24-hour police guard at the front and rear gates of the consulate, a mobile patrol and a bomb-sniffing dog — but these requests were not granted. The consulate was left for many hours “with no police support at all,” one letter complained.

In excerpts of the TV broadcast recorded and translated by MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute), Alaan TV said it was basing its report on documents written by US consulate staff on September 11 and found “in the Tactical Operations Center building” of the consulate.

The report referred to two letters — one addressed to the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the other, almost identical in content, addressed to the Benghazi police chief.

“In the letters, the Americans complained about an incident that occurred on the morning of September 11, an incident they described as ‘troubling’,” the report said.

It quoted from one of the letters, as follows: “‘Early this morning, on September 11, 2011 [sic], at precisely 06:43, one of our diligent guards

You know how desperate the state of the American media is when Arab/Muslim media is covering the jihad in Libya while the American enemedia is covering it up (save for FOX News). America is under siege by the fourth estate.
"Arab TV Report Exposes Lax Security At U.S. Consulate In Benghazi Prior To Ambassador Stevens' Arrival And Security Breach Prior To Attack – Revealed By Documents Gathered At Consulate Following Attack" MEMRI

On November 1, 2012, Alaan TV, a UAE channel, stated in a report on the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that letters found inside the consulate, written by the U.S. Consular staff and addressed to the Libyan Foreign Ministry and the Benghazi police chief, revealed security breaches at the consulate. According to the letters, not only had a Libyan policeman photographed the compound 15 hours prior to the attack, but the Libyan government had not provided the security at the consulate requested by the consular staff prior to Ambassador Chris Stevens' arrival in Benghazi. According to the report, the letter stated, "We are saddened to report that we have only received an occasional police presence at our main gate. Many hours pass when we have no police support at all."

Alaan TV, which operates from Dubai, began broadcasting in August 2006. It states that its aim is the cultural enrichment of Arab women, and it has often focused on Al-Qaeda and other terror organization from a critical point of view, inter alia interviewing family members of jihadi leaders.

Following are excerpts from the report.

Click here to view this clip on MEMRI TV.

"The Letters Read As Follows: 'Early This Morning, On September 11... A Member Of The [Libyan] Police Force Was Seen... Photographing The Inside Of The U.S. Consulate'"

Libyan cop was caught photographing inside of US consulate in Benghazi on morning of September 11, TV report says

http://www.timesofisrael.com/libyan-cop-was-caught-photographing-inside-of-us-consulate-in-benghazi-on-morning-of-september-11-tv-report-says/

Arab/Muslim Media exposes US failure in Libya attack, shames American media NY Times, LA Times, ABC, NBC, CNN cover-up

photos and links here (http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2012/11/arabmuslim-media-exposes-us-failure-in-libya-attack-shames-american-media-ny-times-la-times-abc-nbc-.html)

2:54:09 PM) vile_rat: assuming we don't die tonight. We saw one of our 'police' that guard the compound taking pictures

http://themittani.com/news/rip-vile-rat

Senior counterterrorism officials felt cut out of the loop the night of the attack on the Benghazi consulate, according to emails that were shared with Fox News by military sources who are familiar with discussions of how to respond the night of the Sept. 11 attack.

Top State Department officials decided not to send an interagency rapid response unit designed to respond to terrorist attacks known as a FEST team, a Foreign Emergency Support Team. This team from the State Department and CIA has a military Joint Special Operations Command element to it and has been routinely deployed to assist in investigations -- for instance, after the USS Cole bombing and the bombings at the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

That team, these counterterrorism officials argue, could have helped the FBI gain access to the site in Benghazi faster. It ultimately took the FBI 24 days.

"The response process was isolated at the most senior level," according to one intelligence source. "Counterterrorism professionals were not consulted and a decision was taken to send the FBI on its own without the enablers that would have allowed its agents to gain access to the site in Benghazi in a timely manner." The FBI team did not get on the ground in Benghazi for several weeks after the attack and at that point any "evidence" had been rifled through by looters and journalists.

"A better response approach could have certainly allowed the FBI to access the site much sooner than the 24 days it would eventually take," a source in the counterterrorism community said. 

Further, the Counterterrorism Security Group, or CSG, was never asked to meet that night or in subsequent days, according to two separate counterterrorism officials, as first reported by CBS News. The CSG is composed of experts on terrorism from across government agencies and makes recommendations to the deputies who assist the president's Cabinet in formulating a response to crises involving terrorism.

National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told Fox News, "the most senior people in government worked on this issue from the minute it happened. That includes the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Secretary of State, National Security advisor, etcetera. Additionally, the Deputies Committee -- the second in command at the relevant national security agencies -- met at least once and more often twice a day to manage the issue."

But the latest revelations, including reporting by Fox News that the State Department was warned a month before the attack that the consulate could not withstand a coordinated strike, have sparked renewed criticisms from top GOP lawmakers.

"Enough already, Mr. President," Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. said in a statement. "You need to address the American people and account for your leadership in the attack on our Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. You should explain to the American people what you knew, when you knew it,

Remember how the White House insisted for more than a week that there was “no evidence” that the sacking of the Benghazi consulate was anything more than a spontaneous demonstration over a two-month-old YouTube video that “spun out of control”?  Fox News this morning reports that cables from the consulate itself made clear that they expected an attack from local militia groups in the hours before the terrorist attack that claimed the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. They also told the State Department that they had reason to believe their local security was gathering intel for the attack:

CBS News has learned that during the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Obama Administration did not convene its top interagency counterterrorism resource: the Counterterrorism Security Group, (CSG).


"The CSG is the one group that's supposed to know what resources every agency has. They know of multiple options and have the ability to coordinate counterterrorism assets across all the agencies," a high-ranking government official told CBS News. "They were not allowed to do their job. They were not called upon."


Information shared with CBS News from top counterterrorism sources in the government and military reveal keen frustration over the U.S. response on Sept. 11, the night Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in a coordinated attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya.


The circumstances of the attack, including the intelligence and security situation there, will be the subject of a Senate Intelligence Committee closed hearing on Nov. 15, with additional hearings to follow.


Counterterrorism sources and internal emails reviewed by CBS News express frustration that key responders were ready to deploy, but were not called upon to help in the attack.


CBS News has agreed not to quote directly from the emails, and to protect the identities of the sources who hold sensitive counterterrorism posts within the State Department, the U.S. military and the Justice Department.


As to why the Counterterrorism Security Group was not convened, National Security Council Spokesman Tommy Vietor told CBS News "From the moment the President was briefed on the Benghazi attack, the response effort was handled by the most senior national security officials in governments. Members of the CSG were of course involved in these meetings and discussions to support their bosses."


 Absent coordination from Counterterrorism Security Group, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official says the response to the crisis became more confused. The official says the FBI received a call during the attack representing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and requesting agents be deployed. But he and his colleagues agreed the agents "would not make any difference without security and other enablers to get them in the country and synch their efforts with military and

Notations indicate the letter was intended for the head of the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Benghazi.


"... early this morning at 0643, September 11, 2012, one of our diligent guards made a troubling report. Near our main gate, a member of the police force was seen in the upper level of a building across from our compound. It is reported that this person was photographing the inside of the U.S. special mission and furthermore that this person was part of the police unit sent to protect the mission."


It goes on to ask for an investigation. It's unclear whether the letter was sent and what action may have been taken, but it reflects the continued security concerns of U.S. diplomats in Benghazi in the weeks and days leading up to the assault.


Another draft letter dated two days before the attack complains that requested police support for Ambassador Stevens' visit had not been supplied.


"...We requested daily, twenty-four hour police protection at the front and rear of the U.S. mission as well as a roving patrol. In addition we requested the services of a police explosive detection dog. We were given assurances from the highest authorities in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that all due support would be provided for Ambassador Stevens' visit to Benghazi. However, we are saddened to

According to blog site beforeitsnews.com, CIA sources have confirmed that President Barack Obama ordered military and intelligence assets not to defend or rescue ambassador Christopher Stevens as the American consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi were being attacked by terrorists last month.

Reports are also surfacing that claim White House officials, including the president, was fed real-time video footage from two aerial drones while the seven-hour long attack was underway. On Tuesday, talk show host Glenn Beck predicted Obama will eventually get impeached over his handling of the Libya attacks, an incident that resulted in the deaths

Sharyl Atkisson that same day was picked up by Real Clear Politics. But the millions of viewers who tune in to ABC’s World News and CBS Evening News were not permitted to hear these stories on the evening broadcasts.

 Media Research Center President Brent Bozell reacts:

The stories about the Benghazi terrorist attack written by ABC’s Jake Tapper and CBS’s Sharyl Atkisson clearly demonstrate that there are some serious journalists who believe this is a major story and are looking for answers from the Obama Administration. ABC’s World News’ and CBS Evening News’ refusal to present these stories to the millions of Americans who count on them as their primary source of news shows how corrupted they have become. They’re trying to rig this election for Barack Obama, deliberately spiking news stories even their top reporters believe to be important.

The litany of failures that led to the deaths of four brave Americans in Benghazi on September 11, and the contradictory answers, is long and getting longer, but the big question the Obama Administration must answer remains unasked by the liberal media: if the administration was repeatedly warned of danger, and requests for help were repeatedly turned down, and four brave Americans died, who is responsible for this catastrophe, and why did the Obama Administration dishonestly try to blame it all on a video?

A father and a mother used the word “murder.” A brother said he won’t second-guess decisions made in the heat of battle.

The families of three Americans killed in the Sept. 11 U.S. consulate attack in Benghazi, Libya, are offering widely different reactions to recent reports that U.S. personnel issued several requests for help that were turned down.

Patricia Smith, the mother of slain State Department employee Sean Patrick Smith, is now blaming President Barack Obama for her son’s death.

“I believe that Obama murdered my son,” she said Thursday from the living room of her Clairemont home. “I firmly believe this.”

Patricia Smith, who voted for Obama in 2008 at the insistence of her son, said reporting by Fox News is the basis for much of her belief that Obama is ultimately responsible for her son’s death. She said Sean, who went to Mission Bay High School but lived abroad, was a fervent supporter of the president.

As details emerge of serious security issues before the attack on Sept. 11, Fox News is also beginning to hear more frustration from sources both on the ground in Benghazi and in the U.S. Multiple British and American sources insist there were other capabilities in the region and are mystified why none were used. Fox News was told there were not only armed drones that monitor Libyan chemical weapon sites in the area, but also F-18's, AC-130 aircraft and even helicopters that could have been dispatched in a timely fashion.   

British intelligence sources said that unarmed drones routinely flew over Benghazi every night in flight patterns and that armed drones which fly over chemical sites, some a short flight from Benghazi, "were always said to be on call." American sources confirmed this and questioned "why was a drone armed only with a camera dispatched?"

Another source added, "Why would they put a ragtag team together in Tripoli as first responders? This is not even what they do for a living. We had a first responder air base in Italy almost the same distance away." Despite the team arriving from Tripoli that night, sources said sufficient American back-up never came.

British sources on the ground in Benghazi said they are extremely frustrated by the attack and are still wondering why they weren't called for help. “We have more people on the ground here than the Americans and I just don't know why we didn't get the call?" one said.

he U.S. mission in Benghazi, at an "emergency meeting" less than a month before the Sept. 11 attack, drafted a contingency plan to suspend operations as security deteriorated -- and in the near-term, recommended that consulate operations be moved to the CIA annex about a mile away, according to a classified cable reviewed by Fox News.

The State Department's senior representative at the consulate told those at the Aug. 15 meeting that the security situation was "trending negatively" and reported "this daily pattern of violence would be the 'new normal' for the foreseeable future, particularly given the minimal capabilities" of the Libyan security forces.

With no apparent reason to believe conditions would improve, the cable notified the office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the "Emergency Action Committee" was updating "Post's tripwires in light of the deteriorating security situation ... to include a 'suspension of operations' section."

The term "tripwire" refers to lines in the sand which, if crossed, cover personnel levels, security measures, and in this case, the extreme step of suspending operations.

The cable marked "SECRET" also said, of the possibility of moving the consulate operations: "Mission personnel could co-locate to the Annex (CIA outpost) if the security environment degraded suddenly. ... (There was agreement) to formal weekly meetings to discuss the security environment. ... In the longer term, we believe formal collocation with the (Annex) will greatly improve our security situation."

The warnings reflected a grave concern among officials on the ground that the Libyan militia charged with protecting the consulate had been compromised, perhaps even infiltrated by extremists.

Sources who have debriefed the team that was at the CIA annex the night of the attack in Benghazi say that the CIA operators from the Global Response Staff, or GRS, were equipped with Mark 48 machine guns and had two types of laser capability. Each weapon had both a “passive” as well as a “visible” laser that could be used against the Libyan attackers.

The presence of laser capability on the roof of the CIA annex confirms what Fox News sources that night in Benghazi originally said, which is that they had laser capability and for 5 hours and 15 minutes were wondering where the usual overhead air support was, especially since, according to this source, they radioed from the annex beginning as early as midnight asking for it.

The presence of lasers raises more questions about why air support was not sent to Benghazi even protectively once it became clear that the fighting had followed the CIA rescue team back to the annex.

U.S. military officials say they "thought the fighting was over" after the team left the consulate and that there was a lull in the fighting.

Fox News has learned the guns were fitted with PEQ-15 lasers. The “passive” laser is not visible to the naked eye but can help team members identify hostile forces when the shooter is wearing NODS, or Night Observation Device attached to their helmet. The visible laser system places a red dot on the attacker and warns the attacker not to shoot, encouraging them to flee the scene. U.S. troops often use the visible laser to scare children or other civilians who find themselves in the middle of combat activity. When civilians see the laser they often back off in order not to be shot.

The GRS team that was present at the CIA annex provided security for the CIA station, as they do around the world. They are highly trained in countersurveillance, close target reconnaissance and in depth reconnaissance. Enemy fighters have learned in Afghanistan and Iraq to use their cell phones to follow or intercept these “passive” lasers without

(CNSNews.com) - What David Ignatius of The Washington Post describes as a “detailed CIA timeline” of the events that unfolded in Libya on Sept. 11, 2012 (and in the early hours of Sept. 12), confirms that former Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were not killed until seven hours after the State Department informed the White House—in writing--that the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi was under attack and that U.S. Amb. Chris Stevens was in Benghazi where the attack was taking place.

The attack started at 3:40 p.m Washington, D.C. time. The State Department sent the White House an email at 4:05 pm with this subject line: “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack.” The email said Amb. Stevens was in Benghazi.

According to the CIA timeline provided to the Washington Post and other news organizations, Woods and Doherty were killed by mortar fire while on the roof of a CIA facility in Benghazi between 11:15 p.m. and 11:26 p.m. Washington time—or between 5:15 a.m. and 5:26 a.m. Sept. 12 Benghazi time.

Between 4:05 p.m. Washington time, when the State Department emailed the White House that the U.S diplomatic mission in Benghazi was under attack, and 11:15 p.m., when Wood and Doherty were killed, more than seven hours passed.

On Expedia.com, British Airways is currently advertizing a non-stop flight from London to Libya on Nov. 15--via an Airbus A320--that is expected to have a duration of 3 hours and 30 minutes. That means that in the seven hours that elapsed between when the State Department informed the White House that the U.S. mission in Benghazi was under attack and when Woods and Doherty were killed, a common commercial airliner—not a military jet--could have flown from England to Libya and back.

White House National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, according to reporting by CBS News, personally informed President Obama of the ongoing attack in Benghazi before Obama went into a pre-scheduled 5:00 p.m. meeting with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Vice President Joe Biden.

(On Tuesday, CNSNews.com asked the Defense Department whether this previously scheduled meeting between Obama and Panetta had in fact taken place, whether Panetta was aware at that time of the ongoing attack in Benghazi that the State Department had reported to both the Pentagon and the White House at 4:05 p.m., and whether the president had used that meeting to discuss with Panetta what should be done to defend the Americans in Benghazi. Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a department spokesman,

David Axelrod was in the unfortunate position again today of having to defend the Obama administration’s unwillingness to answer questions about Benghazi. He did so by…not answering questions about Benghazi. On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace pressed Axelrod on whether the President knew about the earlier attacks on the Benghazi consulate and requests for enhanced security. Axelrod responded, in part:

I mean, I’m not in the White House, I’m not privy to all the discussions, but I can tell you this: this President is 100 percent committed to the people he sends overseas personally to represent this country. His the one who met those coffins when they came home, so any suggestion that he would not take the necessary steps to protect them, make some decision not to protect them, is just nonsense.

President Obama should come clean with the American people about what exactly happened in Benghazi, according to the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Buck McKeon (R-CA).

In fact, the President is the only one who has all those answers, McKeon says.

“The whole thing smacks of a cover-up,” he says. According to McKeon, the military has been muzzled by unprecedented orders not to provide information to Congress.

Benghazi, Libya, is where the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed on September 11, 2012, by a terrorist attack, which reportedly was monitored live for several hours by President Obama from the White House Situation Room.

In an astonishing display of media malpractice, CBS News quietly released proof--two days before the election, far too late to reach the media and the public--that President Barack Obama lied to the public about the Benghazi attack, as well as about his later claim to have called the attack "terrorism" from the beginning.

CBS unveiled additional footage from its 60 Minutes interview with President Obama, conducted on Sep. 12 immediately after Obama had made his statement about the attacks in the Rose Garden, in which Obama quite clearly refuses to call the Benghazi an act of terror when asked a direct question by reporter Steve Kroft:

KROFT: Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word terrorism in connection with the Libya Attack, do you believe that this was a terrorism attack?

OBAMA: Well it’s too early to tell exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans.  And we are going to be

Now, we may know why.  Soon after that debate exchange, CBS released a previously unseen clip of an interview "60 Minutes'" Steve Kroft did with Obama on Sept. 12 -- the day after the Benghazi attack. 

The clip added to the previous sound that had been released and seemed to back up the president's claim that he was referring to the Benghazi attack as a terrorist act in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12. Here's what CBS put out Oct. 19, five weeks after the attack.

   KROFT: But there are reports that they were very heavily armed with grenades, that doesn’t sound like your normal demonstration.

   OBAMA:  As I said, we’re still investigating exactly what happened, I don’t want to jump the gun on this.   But your right that this is not a situation that was exactly the same as what happened in Egypt.   And my suspicion is there are folks involved in this. Who were looking to target Americans from the start.  So we’re gonna make sure that our first priority is to get our folks out safe, make sure our embassies are secured around the world and then we are going to go after those folks who carried this out."

After the second debate back and forth, this seemed to back up the president's stance. The only problem? Kroft started his question with "but."

I always thought, it seems that he's following up on a question -- I wonder if there was a question before that question?

This week, we got the CIA timeline of events in which they detail all of the response of the CIA and what they put up the chain of command in the minutes and hours after the attack began.  Of all the details of the specific times the CIA contractors respond to the fight, I found this one most interesting:

"1:15 a.m.: CIA reinforcements arrive on a 45-minute flight from Tripoli in a plane they've hastily chartered. The Tripoli team includes four GRS security officers, a CIA case officer and two U.S. military personnel who are on loan to the agency. They don't leave Benghazi airport until 4:30. The delay is caused by negotiations with Libyan authorities over permission to leave the airport, obtaining vehicles, and the need to frame a clear mission plan. The first idea is to go to a Benghazi hospital to recover Stevens, who they correctly suspect is already dead. But the hospital is surrounded by the Al Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Shariah militia that mounted the consulate attack."

So the U.S. Ambassador to Libya is at the Benghazi hospital and suspected dead. The CIA contractors know that, but they can't get there because the hospital is surrounded by the Al Qaeda-linked group Ansar al Shariah, the "militia that mounted the consulate attack." 

This goes up the chain communication at 1:15 a.m. on Sept. 12.  The White House, the Situation Room, and all of those paying attention to intel channels know that the guys on the ground have determined the group that's behind this. It's the Al Qaeda-linked militia that are still fighting and have the hospital surrounded.

About 12 hours later -- before heading to Las Vegas for a campaign event -- Obama sits down for that "60 Minutes" interview with Steve Kroft. 

And Sunday night, 54 days after the attack and almost two weeks after putting out the first additional clip that appeared to back up the president after the second debate, CBS without fanfare posted the rest of the Benghazi question online -- the question before the question.

Remember this is from a president who has been saying he was calling Benghazi a terrorist attack from the very first moment in the Rose Garden. Also, remember what he said in the debate and notice the new part -- underlined in bold.

Click here to see the "60 Minutes" interview.

   KROFT: Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word terrorism in connection with the Libya Attack, do you believe that this was a terrorism attack?

   OBAMA: Well it’s too early to tell exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans.  And we are going to be working with the Libyan government to make sure that we bring these folks to justice, one way or the other. 

   KROFT: It’s been described as a mob action, but there are reports that they were very heavily armed with grenades, that doesn’t sound like your normal demonstration.

   OBAMA:  As I said, we’re still investigating exactly what happened, I don’t want to jump the gun on this.   But your right that this is not a situation that was exactly the same as what happened in Egypt.  And my suspicion is there are folks involved in this. Who were looking to target Americans from the start.  So we’re gonna make sure that our first priority is to get our folks out safe, make sure our embassies are secured around the world and then we are going to go after those folks who carried this out.

   KROFT: There have been reports, obviously this isn’t the first time…there have been attacks on the consulate before. There was an attack against the British ambassador. Do you…this occurred on Sept. 11. Can you tell me why the ambassador was in Benghazi yesterday? Was it to evaluate security at the consulate?

   OBAMA: Well keep in mind Chris Stevens is somebody that was one of the first Americans on the ground when we were in the process of saving Benghazi and providing the opportunity for Libyans to create their own democracy. So this is somebody who had been courageous, had been on the ground, had helped to advise me and Secretary Clinton when we were taking our actions against Muammar Qaddafi. And is somebody who is very familiar with the train. He was doing the work that he does as a diplomat helping to shape our policies in the region at a time when things are still fairly fragile. But I think it’s important to note that we have a Libyan government in place that is fully cooperative, that sees the United States as a friend that recognizes we played an important role in liberating Libya and providing the Libyan people an opportunity to forge their own destiny. And in fact we had Libyans who helped protect our diplomats when they were under attack. But this is a country that is still rebuilding in the aftermath of Qaddafi. They don’t necessarily always have the same capabilities that countries with more established governments might have in helping to provide protection to our folks. But beyond that, what I want to do is make sure that we know exactly what happened, how it happened, who perpetrated this action, then we’ll act accordingly."

These are two crucial answers in the big picture.  Right after getting out of the Rose Garden, where, according to the second debate and other accounts he definitively called the attack terrorism, Obama is asked point blank about not calling it terrorism. He blinks and does not push back.

Understand that this interview is just hours after he gets out of the Rose Garden.

How after this exchange and the CIA explanation of what was being put up the chain in the intel channels does the Ambassador to the United Nations go on the Sunday shows and say what she says about a spontaneous demonstration sparked by that anti-Islam video? And how does the president deliver a speech to the United Nations 13 days later where he references that anti-Islam video six times when referring to the attack in Benghazi?

There are many questions, and here are a few more.

Why did CBS release a clip that appeared to back up Obama's claim in the second debate on Oct. 19, a few days before the foreign policy debate, and not release the rest of that interview at the beginning? 

Why on the Sunday before the election, almost six weeks after the attack, at 6 p.m. does an obscure online timeline posted on CBS.com contain the additional "60 Minutes" interview material from Sept. 12? 

Why wasn't it news after the president said what he said in the second debate, knowing what they had in that "60 Minutes" tape -- why didn't they use it then? And why is it taking Fox News to spur other media organizations to take the Benghazi story seriously? 

Whatever your politics, there are a lot of loose ends here, a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of strange political maneuvers that don't add up.

That's what reporters should live for, but this time they're not.  We will. 

Current and former intelligence officials tell Fox News that a classified State Department cable sent Aug. 16 -- and which said the Benghazi consulate could not defend against a "coordinated attack" -- would certainly have gone to the White House National Security Council staff. 

"The National Security Council sees everything," a former senior intelligence official told Fox News. "The staff are sitting on top of all the cable traffic which means the national security advisor (Tom Donilon) and deputy national security advisor (Denis McDonough) have some explaining to do. If Libya was of interest to this administration, the national security staff saw it."

Current and former intelligence officials said that North Africa -- specifically the growing lawlessness in eastern Libya, the sizable CIA presence and the estimated 20,000 loose weapons -- were of keen interest to the White House national security team and the intelligence community. There is growing evidence that the attack was designed to flush out any remaining western influence in eastern Libya, and specifically the growing CIA presence.

"To have not read it would be negligent," the former senior intelligence official said.

The classified cable marked "SECRET" and reviewed by Fox News summarized an emergency meeting in Benghazi less than a month before the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Other media outlets, including The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, have since cited the classified cable in editorials questioning the administration's security lapses preceding the attack

To get to the truth, connect the lies. Do what intel analysts and detectives do: Build a scenario from the facts and watch the lies blink red. And when anyone tells as many lies as this administration has told about its Benghazi debacle, you get a Christmas tree.

A three-act drama emerges from the facts that have leaked out. It starts ugly and turns hideous.

Act One: Our personnel in Libya worried for months about security, repeatedly petitioning the State Department for enhanced protection, especially for Benghazi. Requests denied.

Why? In Iraq, the State Department played tough guy, hiring mercenaries who gunned down innocent locals to “protect their packages” (our diplomats were the least diplomatic people we had in Baghdad). When Secretary Hillary Clinton took over, she moved, to her credit, to dump the psychos.

We’re here, the final hours of the 2012 Presidential campaign.  It’s D-Day, Judgment day and Super Bowl Sunday all rolled into one.  To me, this campaign season has seemed to be the longest I can remember.  Maybe my memory is fading, but I can’t remember a campaign as hard fought as this one.  Yes, the Bush, Gore election of 2000 was aggressively fought and the battle of the “hanging chads” seemed to go on forever, but somehow it worked itself out and our country righted itself in a couple of months.

I’m not so sure about this election.  The division between the parties cuts so deep and is so close to hitting a vital organ that I wonder if we will accept the result and come together as a country like we always have.  Usually both parties have differences, but they have always had a common ground.  No matter what your stand on social issues, the safety and security of the United States was highlighted on both sides.  It always seemed that no matter who took the reins, Democrat or Republican, their loyalty was to the country and its people.

Like I said, I’m not so sure about this election.  Yes, I am a conservative and align myself with the Republican Party even though there are some issues that I disagree with.  I see Romney as the obvious choice because he has the track record and fortitude to get this country out of the mess it is in.  We gave Obama a chance.  He had four years to at least make SOME sort of progress, but the numbers don’t lie, we are in worse shape than when he took office, and our foreign policy is in shambles.

My biggest concern however, is one that the media has all but blacked out and refused to even

Senior intelligence, State Department and FBI officials can expect to be grilled next week as congressional hearings resume on the terror attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya that killed four Americans.

Lawmakers want answers to many outstanding questions surrounding the September 11 armed assault on the diplomatic facility and a CIA annex in Benghazi.

Specifically, they want to know who was responsible, whether it was planned, the intelligence reporting on the threat to Libya prior the attack, and whether security was adequate.

The Senate Intelligence Committee will conduct a closed-door hearing on November 15. Scheduled witnesses include Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director David Petraeus, Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce and National Counterterrorism Center Director Matt Olsen.

Clapper, Petraeus and Olsen will also testify behind closed doors to the House Intelligence Committee on the same day.

House investigators asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to testify next week about the September 11 terrorist attack in Benghazi, but she declined citing a scheduling conflict.

“[Clinton] was asked to appear at House Foreign Affairs next week, and we have written back to the Chairman to say that she’ll be on travel next week,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters yesterday. “She has a commitment with the Secretary of Defense to the AUSMIN Ministerial.” Per AFP, “AUSMIN is the highest level forum for Australia and US consultation on foreign policy, defense and strategic issues.” The United States is reportedly concerned about Australia’s plan to cut their defense spending.

WASHINGTON — New Pentagon details show that the first U.S. military unit arrived in Libya more than 15 hours after the attack on the consulate in Benghazi was over, and four Americans, including the ambassador, were dead.

A Defense Department timeline obtained by The Associated Press underscores how far the military response lagged behind the Sept. 11 attack, due largely to the long distances the commando teams had to travel to get to Libya.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and his top military adviser were notified of the attack about 50 minutes after it began and were about to head into a previously scheduled meeting with President Barack Obama. The meeting quickly turned into a discussion of potential responses to the unfolding situation in Benghazi, where militants had surrounded the consulate and set it on fire. The first wave of the attack at the consulate lasted less than two hours.

The terrorist attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya is back on the front burner in Congress now that President Obama has won reelection.

No fewer than four House and Senate panels plan to hold closed-door briefings with administration officials about the attack this week, while one committee is holding a public hearing. Members of both parties say they expect the Benghazi probe to last well into Obama's second term.

Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), who has the inside track on the gavel of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in the next Congress, has promised his Republican colleagues he would conduct a vigorous investigation of Libya.

“If selected as chairman, I will work against the Administration's most harmful foreign policies, and exercise strong oversight over the State Department and other agencies. The Administration's behavior in the Benghazi incident still demands an accounting,” Royce said in a statement.

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), who's running for ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs committee, said Democrats have questions as well.

“If it's going to be a legitimate probe by Congress, then it's not something I would oppose. Because I really want to get to the bottom of it,” Engel told The Hill. “If it's only going to be a probe to be used for political purposes, then I would remind my Republican colleagues that the election's over. Barack Obama has been reelected to a second term. And we ought to start off his second term trying to come together rather than trying to play gotcha politics.”

The attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi less than two months before the election became a political issue as Republicans saw an opening to challenge Obama’s record on national security.

The administration’s shifting explanation of what happened that night — first it was a protest sparked by an anti-Islam video, then an organized terrorist attack — and revelations about security requests in Libya have raised questions that remain largely unanswered.

With the election now over, Engel said it's up to Republicans in Congress to set a new tone and work with Democrats, but partisan tensions remain.

Six Senate Republicans on Friday blasted Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta for what they called his failure to explain why U.S. armed forces didn't intervene on the night of the attack after they sent 13 letters raising their concerns.

“Today, we finally received from the Secretary of Defense the first response to our many letters,” Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) wrote in a statement. “Unfortunately, Secretary Panetta's letter only confirms what we already knew — that there were no forces at a sufficient alert posture in Europe, Africa or the Middle East to provide timely assistance to our fellow citizens in need in Libya. The letter fails to address the most important question — why not?”

White House spokesman Jay Carney suggested Friday more information would be forthcoming on the administration's response to the Libya assault.

The Deeper Questions Behind the Ambassador’s Murder … and the CIA Boss’ Sudden Resignation

While the GOP is attacking (and Dems defending) the Obama administration in connection with the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, there is a deeper story.

Sure, it is stunning that the State Department never requested backup or that people such as Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer allege that President Obama personally watched in real time the attacks as they occurred via video feeds from drones flying over the Benghazi consulate.

But these claims only can be assessed – and the whole confusing mess only makes sense – if the deeper underlying story is first exposed.
Many Syrian Terrorists Come from Libya

The U.S. supported opposition which overthrew Libya’s Gadaffi was largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists.

According to a 2007 report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center’s center, the Libyan city of Benghazi was one of Al Qaeda’s main headquarters – and bases for sending Al Qaeda fighters into Iraq – prior to the overthrow of Gaddafi:
WestPoint 1 LibyaAQvsAS Why Did CIA Director Petraeus Suddenly Resign ... And Why Was the U.S. Ambassador to Libya Murdered?
Al Qaeda is now largely in control of Libya.  Indeed, Al Qaeda flags were flown over the Benghazi courthouse once Gaddafi was toppled.

(Incidentally, Gaddafi was on the verge of invading Benghazi in 2011, 4 years after the West Point report cited Benghazi as a hotbed of Al Qaeda terrorists. Gaddafi claimed – rightly it turns out – that Benghazi was an Al Qaeda stronghold and a main source of the Libyan rebellion.  But NATO planes stopped him, and protected Benghazi.)

CNN, the Telegraph,  the Washington Times, and many other mainstream sources confirm that Al Qaeda terrorists from Libya have since flooded into Syria to fight the Assad regime.

Mainstream sources also confirm that the Syrian opposition is largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists.  See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

The U.S. has been arming the Syrian opposition since 2006. The post-Gaddafi Libyan government is also itself a top funder and arms supplier of the Syrian opposition.
The Real Story At Benghazi

This brings us to the murder of ambassador Stevens and the sudden resignation of CIA boss David Petraeus.

The Wall Street Journal, Telegraph and other sources confirm that the US consulate in Benghazi was mainly being used for a secret CIA operation.

They say that the State Department presence in Benghazi “provided diplomatic cover” for the previously hidden CIA mission.

Reuters notes that the CIA mission involved finding and repurchasing heavy weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals.

Business Insider reports that Stevens may have been linked with Syrian terrorists:

    There’s growing evidence that U.S. agents—particularly murdered ambassador Chris Stevens—were at least aware of heavy weapons moving from Libya to jihadist Syrian rebels.

     

    In March 2011 Stevens became the official U.S. liaison to the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan opposition, working directly with Abdelhakim Belhadj of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group—a group that has now disbanded, with some fighters reportedly participating in the attack that took Stevens’ life.

     

    In November 2011 The Telegraph reported that Belhadj, acting as head of the Tripoli Military Council, “met with Free Syrian Army [FSA] leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey” in an effort by the new Libyan government to provide money and weapons to the growing insurgency in Syria.

     

    Last month The Times of London reported that a Libyan ship “carrying the largest consignment of weapons for Syria … has docked in Turkey.” The shipment reportedly weighed 400 tons and included SA-7 surface-to-air anti-craft missiles and rocket-propelled grenades.

     

    ***

     

    Reuters reports that Syrian rebels have been using those heavy weapons to shoot down Syrian helicopters and fighter jets.

     

    The ship’s captain was ”a Libyan from Benghazi and the head of an organization called the Libyan National Council for Relief and Support,” which was presumably established by the new government.

     

    That means that Ambassador Stevens had only one person—Belhadj—between himself and the Benghazi man who brought heavy weapons to Syria.

     

    Furthermore, we know that jihadists are the best fighters in the Syrian opposition, but where did they come from?

     

    Last week The Telegraph reported that a FSA commander called them “Libyans” when he explained that the FSA doesn’t “want these extremist people here.”

     

    And if the new Libyan government was sending seasoned Islamic fighters and 400 tons of heavy weapons to Syria through a port in southern Turkey—a deal brokered by Stevens’ primary Libyan contact during the Libyan revolution—then the governments of Turkey and the U.S. surely knew about it.

     

    Furthermore there was a CIA post in Benghazi, located 1.2 miles from the U.S. consulate, used as “a base for, among other things, collecting information on the proliferation of weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, including surface-to-air missiles” … and that its security features “were more advanced than those at rented villa where Stevens died.”

    And we know that the CIA has been funneling weapons to the rebels in southern Turkey. The question is whether the CIA has been involved in handing out the heavy weapons from Libya.

In other words, ambassador Stevens may have been a key player in deploying Libyan terrorists and arms to fight the Syrian government.

Other sources also claim that the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was mainly being used as a CIA operation to ship fighters and arms to Syria.

Many have speculated that – if normal security measures weren’t taken to protect the Benghazi consulate or to rescue ambassador Stevens – it was  because the CIA was trying to keep an extremely low profile to protect its cover of being a normal State Department operation.
Why Did CIA Chief David Petraeus Suddenly Resign?

CIA boss David Petraeus suddenly resigned, admitting to an affair.  This could be the real explanation, given that affairs of high-level intelligence chiefs could compromise national security.

But the timing of Petraeus’ resignation becomes more interesting once one learns that that he was scheduled to testify under oath next week before power House and Senate committees regarding the Benghazi consulate.

Many speculate that it wasn’t an affair – but the desire to avoid testifying on Benghazi – which was the real reason for Petraeus’ sudden resignation.
The Big Picture

Whatever the scope of the CIA’s operation in Benghazi – and whatever the real reason for the resignation of the CIA chief – the key is our historical and ongoing foreign policy.

For decades, the U.S. has backed terrorists for geopolitical ends.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the U.S. military “did everything they were in position to do” about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya.

In a letter and timeline sent to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Panetta said the Sept. 11 attack on the consulate and nearby annex in Benghazi were over before U.S. forces could arrive.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83682.html#ixzz2C24yY9uQ

Watch out! There is a cosmic force at work. One by one, people caught up in the Benghazi Triangle are disappearing.

First it was AFRICOM commander General Carter F. Ham who was given early retirement. Ham’s sphere of military authority extended to Benghazi.

Then Rear Admiral Charles M. Gaouette, who commanded the aircraft carrier attack task group in the Mediterranean near Benghazi, was recalled to Bremerton pending a Navy Inspector General investigation.   

And now another coincidental “resignation” in the chain of command working the Benghazi overwatch is either pointing to a cosmic force at work, or gasp! a cover up.

A cover-up in the Obama administration?

I know what you are thinking: No way; not the most transparent, patriotic administration ever.

It must be an act of the gods or perhaps the Mayan calendar.         

But really, the recent resignation of General Petraeus from the position of director of the C.I.A. has to be related to Benghazi. Either that or to the Bermuda Triangle.   

Because here is another remarkable coincidence: Neither the FBI, nor United States Marines are responsible for the security of consulates and embassies.

The C.I.A. is tasked with that job.

Jennifer Griffin at FOX News today confirmed that the US was holding prisoners at the Benghazi annex near the consulate compound. US agents handed three prisoners over to Libyan authorities on their way out of the city on September 12. The prisoners may have been held in the compound for several days.

Paula Broadwell leaked information on the US annex prisoners in a speech she gave at Denver University in October.

Paula Broadwell, the former military intelligence officer whose alleged affair with CIA Director David Petraeus culminated in the end of his career, had earlier made some startling, now-revealed claims about the agency’s role in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi.

In an Oct. 26 speech at the University of Denver, she said that Libyan militants had attacked the post to retrieve some fellow fighters who’d been taken prisoner at the nearby CIA annex. She also seems to suggest that Petraeus himself knew about it, implying that he may have been her source. Here’s the relevant passage from the speech, transcribed in full here by Foreign Policy’s Blake Hounshell.

    Now, I don’t know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex had actually, um, had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back. So that’s still being vetted.

    The challenging thing for General Petraeus is that in his new position, he’s not allowed to communicate with the press. So he’s known all of this — they had correspondence with the CIA station chief in, in Libya. Within 24 hours they kind of knew what was happening.

The CIA is flatly denying this. “CIA adamant that Broadwell claims about agency holding prisoners at Benghazi are not true,” The Post’s Greg Miller tweeted. Fox News cites a single anonymous source saying that the CIA annex had prisoners at the time, and “multiple intelligence sources” as saying that the annex had at different times held prisoners. So why did she say it? I can only imagine three possible explanations, all of which should be taken with many grains of salt:

1. Intelligence from faraway conflict areas can be hazy, and the story got honestly confused. Who knows how long or convoluted the chain of information was from Benghazi to Broadwell, whether or not it went through Petraeus, and it’s not hard to imagine a misstatement or mistake getting amplified.

“Now, I don't know if a lot of you have heard this but the CIA annex had actually taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner, and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try get these prisoners back, so that’s still being vetted,” Broadwell said during the question-and-answer session of her presentation when an audience member asked her to comment on Libya.

Broadwell, who was speaking at her alma mater about her biography of Petraeus, confirmed the Fox News report (Broadwell said Jennifer Griffin's report had "insightful information") that came out on the day of her speech that said the Obama administration denied Americans on the ground in Libya the security and help they requested, telling NAVY Seals in Libya who wanted to help U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans who were eventually murdered to “stand down.”

“The facts that came out today is that the ground forces there at the CIA annex, which is different from the consulate, were requesting reinforcements,” Broadwell said. “They were requesting the – it's called the CINC’s (Commander-in-Chief’s) In Extremis Force – a group of Delta Force operators, our very, most talented guys we have in the military. They could have come and reinforced the consulate and the CIA annex that were under attack. “

Broadwell said the “challenging thing” for Petraeus was, as Director of the CIA, he was “not allowed to communicate with the press.”

“So he's known all of this – they had correspondence with the CIA station chief in Libya, within 24 hours they kind of knew what was happening,” Broadwell said.

The Obama administration tried to claim an anti-Muhammed video caused the terrorist attacks and has repeatedly punted on whether they they turned down additional security measures and reinforcements that were requested. Broadwell, though, said there was a system failure that led to four Americans being murdered in part because additional security forces were denied.

The CIA is denying an assertion made by David Petraeus' biographer and girlfriend that the agency held militants in Libya before the Sept. 11 attack.

During a talk last month at the University of Denver, author Paula Broadwell said the CIA had detained people at a secret facility in Benghazi, and the attack on the U.S. Consulate there was an effort to free those prisoners.

President Barack Obama issued an executive order in January 2009 stripping the CIA of its authority to take prisoners.

The move means the CIA can no longer operate secret jails across the globe as it had done under the administration of President George W. Bush.

Special Operations Speaks Sets Thursday Press Conference to Present Congress with Petition Demanding Benghazi Massacre Special Prosecutor

 

 

WHO:

 

Members of Congress:

The Honorable Louie Gohmert (R-TX 1)

Additional members are likely to attend. We will update as each member confirms.

 

Special Operations Speaks, PAC Leadership:

Brigadier General Joseph S. Stringham, US Army (Ret.)

Captain Larry Bailey, (SEAL), USN (Ret.)

Colonel Dick Brauer, USAF (Ret.)

 

WHAT: SOS leaders will present the congressmen with a petition containing the names of more than 100,000 Americans demanding a special prosecutor be appointed to fully investigate the events in Washington and abroad surrounding the murder of the US ambassador to Libya, the ambassador’s aide, and the two Navy Seals attempting to defend US property in Libya.

Secret CIA prison?  Where are all the people that wet their dress about Abu graib?

So, how long does it take to get military assets stationed mere hours away from a firefight to a firefight? Apparently, it takes some 22 hours. When former Navy SEALs called for backup at the consulate in Benghazi on September 11, American assets were stationed both in Libya and in Italy. The help never came; both Navy SEALs were killed after a seven-hour ordeal.

Fifteen hours after that, the military finally showed up. According to the Associated Press:

New Pentagon details show that the first U.S. military unit arrived in Libya more than 15 hours after the attack on the consulate in Benghazi was over, and four Americans, including the ambassador, were dead.

A Defense Department timeline obtained by The Associated Press underscores how far the military response lagged behind the Sept. 11 attack, due largely to the long distances the commando teams had to travel to get to Libya.

As the AP also reports:

The Benghazi debacle boils down to a single key factor — the granting or withholding of “cross-border authority.” This opinion is informed by my experience as a Navy SEAL officer who took a NavSpecWar Detachment to Beirut.

Once the alarm is sent  – in this case, from the consulate in Benghazi — dozens of HQs are notified and are in the planning loop in real time, including AFRICOM and EURCOM, both located in Germany. Without waiting for specific orders from Washington, they begin planning and executing rescue operations, including moving personnel, ships, and aircraft forward toward the location of the crisis. However, there is one thing they can’t do without explicit orders from the president: cross an international border on a hostile mission.

That is the clear “red line” in this type of a crisis situation.

No administration wants to stumble into a war because a jet jockey in hot pursuit (or a mixed-up SEAL squad in a rubber boat) strays into hostile territory. Because of this, only the president can give the order for our military to cross a nation’s border without that nation’s permission. For the Osama bin Laden mission, President Obama granted CBA for our forces to enter Pakistani airspace.

On the other side of the CBA coin: in order to prevent a military rescue in Benghazi, all the POTUS has to do is not grant cross-border authority. If he does not, the entire rescue mission (already in progress) must stop in its tracks.

Ships can loiter on station, but airplanes fall out of the sky, so they must be redirected to an air base (Sigonella, in Sicily) to await the POTUS decision on granting CBA. If the decision to grant CBA never comes, the besieged diplomatic outpost in Benghazi can rely only on assets already “in country” in Libya — such as the Tripoli quick reaction force and the Predator drones. These assets can be put into action on the independent authority of the acting ambassador or CIA station chief in Tripoli. They are already “in country,” so CBA rules do not apply to them.

How might this process have played out in the White House?

If, at the 5:00 p.m. Oval Office meeting with Defense Secretary Panetta and Vice President Biden, President Obama said about Benghazi: “I think we should not go the military action route,” meaning that no CBA will be granted, then that is it. Case closed. Another possibility is that the president might have said: “We should do what we can to help them … but no military intervention from outside of Libya.” Those words then constitute “standing orders” all the way down the chain of command, via Panetta and General Dempsey to General Ham and the subordinate commanders who are already gearing up to rescue the besieged outpost.

When that meeting took place, it may have seemed as if the consulate attack was over, so President Obama might have thought the situation would stabilize on its own from that point forward. If he then goes upstairs to the family quarters, or otherwise makes himself “unavailable,” then his last standing orders will continue to stand until he changes them, even if he goes to sleep until the morning of September 12.

Unnamed sources tell Fox News that the CIA Annex in Benghazi held three Libyan militia members for days and that retrieving these detainees may have been a motive for the September 11th attack on the nearby US consulate.

The new reporting builds on details previously published by Fox's Jennifer Griffin and information apparently leaked by ex-intelligence officer Paula Broadwell last month. Speaking on Fox News Monday, Griffin indicated new sources suggest the CIA annex may have been a detention site for local militia forces and even for some prisoners from other parts of Africa.

Washington is still reeling from the resignation of General David Petraeus as head of the CIA just days before he was supposed to testify on Capitol Hill about what the CIA knew about the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi on September 11, and when it knew it.

The many questions surrounding that scandal–including why the FBI was reading the CIA director’s emails and Petraeus’s mistress’s bizarre claims about a secret prison in the Benghazi CIA annex -- just add to the picture of an Obama administration out of control on national security—and the conclusion that someone knowingly put an American ambassador at risk to his life; left him there to die; and then lied about it afterwards.

As Congressional hearings on Benghazi start up again this week, three key issues demand answers.

First, why did the Obama administration ignore repeated pleas to strengthen security for our people in Libya, not only from State Department security chief Andrew Wood and the man on the ground in charge of security, Greg Nordstrom; but from Ambassador Christopher Stevens himself, who sent a memo on June 25 headlined “fragile security deteriorating, “ noting the rise of pro-Al Qaeda sentiment across Libya–and why it refuse Stevens additional security for his trip to Benghazi, knowing it might cost him his life? 

Second, when did the president and/or his national security staff b

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/11/13/three-key-questions-on-benghazi-scandal/?intcmp=trending#ixzz2C8nreBEh

President Barack Obama revealed at his press conference this afternoon that he is responsible for sending U.N. ambassador Susan Rice to speak to the American people a few days after the September 11 Benghazi terror attack.

"As I said before, she made an appearance at the request of the White House in which she gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her," Obama said at the press conference, defending the statements the ambassador to the U.N. made regarding the Benghazi attack.

Rice has been widely criticized for giving misleading statements about Benghazi. She maintained that the killing of four Americans stemmed for a spontaneous protest that got violent.

Later evidence, however, revealed that U.S. officials had real-time updates from Americans on the ground in Benghazi, and that terrorists were immediately suspected.

The war of words over Benghazi escalated Wednesday when President Obama told his critics to "go after me" rather than Ambassador Susan Rice. Those critics then said they would do exactly that.

"Mr. President, don't think for one minute I don't hold you ultimately responsible for Benghazi. I think you failed as Commander in Chief before, during, and after the attack," said Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican.

The exchange came after Mr. Graham and Sen. John McCain said they would try to block Ms. Rice if Mr. Obama tapped her to become secretary of state. They said she hasn't done an exemplary job in her current post as ambassador to the U.N., and also said she has damaged her credibility because she inaccurately blamed the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in Benghazi on a mob protest.

Mr. Obama, in a press conference, angrily said his critics should instead go after him, and said Ms. Rice was only acting on behalf of the White House.

"She made an appearance at the request of the White House in which she gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been

Read more: Graham to Obama: I hold you responsible for Benghazi - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2012/nov/14/graham-obama-i-hold-you-responsible/#ixzz2CEetSzco
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Sen. John McCain is calling for establishment of a Watergate-style congressional committee to investigate the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The Arizona Republican tells "CBS This Morning" he believes the unanswered questions surrounding events at Benghazi on Sept. 11 require such a select committee.

McCain accused the Obama administration of making misleading statements. He also said U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went on national television and said incorrectly that the violence was the result of a demonstration against an anti-Muslim movie made in the

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/McCain-Benghazi-Stevens-hearing/2012/11/14/id/464044#ixzz2CJapViFL

Petraeus Scandal: Four Americans have been killed under still-unexplained circumstances, yet the obsession is with a general's mistress and not with the truth of why these men were left to die in Libya.

How ironic that the FBI agents who descended on the home of Paula Broadwell to gather information on the mistress of now-former CIA Director David Petraeus probably did a better job than the FBI agents who gave a cursory look at our burned-out consulate in Benghazi, leaving behind classified documents strewn on the floor and even our ambassador's diary to be picked up by CNN.

A press that ignored the administration's incompetence and swallowed its lies whole now salivates over every episode of what some have dubbed "The Real Housewives of West Point." Protect the president, but slime the military as a commune of lechers.

Senate Intelligence Committee head Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is insisting that her committee hear directly from Petraeus about his October trip to Libya to personally inquire about the Sept. 11 terror attack on the Benghazi consulate. The general reportedly will cooperate.

What did the nation's chief spy find out? What's in his report? Did it have anything to do with the curious timing of his "resignation," just after the election and just before he was to testify to Congress? Will it blow the administration's narrative out of the water?

Read More At IBD: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/111412-633490-benghazi-not-broadwell-should-be-focus.htm#ixzz2CJjsyIXQ

TUNIS, Tunisia — The lawyer for a militant detained for attacking the U.S. embassy in Tunisia says his client has died from a heart attack after a two month hunger strike protesting his innocence.

Abdel-Basset Ben Mberek, the lawyer, said his client died Thursday after being transferred to a Tunis hospital when his condition declined.

Bachir al-Gholi, 23 and father of a six-month-old daughter, survived two heart attacks and succumbed to the third, his lawyer added.

Following region-wide anger over a U.S.-made film insulting the Prophet Muhammad, some 2,000 militants attacked the U.S. embassy in Tunis in September and looted a nearby school.

(Reuters) - Former CIA Director David Petraeus told Congress on Friday that he and the spy agency had sought to make clear from the outset that September's deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, involved an al Qaeda affiliate, lawmakers said.

Petraeus told lawmakers "there were extremists in the group" that launched the attack on the diplomatic mission, describing them as affiliates of al Qaeda and other groups, said Representative C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives intelligence committee.

"The fact is that he clarified it," Ruppersberger said.

Petraeus appeared behind closed doors before the House and Senate intelligence panels the week after quitting his CIA post because of an extramarital affair. He made no public remarks.

Another lawmaker, Republican Representative Peter King, said Petraeus' account in the closed-door session differed from the assessment the CIA chief gave to Congress two months ago, just days after the September 11 attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other

(Reuters) - The White House did not heavily alter talking points about the attacks on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya, an official said on Saturday.

"If there were adjustments made to them within the intelligence community, that's common, and that's something they would have done themselves," Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, told reporters. "The only edit ... made by the White House was the factual edit as to how to refer to the facility."

David Petraeus told Congress Friday in closed hearings that the CIA believed from the start that the September 11 attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi were by terrorists. That leaves one VIP who's still missing from Congressional scrutiny: Hillary Clinton.

GOP Congressman Peter King said Mr. Petraeus's testimony differed from what the former CIA director told Congress immediately after the attacks. Mr. King also said Mr. Petraeus said that the CIA's original talking points on the attacks were edited. The altered version became the basis for U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's misleading and now infamous comments blaming the attacks on a YouTube video. Both that discrepancy and the issue of the altered talking points need further digging, especially if Ms. Rice is nominated to be the next Secretary of State.

But Mr. Petraeus wasn't responsible for lax consulate security or the U.S. policy that led to the Libya debacle. That's Mrs. Clinton's bailiwick. Last month in interviews from deepest Peru, the Secretary of State said "I take responsibility" for Benghazi.

President Barack Obama has survived Benghazigate — thus far. In the weeks and days leading up to the November 6 elections, President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and their advisors, no doubt, had containment of this Libyan fiasco foremost in their minds. Would toxic details of the deadly debacle leak out and spell doom for the struggling administration in the closing hours of the campaign?

A CBS News national telephone poll of likely voters conducted October 25-28 did not portend well for Team Obama. Locked in a dead heat with Mitt Romney, and with the economy in shambles and sliding toward a fiscal cliff, unemployment sky high, and a looming debt tsunami, the last thing the Obama White House could afford was a late-inning foreign policy disaster, especially when Obama propagandists were touting foreign policy and national security as their candidate’s great strength.

According to the CBS poll, only 38 percent of voters approved of President Obama’s handling of the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead: U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, his assistant Sean Smith, and former Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. Over half of all voters (51 percent) and 57 percent of Independents disapproved of his handling of Benghazi.

Even though the conventional wisdom held that pocketbook issues would determine the outcome of the race, Benghazi could have spelled the end for Obama. The numbers were looking very bad, and that was even with the overwhelmingly pro-Obama mainstream media bending over backward to cover for the White House and keep Libya off the media radar screens. As more and more troubling details about Benghazi began leaking out, the major corporate media smothered the facts and stuck to the White House talking points.

The full details about precisely what transpired at the American “consulate” in Benghazi on the night of September 11, 2012, still remain largely suppressed by the Obama administration and its accomplices in the major media. However, the damning evidence that has surfaced paints an ugly picture of a commander in chief who ignored months of repeated warnings about escalating violence and terrorist activity in Benghazi, ignored and/or denied requests for additional security, and after the attack on our “consulate” began, refused to send adequate backup and assistance to the American defenders who were vastly outnumbered and under fire.

Most of President Obama’s harshest Benghazi critics have focused on these twin security failures: failure to heed the prior warnings of those on the ground in Libya, and failure to aid our forces after they had come under attack. In addition, critics have

The cover-up is extremely hypocritical coming from the Democrats. The left was outraged over President Reagan secretly providing U.S. arms to the Contras in Nicaragua. The Iran-Contra hearings resulted in Reagan dismissing Oliver North from his position at the National Security Council. In contrast, there has been no fall guy losing their job over Benghazigate, even though four Americans are dead. Instead, the opposite is occurring; guys like Petraeus are ousted in order to continue to protect the cover-up. The Obama administration will stop at nothing to protect those complicit in the cover-up. As a popular graphic now making the rounds on the Internet declares, “If Obama would have defended our Ambassador like he did Susan Rice, four Americans would still be alive.”

Thursday morning, U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, watched some very different video.

It was a real-time feed of the attack from the consulate's closed-circuit TV system and from an unmanned aircraft flying overhead.

It was a revealing account of a tragic episode that figured in the U.S. presidential campaign and still haunts the Obama administration. And it confirmed Rooney's concerns, he said.

"Our ambassador is dead," he said. "Three other Americans are dead. We didn't protect them. We were grossly unprepared for any kind of infiltration of that consulate."

The video, Rooney said, shows "these guys literally walked into the compound — it's not like what you would think — people running around and guns blazing. There was gunfire at the beginning, but then they walked in and stole stuff.

"In one case a guy walked out with an Xbox. Another guy walked out with a suit. Then they left and set the building on fire. And that's how the ambassador died."

"It was infuriating to me," Rooney said. "The whole time there is a Libyan militia there, supposed to be protecting the compound. At least helping. But not what we are seeing on the video."

Stevens and Smith died at the consulate.

The video, said Rooney, does not show how they were killed.

But it does show how Smith "did everything he could to save the life of our ambassador and not leave his side."

The White House yesterday denied it edited talking points about the terrorist attack that killed the American ambassador to Libya — contradicting remarks made a day earlier by disgraced ex-CIA chief David Petraeus.

“The only edit that was made by the White House and also by the State Department was to change the word ‘consulate’ to the word ‘diplomatic facility,’ since the facility in Benghazi was not formally a consulate,” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters aboard Air Force One.

“Other than that, we were guided by the points that were provided by the intelligence community. So I can’t speak to any other edits that may have been made.”

During an Oct. 26 question-and-answer session at the University of Denver, Paula Broadwell, who's been named as the woman whose affair with CIA Director David Petraeus led to his resignation Friday, told the audience that two Libyan militiamen were being held at the CIA annex and suggested that the attackers were targeting the annex, rather than the consulate.

"Now, I don't know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex had actually, um, had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner, and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back. So that's still being vetted," she said.

But most here don't believe that. The guard, who stayed around the consulate for the duration of the assault, said he thought that the subsequent attack on the CIA compound happened because the attackers had followed the Americans who were fleeing the consulate to the CIA annex.

"They came to kill Americans," he said.

The assault at the consulate began somewhere between 9:25 and 9:40 p.m. The CIA annex came under fire twice in subsequent hours, according to a timeline released by the CIA. The first attack consisted of what the agency called "sporadic small arms fire and RPG rounds," a reference to rocket-propelled grenades. That assault lasted about 90 minutes, from 11:30 p.m. to 1 a.m.

The second, more serious attack took place at 5:15 the next morning, according to the CIA, when assailants lobbed mortar rounds into the compound for 11 minutes. It was during this assault that CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, both former Navy SEALs, were killed.

Since the attacks, events have unfolded very differently for the two compounds.

At the consulate, gawkers and looters still could enter the property, and no repairs had been made to the burned-out buildings. Two months after he died here of smoke inhalation, Ambassador Christopher Stevens' clothes still hung in the closet; his ties were strewn on the floor. In the building that served as an office and operations center, State Department stationery littered the floor and lettered Post-it notes left by the FBI on the day agents came here to investigate were stuck throughout the compound buildings.

But at the CIA safe house, American officials cleared their property within days of the attack. By Sept. 14, three new families had moved into the four houses that make up the compound, according to a gatekeeper at the door. Nearby residents said the landlord wanted Libyans living there as soon as possible, so his property wouldn't be destroyed by extremists angry that the CIA had been stationed there.

In October Paula Broadwell told an audience that the CIA in Benghazi "had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner" at its secret annex.

The CIA flatly denied the claim, saying that the agency "has not had detention authority since January 2009, when Executive Order 13491 was issued. Any suggestion that the Agency is still in the detention business is uninformed and baseless."

Marc Thiessen of the American Enterprise Institute points out that the denial is factually incorrect because while Obama ordered the closure of all CIA detention facilities (i.e. “Black Sites”), the order states that it "does not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis."

Since “short-term, transitory basis” is left undefined, Thiessen concludes that "if CIA was holding detained militia fighters in the Benghazi annex on a short-term, transitory basis, it would not be in violation of Executive Order 1349."


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/cia-benghazi-2012-11#ixzz2ChmYDo9x

Paula Broadwell, the biographer and mistress of now-former CIA Director David Petraeus, revealed sensitive if not classified information about the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. mission in Benghazi during a talk on Oct. 26 in Denver, Blake Hounshell of Foreign Policy reports.

"Now I don't know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex [to the consulate] had actually—had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back," Broadwell, a former military intelligence officer, said in response to a audience question about Benghazi.

The CIA adamantly denied the claims a couple of hours after Israeli news outlet Arutz Sheva first published a partial transcript of Broadwell’s speech.

But a source told Fox News today that "there were Libyan militiamen being held at the CIA annex in Benghazi and


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/paula-broadwell-benghazi-2012-11#ixzz2ChnYs4V9

(CBS News) WASHINGTON - CBS News has learned that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) cut specific references to "al Qaeda" and "terrorism" from the unclassified talking points given to Ambassador Susan Rice on the Benghazi consulate attack - with the agreement of the CIA and FBI. The White House or State Department did not make those changes.

There has been considerable discussion about who made the changes to the talking points that Rice stuck to in her television appearances on Sept. 16 (video), five days after the attack that killed American Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, and three other U.S. nationals.

Republicans have accused her of making misleading statements by referring to the assault as a "spontaneous" demonstration by extremists. Some have suggested she used the terminology she did for political reasons.

Today, the White House officially refused to release photos of US officials during the September 11 terrorist attacks on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that ended with the deaths of four Americans. CBS News requested the photos on October 31; the White House has routinely released photos showing members of the Obama administration in their hero poses during national security crises. That happened most famously with pictures of the Obama administration key players clustered into the White House situation room during the raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.

The White House told CBS to ask the White House Photo Office; that office then delayed for nearly three weeks. Finally, the Office said they wouldn’t release any photos without the permission of the White House Press Office, which has been utterly unresponsive to this point. CBS News has also not been told any details about the Obama administration’s actions during the Benghazi events.

It now looks as though the White House's excuse for the pre-election Libya cover-up is itself a cover up. Last week we were told by the Administration (and the compliant media) that during her now-infamous round robin of five Sunday news shows, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice was only telling us what she was told by the intelligence community. We were also told that references to al-Qaeda were edited out of the talking points in order to avoid tipping off the attackers that we were on to them. According to a number of CBS News' sources, this simply isn't true.

As recently as yesterday, though, Rice doubled down on this defense:

"I relied soley and squarely on the information provided to me by the intelligence community. I made clear that the information was preliminary and that our investigations would give us the definitive answers."

At first glance, Rice's comments might not appear to move the ball, but they do tell us that the Administration has found its defense and intends to stick to it -- that defense being that Rice was only parroting the false information she was given. But now, thanks to some good reporting from CBS News, we know things weren't that simple.

Let's back up just a little bit…

Last week, former CIA Chief Davis Petraeus testified that within a day he knew the assault on our consulate in Benghazi was a premeditated terrorist attack committed by a Libyan militia with ties to al-Qaeda. As a result, Petraeus authorized the release of this information to the public in talking points to be given to the White House and to lawmakers. CBS News reports that references to al-Qaeda were  later removed by Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) -- an agency run by James Clapper, an Obama appointee. The FBI also made substantial edits.

But here's where the plot thickens.

DNI spokesman Shawn Turner told CBS News, "The intelligence community assessed from the very beginning that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack." He added that this classified information was shared with the White House. CBS News then quite correctly concludes that as a member of Obama's cabinet, Susan Rice would would've known this. All cabinet members are given classified briefings.

The bottom line, then, is that during her Sunday show appearances, Rice knew the information she was spreading was false. 

Note that this report doesn’t pin the blame on Clapper himself.  It instead locates the change in Clapper’s “office,” allowing for a rather non-specific assignment that makes almost no sense at all.  Are we to believe that a Clapper aide overruled David Petraeus’ assessment of Benghazi?  If so, on what basis?

The report also states that the reason for the redaction was because the link to AQ was “too tenuous.”  However, the presence of mortars and RPGs, as well as coordinated fire and attack strategies in play, made it clear “almost immediately” to Petraeus and others in the CIA that this was much more than a spontaneous demonstration run amok.  That made the YouTube video explanation rather “tenuous” too, no?  And yet that stayed in the talking points while terrorism got excised.

This explanation seems even more tenuous than the previous stories coming from the White House.  If Petraeus knew “almost immediately” that this was an act of deliberate terrorism and included that in his talking points, then we need an explanation of who in the “office of the DNI” removed that explanation, and why — more than just the “too tenuous” excuse here that turned out to be totally wrong — and whether they got pressured to do so.

The answer to this question may be that the Obama Administration is less than fond of free speech that "slanders" Islam. In his now infamous Cairo speech in 2009 Obama told an Egyptian Muslim audience, including the Muslim Brotherhood, on foreign soil that he considers "it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear." In the aftermath of the Muslim world's protests to the video, Obama told the UN General Assembly that "(t)he future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam." Nakoula was arrested the following day.

During the past year, of the 10,823 adults under supervision in the federal probation system, only 829 had their probation revoked for technical reasons. Usually the violations that attract the attention of the courts are those that involve violence, drugs, or other serious unwholesome behavior. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula has been sentenced to a year in prison for probation violations that are none of these. His case stinks to high heaven, with its slow process, the prosecution's demand for serious prison time, the very public arrest, the decision by the U.S. Attorney's office to have a senior prosecutor handle the case, and the judge's decision to imprison immediately without any bail. Then, there is the statement by the Secretary of State, whose position, unless I am misremembering my American government classes, does not have jurisdiction over domestic criminal matters. And let's not forget that the government's very public identification and prosecution of Nakoula – done for his speech, and not for his probation violations – has actually endangered his life, and that of his family's, even forcing them to flee their own home.

I would love to believe that this case, and this criminal sentence, is totally focused on Mr. Nakoula's actual probation violations, and has nothing to do with the film he wrote about Muhammed. I would love to believe this, but the surrounding circumstances are just too suspicious.

Three Republican senators who met Tuesday with U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice say they left the meeting with more unanswered questions about her comments after the deadly September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

“I am more disturbed now than before,” said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.

The Capitol Hill meeting lasted about 90 minutes and also was attended by acting CIA Director Michael Morell. 

Graham was joined by Sens. Kelly Ayotte, of New Hampshire, and John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“I’m significantly troubled by the answers we got and didn’t get,” McCain said.

Rice continues to be discussed as one of the top candidates to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she steps down next year.

However, the senators said after the meeting they needed more information about the attacks and the aftermath before making a decision on how they might vote on a potential Rice nomination.

Clinton has said she will step down as soon as her replacement is ready. Rice and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., have been the top names discussed for the job.

McCain has demanded Rice be held accountable for her public explanation of events following the fatal Sept. 11 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. He wouldn't say Monday whether she could allay his concerns.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11/26/rice-to-meet-with-top-gop-senators-after-their-objections-to-her-replacing/#ixzz2DRmlNK00

Under fire from congressional critics, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice stressed in a Tuesday statement that she did not intend to mislead the public about the September 11th attacks on the Benghazi consulate.

"Neither I nor anyone else in the administration intended to mislead the American people at any stage in this process, and the administration updated Congress and the American people as our assessments evolved," Rice said.

"What the president is worried about, Major, is what happened and why in Benghazi. He is not particularly concerned about whether the ambassador or I went out and talked about the fact that we believed extremists might have been responsible. And whether we named them as al Qaeda or not does not--no, it certainly doesn't have any bearing on what happened and who was responsible as that investigation was continuing on Benghazi."

The father of a former Navy SEAL killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, says he learned the details of his son’s bravery not from the Obama administration, but in an email from an American whose life was saved by his son.

Tyrone Woods, 41, was found “slumped over his machine gun, which was caked with blood,” Charles Woods, the former SEAL’s father, said during a telephone interview from his home in Hawaii.

“He had continued to fire until he had no blood left and was unable to fire anymore,” Mr. Woods said.

He did not identify the email’s sender but said he later spoke with the person who “told me how Ty died.”

Washington politics has largely shifted attention from what actually happened nearly three months ago in the Benghazi attack, in which U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, former SEAL Glen Doherty and State Department officer Sean Smith also were slain.


Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/4/families-want-to-know-what-happened-in-benghazi-ob/#ixzz2ECeB5Uek
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In a story that’s been largely buried by the media for years upon years – and was doubly buried in the aftermath of the Benghazi terrorist attack on September 11 resulting in the death of four Americans – the New York Times is now reporting that US-approved arms that were supposed to go to Libya rebels went to Islamist terrorists. Even more importantly, the Obama administration knew about it before, during, and after the Benghazi attacks. The Times reports:



No evidence has emerged linking the weapons provided by the Qataris during the uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to the attack that killed four Americans at the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in September.


But in the months before, the Obama administration clearly was worried about the consequences of its hidden hand in helping arm Libyan militants, concerns that have not previously been reported. The weapons and money from Qatar strengthened militant groups in Libya, allowing them to become a destabilizing force since the fall of the Qaddafi government ….



The United States, which had only small numbers of C.I.A. officers on the ground in Libya during the tumult of the rebellion, provided little oversight of the arms shipments. Within weeks of endorsing Qatar’s plan to send weapons there in spring 2011, the White House began receiving reports that they were going to Islamic militant groups



This was clearly a risk in arming the rebels in the first place. As Breitbart News reported, Benghazi was controlled by terrorist group Ansar Al-Shariah. And terrorists like Sufyan Ben Qumu, who was originally rumored to be the planner of the Benghazi attack (sources later denied he was the planner), were armed and supplied by the United States in their war against Muammar Qadaffi.



If, in fact, US-funneled weapons were used in the Benghazi attack and the administratio

After a classified briefing on the attack on the Benghazi consulate, Rep. Tom Rooney, R-FL, said he “learned a lot” from National Intelligence Director James Clapper.

“I learned we do not have the adequate protection at our compound in Libya, in Benghazi, and if that’s the case in other dangerous areas of the world, then we have a lot of work to do at the State Department to make sure our people are safe,” said Rooney, a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Rooney said they watched the attack unfold on a closed circuit-type television and saw people “walking through the front gate, not storming in, as some people have said.”

“There was basically no security,” Rooney said. “It was very difficult to watch.”

Rooney was obviously agitated by the way the administration has handled the situation and the dissemination of information about what transpired. See of Rooney’s impassioned remarks here:

Within eight hours of the initial attack on the United States' diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, the CIA decided to scrub and abandon rather than protect its annex, a military intelligence source told Fox News.

“The defensive posture was no longer sustainable," the source told Fox News, revealing for the first time how quickly the CIA chose to secure classified material and close down the facility after it took indirect fire from two mortars at about 5:15 a.m. local time Sept. 12.

The adjoining U.S. consulate, by contrast, has never been secured, even three months after the attack.

The process to sanitize the CIA site began on Sept. 11 after the consulate was attacked around 9:35 p.m. local time. The initial stages of the agency’s proscribed evacuation plan kicked in as a precautionary step.

Given the CIA Annex was designated a high-threat posting by the agency and described to Fox News as having an “expeditionary” feel, there was not a lot of classified material to dispose of. Classified communications equipment was also near minimum.

Within two and a half hours of the decision by the CIA chief of base, the agency’s point person in Benghazi, the annex was cleared of all classified material and equipment. Both CIA Director David Petraeus and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who oversees the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies, were notified of the decision, which was made on the ground in Libya and not directed by Washington.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/12/05/cia-moved-swiftly-scrub-abandon-libya-facility-after-attack-source-says/#ixzz2EJDyF2gQ

(Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will testify on a report expected to be released next week on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, a top Republican lawmaker said on Friday.

"I have just received confirmation from Secretary Clinton's office that the secretary of state will appear before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs to discuss, in an open hearing, the findings and the recommendations in the report," Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement.

Ros-Lehtinen is chair of the House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee, which has already held several hearings and classified briefings on the attack.

The attack killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, and raised questions about the adequacy of security in far-flung posts.

Republicans have criticized the Obama administration for its flawed early public explanations of the attack, and then for shifting explanations of why talking points given to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice were changed to delete a reference to al Qaeda.

Ros-Lehtinen said she expected an accountability review board conve

The Egyptian government has nabbed a major terrorist tied to the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, according to the Wall Street Journal. And that terrorist has direct, longstanding ties to al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri.
Muhammad Jamal al Kashef
(http://www.weeklystandard.com/sites/all/files/imagecache/teaser-large/images/teasers/Muhammad_Jamal_al_Kashef-260x190.jpg)
Muhammad Jamal al Kashef

The captured terrorist is Muhammad Jamal al Kashef (a.k.a. Abu Ahmed), who served as a senior Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) terrorist in the 1990s and was imprisoned for years. The EIJ was headed by Ayman al Zawahiri, who merged the group with Osama bin Laden’s operation.

After his release from prison in 2011, Kashef established training camps in Egypt and Libya. Some of Kashef’s trainees took part in the Benghazi attack, according to multiple reports.

Kashef is the most senior terrorist detained in connection with the Benghazi attack to date. Importantly, the publicly-available details of his biography show that he has numerous al Qaeda connections.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Kashef “petitioned al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri to establish a new Qaeda affiliate he called al Qaeda in Egypt” and also received financing from al Qaeda in the

Senior State Department, defense and intelligence officials were well aware that Benghazi and its surrounding area harbored al Qaeda-linked extremists long before the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in the eastern Libyan city.

Benghazi became famous last year as the birthplace of the revolution that swept Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi from power.

But in recent interviews with The Washington Times, several former high-level officials explained that eastern Libya was notorious in Washington’s counterterrorism community for more than a decade as a hub for jihadists leaving for or returning from insurgencies abroad.

The agencies’ long-standing knowledge about Islamic extremists in Benghazi raises questions about the level of security at the U.S. Consulate on Sept. 11, when heavily armed militants stormed the diplomatic mission and a CIA annex and killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, State Department officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

The officials pointed to the 2007 seizure by coalition forces in Iraq of a treasure trove of documents that highlighted the town of Darnah, just east of Benghazi, as one of the top destinations in the world from which foreign fighters were recruited to join al Qaeda’s insurgency against U.S

Meanwhile, Fox News is learning more about the arms movement from sources on the ground in Benghazi. A shipper who has just returned from dropping a load of arms in Syria said that the U.S. knows shoulder-fired missiles are the most important weapons for anti-Assad forces and that he has even shipped some hand-launched drones which can be used for surveillance purposes as part of the arms movement.

Sources continue to say that the U.S. has been privy at the very least to this arms movement, with some insisting that the U.S. was doing more but has "found ways to parse words."

One concern shared not only by Poe but multiple sources on the ground in Benghazi is where the weapons are ending up. The shipper says that right now there are at least 18 different opposition groups in Syria fighting Assad, and at the same time fighting each other for control if Assad falls.

"The Islamists are getting stronger in Syria and nobody wants to help them. The Qataris and others want to help the opposition, but these countries are generous, they are not stupid -- they want to make sure the weapons get into the right hands," he said, adding: "The U.S. is allowing things to move, but not enough to make a difference. They are providing enough to do something, but not enough to make something happen."

There are also questions about the initial weapons movement operation, also reported by the New York Times, which tied Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to arms shipments into Libya during the civil war to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi. Sources in Benghazi say while more American companies have shown interest in returning to Benghazi and eastern Libya for oil operations, there are still concerns of where these weapons ended up and who ended up with them.

"There really is no way of knowing. It's the nature of all these support tasks, the end user is never quite known," one source said. He also said that while the initial attack on the U.S. Consulate on Sept. 11 was "obviously professional," it is entirely possible that the mob that showed up and ransacked the compound could have been at least partly armed with weapons the U.S. allowed to move into the country to support Qaddafi opposition.

The actual volume of weapons moving and their ultimate destination continues to be unclear. Sources say it is "loosely controlled" and no matter how hard the organizers try, there is no perfect "formal government auditing process."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/12/11/rep-blissful-silence-from-pentagon-on-questions-over-arms-shipments-from-libya/?test=latestnews#ixzz2Ersctwr7

Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R- UT) told Breitbart News on Wednesday that he has been “thwarted” by the State Department from seeing any Americans who survived the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in  Benghazi. Many people forget that there were Americans who survived the Benghazi attack, some of whom were badly injured and are still recovering.

“My understanding is that we still have some people in the hospital. I’d like to visit with them and wish them nothing but the best but the State Department has seen it unfit for me to know who those people are—or even how many there are,” Rep. Chaffetz said. "I don’t know who they are. I don’t know where they live. I don’t know what state they’re from. I don’t even know how many there are. It doesn’t seem right to me."

“This is so patently different than any other experience I’ve had. Unfortunately, people have been killed and maimed and in harm’s way in Afghanistan and Iraq and in points beyond. It’s typically been the case that they would release those names but in this case,

(CNSNews.com) – As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton prepares to testify on Capitol Hill next week about last September’s attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, a Republican lawmaker is urging her to cut aid to Tunisia over its refusal to allow the FBI to talk to the only known detained suspect in the attack.

Speaking on the U.S. House floor Wednesday, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) accused Tunisian authorities of hampering the FBI’s investigation into the attack in Libya’s second city, during which U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

Since being arrested in Turkey and handed over to Tunisia more than two months ago, Tunisian-born Ali Harzi has been in custody in his native country. Tunisian Interior Minister Ali Larayedh said in late October he was “strongly suspected” of involvement in the Benghazi attack.

According to Wolf, Tunisian officials have not allowed the FBI to question him for the past five weeks.

“These unnecessary and unfounded delays are inexcusable and demonstrate that Tunisia is no friend or ally of the United States,” Wolf wrote in a letter to Clinton earlier this week.

Benghazi

Part of an FBI poster seeking information from members of the public in Libya about the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. (Image: FBI)

“Since January 2011, the U.S. has given more than 320 million taxpayer dollars to Tunisia,” he said in the House Wednesday. “Why are we giving any sort of aid to a country th

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will testify on Dec. 20 before the House of Representatives and Senate foreign affairs committees on a report on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, the committees said on Wednesday.

The attack on Sept. 11 killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, and raised questions about the adequacy of security in far-flung posts.

Republicans have criticized Democratic President Barack Obama's administration for its flawed early public explanations of the attack.

They have also criticized shifting explanations of why talking points given to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice were changed to delete a reference to al Qaeda. Some Republicans have used that criticism to question Rice's suitability as a candidate to replace Clinton, if Obama were to nominate her.

Clinton has said she planned to retire from her post at State after Obama's first term.

An accountability review board convened by the State Department is expected to release a report on the Benghazi attack before Clinton testifies.

The board, led by veteran diplomat Thomas Pickering, is expected to consider whether enough attention was given to potential threats and how Washington responded to security requests from U.S. diplomats in Libya.

Democratic Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,

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Susan Rice's abrupt withdrawal from consideration for secretary of state, coupled with suggestions from the State Department that Secretary Hillary Clinton may not testify as scheduled next week, has stirred speculation that something big is brewing in the Libya terror attack investigation.

"You're starting to see the State Department squirm a little bit," Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said.

For the better part of the last three months, an independent board has been conducting a review for the State Department of the Sept. 11 terror attack in Benghazi. In anticipation of the report's conclusion, two congressional committees scheduled hearings for next week in which Clinton was set to testify.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, though, surprised lawmakers and reporters on Thursday when she indicated the report, and the secretary, might not be ready.

"The Hill has talked about a planning date on the calendar. That presumes that the (report) is finished," Nuland said. "I don't have any dates, any schedule of the secretary's to announce here."

Asked whether Clinton has committed to testify, Nuland said "it's dependent on the work being finished."

Further, Nuland rejected the notion that the final report on Libya needed to be shared with Congress at all. She stressed, instead, that the only thing the statute requires is for "the secretary's response" to the report's conclusion to be sent to Congress.

The comments were met with surprise on Capitol Hill. A spokesman for House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., who scheduled a hearing for Dec. 20, said this was the first they heard a scheduling issue.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., said it's still "the plan" for Clinton to testify on his committee next week.

But Fox News is told that Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/12/14/state-department-preparing-for-libya-bombshell/?intcmp=trending#ixzz2F92ZJkCd

The results of the independent review ordered by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of the attack in Benghazi will be presented to the State Department on Monday, CNN reports.

It will then be provided to members of Congress before a private briefing Wednesday and a public hearing Thursday, when Clinton deputies Bill Burns and Tom Nides are scheduled to testify, CNN reported, citing unnamed sources. They are substituting for Clinton, who is home recovering from a concussion she suffered after fainting from dehydration caused by a stomach virus, the State Department said.

The report is expected to provide answers to questions that have dogged the Obama administration for months about the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Libya that left four Americans dead, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. White House press secretary Jay Carney, citing the ongoing review, has declined to answer questions about security at the mission and other concerns about the United States' handling of the situation.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote to the leaders of the House and Senate foreign affairs panels on Monday to tell them she may testify in future on the Benghazi attack, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

Clinton was expected to testify at a hearing this Thursday but will be sending her two deputies, William Burns and Thomas Nides, after contracting a stomach virus and suffering a concussion during a fall last weekend. Thursday's hearing will be preceded by a closed-door briefing of both committees on Wednesday.

 
 “It was her intention to be there. If she had not been ill, she would be there. And she's also committed, including in a letter today to the committee chairmen, that she looks forward to having an ongoing conversation with them herself,” Nuland said at her daily briefing Monday. “She has, including in a letter today to the two committees, made clear that

This thing couldn't get any stranger. 

A State Department-ordered investigation into September's attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, concluded that "systemic failures" left the facility inadequately protected, according to the independent review board's report, which confirmed that no protest preceded the deadly attack.

The report, posted Tuesday night on the State Department's website, also identified "leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus." It suggested 29 ways the department can improve its operations, but recommended no disciplinary action.

The Accountability Review Board's report comes after more than three months of intense debate in Washington over who was behind the attack, what motivated the attackers and why U.S. authorities weren't able to stop the violence, which took the lives of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Republicans have accused Obama administration officials of giving the American people a series of misleading explanations for the attack from


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/12/18/benghazi-report-cites-state-dept-for-security-failures-confirms-no-protest/#ixzz2FWOkL4rC

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Three State Department officials resigned under pressure Wednesday, less than a day after a damning report blamed management failures for a lack of security at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, where militants killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans on Sept. 11.

An administration official said Eric Boswell, the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, Charlene Lamb, the deputy assistant secretary responsible for embassy security, and an unnamed official with the Bureau of Near East Affairs, had stepped down. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss personnel matters publicly.

The report said poor leadership in both bureaus left the post underprotected.

"Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus" resulted in a security level that was "inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place," according to the report released late Tuesday by the independent Accountability Revie

There were systemic failures at the state department, but no individual official ignored their duties, it adds.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has accepted all 29 recommendations contained in the report.

Washington –  A top State Department official acknowledged Thursday that cables warning of serious security concerns at the U.S. compound in Benghazi went to department headquarters – and possibly to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s office – in the months leading up to the deadly Sept. 11 attack.

Deputy Secretary of State Williams Burns, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the cables “would have been reviewed up through the assistant secretary level, and it may be that some of my colleagues on the seventh floor saw them as well.” The seventh floor refers to Clinton’s office.

Further, Burns confirmed “there were certainly memos” that came to Clinton’s office describing some of the dozens of security incidents in the region before the attack that claimed four American lives.

The confirmation Thursday comes after Fox News first reported in October on one cable addressed to Clinton’s office said the U.S. Mission in Benghazi convened an “emergency meeting” less than a month before the attack because Al Qaeda had training camps in Benghazi and the consulate could not defend against a “coordinated attack.”


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/12/20/sen-kerry-says-ack-funding-to-blame-for-benghazi-attacks/#ixzz2FcQ2YMwt

And so the reckoning begins. Only hours after a special task force concluded on Wednesday that “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies” may have contributed to the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, the State Department’s security chief resigned and three other officials were relieved of their duties.

What was lacking in the report, however, was any sense of who was responsible farther up the chain. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Accountability Review Board—chaired by retired Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering and vice chaired by another national-security heavyweight, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen—detailed a broad failure of U.S. intelligence officials and policymakers to fully understand the growing Islamist threat in Libya, but without naming the names of those who were responsible for that failure. As the report put it, using the passive tense, “There was little understanding of militias in Benghazi and the threat they posed to U.S. interests.”

Even more damning, in its absence, was the report’s failure to step back and question whether the Obama administration, at its highest levels (starting with the president), created the conditions for Benghazi by overstating the decimation of al-Qaida and playing down the significance of the extremist elements, possibly al-Qaida-linked, that have reemerged in the aftermath of the Arab Spring in Libya and elsewhere. Unless this reckoning is made, it is easy to imagine a similar disaster happening in post-Assad Syria, or elsewhere in the region. This has been a chief Republican talking point against Obama since the Benghazi attacks occurred on Sept. 11.   

A disturbing subtext of the report is the broader failure of the U.S. intelligence community to catch up ideologically with extremist threats, even as the CIA and FBI have burrowed deeply into Islamist networks at home and abroad. As demonstrated by the October arrest of a would-be terrorist plotting to blow up the New York Federal Reserve, the FBI is now deeply embedded in the domestic Muslim community, and the CIA has gotten fairly adept at penetrating jihadist networks abroad, especially online (a striking contrast to the U.S. law-enforcement community’s inability to root out the nation’s Adam Lanzas before they kill).

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney appeared to suggest during a press briefing today, that FOX News reports on Benghazi were incorrect – based on the report released yesterday regarding the attacks.

Carney emphasized a part of the report that said that the response to the Benghazi attacks was timely and appropriate and that there was “no evidence” to show that there was a delay in the response from the White House.

FOX News reported after the attacks that according to their sources, “an urgent request from the CIA annex … was denied by the CIA chain of command — who also told the CIA operators twice to “stand down” rather than help the ambassador’s team when shots were heard.”

FOX News White House correspondent Ed Henry asked Carney if the four State Department officials that resigned yesterday were “taking the fall” for President Obama and Hillary Clinton even though they

The general public will never get the truth on Benghazi or Fast and Furious because they have no one in Washington that wants it bad enough to risk their position or power.

The general public will never get the truth on Benghazi or Fast and Furious because they have no one in Washington that wants it bad enough to risk their position or power.

A State Department security chief who was said to have resigned last week after the release of a scathing report about security lapses at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in the run-up to the terror attack that killed four Americans reportedly is still on the department's payroll.

The New York Post reports that Eric Boswell, the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, has not resigned from the department, though a State Department spokeswoman said Dec. 19 he was resigning his position. Boswell is instead just "switching desks," according to the report.

Three other State Department officials, including Charlene Lamb, the deputy assistant secretary responsible for embassy security, were placed on administrative leave after the release of the report. However, according to the Post they are expected to return.

Asked for comment, a State Department spokesman referred FoxNews.com to the statement originally put out on Dec. 19.

That statement said that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "has accepted Eric Boswell's decision to resign as Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security, effective immediately," and that the three others were "relieved of their current duties."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/12/26/state-department-official-who-resigned-after-libya-findings-reportedly-staying/#ixzz2GB5h3ewe

The four officials supposedly out of jobs because of their blunders in the run-up to the deadly Benghazi terror attack remain on the State Department payroll — and will all be back to work soon, The Post has learned.

The highest-ranking official caught up in the scandal, Assistant Secretary of State Eric Boswell, has not “resigned” from government service, as officials said last week. He is just switching desks. And the other three are simply on administrative leave and are expected back.

The four were made out to be sacrificial lambs in the wake of a scathing report issued last week that found that the US compound in Benghazi, Libya, was left vulnerable to attack because of “grossly inadequate” security.

State Department leaders “didn’t come clean about Benghazi and now they’re not coming clean about these staff changes,” a source close to the situation told The Post., adding, the “public would be outraged over this.”

US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Sept. 11 attack, originally blamed on a spontaneous demonstration against a US-made anti-Islam video that got out of hand.

That version was dismissed by an Accountability Review Board headed by retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering.

In response to questions from The Post, the State Department would only reissue the carefully crafted statement put out last week.

Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton “has accepted Eric Boswell’s decision to resign as assistant secretary for diplomatic security, effective immediately.” What Nuland omitted was that Boswell gave up only the presidential appointment as assistant secretary, not his other portfolios.

The other officials — Deputy Assistant Secretaries Charlene Lamb and Raymond Maxwell, and a third who has not been identified — were found to have shown “performance inadequacies” but not “willful misconduct,” Pickering said, so they would not face discipline.

Republican senators will refuse to confirm Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., as Secretary of State until the nation’s current top diplomat, Hillary Clinton, testifies about her handling of the Benghazi terrorist attack.

“The Senate is expected to take up Kerry’s nomination in early January, but multiple Republican senators have already said they won’t agree to a vote on Kerry’s nomination until Clinton testifies about the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi,” The Cable’s Josh Rogin notes.

Clinton backed out of testifying at a congressional hearing last week after fainting and suffering a concussion. She was the first cabinet-level official to acknowledge that terrorists played a role in the assault on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.

“For some time, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and other groups have launched attacks and kidnappings from northern Mali into neighboring countries,” Clinton said during a United Nations meeting in

(CNSNews.com) – Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, to “explain why her department failed.”

In an editorial published on Wednesday, Rubio said the State Department Accountability Review Board (ARB) report released last week “concisely lays out much that we already knew” about the attack that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

“This was the premeditated work of terrorists, not a protest about a YouTube video that spun out of control,” Rubio said, adding that “the attackers employed military tactics and used rocket-propelled grenades and other heavy weapons; they also used simple weapons of opportunity, such as gasoline used to set the fire that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and Sean Smith.”

The Review Board laid the blame for inadequate security at the consulate in Benghazi on the State Department, leading to Rubio’s insistence that Clinton testify.

A decision by a Tunisian judge to conditionally release one of the very few people in custody in connection with the Libya terror attack has underscored concerns in Washington about the alleged lack of progress in the investigation nearly four months after the attack.

"The window for justice is quickly closing as far as I see," Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told FoxNews.com Tuesday.

While a Senate committee and State Department-sponsored panel have both issued reports in recent weeks about the Sept. 11 attack that killed four Americans, those reports said little about the criminal investigation itself. They examined the motivations and conditions that led to the attack, but not who was specifically behind it. Further, Capitol Hill lawmakers are still in a holding pattern as they wait to hear testimony from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is recovering from a blood clot and has pledged to testify.

The criminal investigation itself falls to the FBI, and the decision in Tunisia appeared to be a blow to the case.

A lawyer for Ali Harzi, a 26-year-old Tunisian, said the presiding judge had "conditionally freed" his client Monday night and he has to remain in the greater Tunis area in case the court needs him. The lawyer described the release as "correcting an irregular situation" because authorities never had any real evidence.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/08/lawmaker-warns-window-for-justice-closing-in-libya-attack-probe/#ixzz2HPakMo2N

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) -- Tunisian authorities released one of the only men in custody for alleged links to September's attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in the Libyan city of Benghazi, the latest blow to an investigation that has limped along for months.

Armed groups assaulted the lightly guarded mission on Sept. 11 and killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, but despite U.S. promises there has been little news of progress so far in bringing the perpetrators to justice.

Ali Harzi, a 26-year-old Tunisian extradited from Turkey in October, was one of the only people actually detained over the attack, and at the time Tunisian authorities said they "strongly suspected" he was involved.

On Jan. 8, I contacted the State Department press office three times by telephone and once by email to ask when exactly on Sept. 11, 2012, the department released this statement by Clinton.

"I just want to know at what time on Sept. 11, 2012, this statement was released," I asked in an email that I sent at 2:20 p.m. Eastern time after my second phone inquiry.

I was later told that a group that answers questions on Benghazi for the State Department was working on an answer for me.

However, the Associated Press first published a story quoting Clinton's statement at 10:58 p.m. Eastern time on Sept. 11.

The AP released a story that night datelined Cairo, written by Maggie Michael and Sarah El Deeb, and carrying the headline, "American killed in Libya protest over film." The story noted that Clinton had confirmed that "one State Department officer had been killed in the protest at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi." It also quoted directly from Clinton's statement: "Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet."

The Associated Press' Media Relations office confirmed to me that the AP first published its version of this story quoting Clinton's statement at 10:58 p.m. Eastern time on Sept. 11.

A CIA timeline of the Benghazi events provided by a senior U.S. intelligence official, the Senate Homeland Security Committee's report on Benghazi and the State Department's own Accountability Review Board Report all indicate that Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed at the U.S. "Annex" in Benghazi sometime between about 5:14 a.m. and 5:26 a.m. Benghazi time on Sept. 12. That would be between 11:14 p.m. and 11:26 p.m. on Sept. 11 in Washington, D.C. -- or at least 16 minutes after the AP reported Clinton's statement.

The CIA timeline indicates that a security team sent to the rescue by the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli got to the Benghazi Annex about 5:15 a.m. Benghazi time. "They arrive with Libyan support at the Annex by 5:15 a.m., just before the mortar rounds begin to hit the Annex," says this timeline. "The two security officers (Woods and Doherty) were killed when they took direct mortar fire as they engaged the enemy. That attack lasted only 11 minutes then also dissipated."

The State Department ARB report provided additional details, but also set the time of the attack that killed Woods and Doherty at approximately 5:15 a.m. Benghazi time.

"The seven-person response team from Embassy Tripoli arrived in Benghazi to lend support," said the ARB report. "It arrived at the Annex about 0500 local. Less than 15 minutes later, the Annex came under mortar and RPG attack, with five mortar rounds impacting close together in under 90 seconds. Three rounds hit the roof of an Annex building, killing security officers Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty."

On Dec. 31, Senate Homeland Security Chairman Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and Ranking Member Susan Collins, R-Maine, published their own report on Benghazi. This report confirmed both that Woods and Doherty were killed between 5:14 a.m. and 5:26 a.m. Benghazi time on Sept. 12 and that Benghazi was six hours ahead of Washington, D.C.

"American government officials outside of Benghazi learned of the attack shortly after it started at 3:40 p.m. EST (9:40 p.m. Benghazi time)," said the Lieberman-Collins report. "DS (diplomatic security) agents, in addition to notifying personnel at the Annex, immediately alerted officials at the U.S Embassy in Tripoli and the Department of State Headquarters in Washington, D.C."

From the start, almost everything that we were originally and "officially" told by the Obama Administration about the Benghazigate "event" was false (i.e., a lie) or misleading or inadequate. And now that the sole suspect held in the attack has been released, the cover-up is gaining momentum.

The report produced by State's Accountability Review Board (ARB) and released in an unclassified version Dec. 18 (pdf) did little to clear up what was misleading and inadequate in the "official" versions about the happenings during the "event."

The recently-released "Flashing Red: A Special Report On The Terrorist Attack At Benghazi" (pdf) by the Senate Committee On Homeland Security And Governmental Affairs is little better.

I write today to: 1) Describe the lies within the contexts of the reports; 2) Reveal the shortcomings of the reports; 3) Discuss the implausibility of the various details of encounters between the intruders, the occupants, and the rescuers; and 4) Examine the pre-"event" operations in Benghazi and the possible reasons the "event" occurred.

Abridged versions of the two reports showing points relevant to this post can be found here and here.

The reason that this serial perfidy should be exposed is that the lies -- along with the misleading and inadequate focus on the pre-"event "security situation in Benghazi, the Mohammed video, and the questions about the lack of support during the "event" -- all distract from the main issues:

(1) The pre-"event" purpose of the compound and its Annex (since these operations probably motivated the perpetrators of the "event"); and

(2) Team Obama's failed policies in North Africa, the Middle East, and Afghanistan.

That is, everything that we are "officially" being told is intended to or serves to provide a cover-up both of the gun-running operation that was run out of the compound and its associated Annex and of the fiascoes in Libya, Egypt, and Syria.

The reports reveal little new information, and that is disappointing but not surprising, for the administration has no intention of ever allowing the truth to be known by the public about the pre-"event" operations in Benghazi, the "event" itself, and the aftermath of the "event."  Michael Hirsh sums it best in his review of the ARB report: "A real reckoning of Benghazi will have to await further reports.

Neither report discusses pre-"event" operations in Benghazi, nor do the reports investigate possible motivations for the attack.  Instead, both reports dwell at length about the pre-"event' security situation in Benghazi and the absence of military responses during and after the "event."

The ARB report is 39 pages of mush -- some say cover-up -- interspersed with purported facts that pretty much follow the substance of earlier "official" descriptions of the "event."   It is ironically headed with the quote by Santayana about the past repeating itself, and that, alone, would be cringe-inducing were it not so risible -- since the authors of the report placed it there with apparent serious intent, and it was "included perhaps to add legitimacy and a veneer of integrity to an investigative report unworthy of such a definition, it is an insult to those aware of"  the actual circumstances prior to the "event."

The Senate report offers little new insight, but it does go into more detail on pre-"event" circumstances, the "event" itself, the "Mohammed film" lie, and a few other things -- worth the read only if you have nothing else to do!

Both reports dismiss the first lie -- that the intrusion resulted from spontaneous demonstrations in reaction to a "disgusting and reprehensible" video.  The ARB report simply states that "there was no protest prior to the attacks, which were unanticipated in their scale and intensity."

The Senate report goes into a little more insignificant detail in its dismissal of the lie by specifically covering the multiple statements by Mr. Carney, Secretary Clinton, Mr. Obama, and others -- most famously during the U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's "full Ginsberg" on Sept. 16 --  wherein the administration held to that first lie.

The reports also refute the second lie: The one about the description of the compound, for neither the compound itself nor its main building ever should have been called a "consulate," since neither ever held that formal designation.  Furthermore, no "consular" functions were ever carried out in the building or at the compound nor did the American flag ever fly over it.

The ARB report refers to the compound (view overhead here) as  the "U.S. Special Mission compound (SMC)," but we do not know if it ever held that formal designation prior to the "event," because "a complete list of All U.S. embassies, consulates, and diplomatic missions worldwide" can be found here, and there is nothing at that link that refers to anything in Benghazi.

The compound was:

    ... a gated-villa, leased by the US State Department from a local man named Mohammad al-Bishari. The villa in Benghazi was not a US Embassy, diplomatic mission or extension of the embassy. In fact, the nearest US Embassy is Tripoli.

And the ARB report confirmed:

    ...that the U.S. government mission in Benghazi was "never a consulate," contrary to the incessant claims made in the establishment press. "The unique circumstances surrounding the creation of the mission in Benghazi as a temporary mission outside the realm of permanent diplomatic posts resulted in significant disconnects and support gaps," the report explains, pointing out that the new Libyan regime was not even officially notified about the existence of the compound.

An interesting point is that the Senate report refers to the compound as "Temporary Mission Facility" or simply -- uncapitalized -- as "mission" or "facility."

A third lie unintentionally debunked by the reports was that it was an "attack."   

Even though each report uses the term "attack" many times, both make clear that the compound was not actually attacked.

What really happened was that a group of "dozens" of men entered the compound (in the words of the Senate's report -- "a large number of armed people flow[ed] unimpeded") through the front gate, and this entry was accompanied by gunfire and at least one explosion.

None of the compound's inhabitants were ever killed or wounded by the gunfire, and neither the gate nor the wall surrounding the compound nor any of the buildings in the compound were damaged by any of the explosions.

The group used fuel cans stored near a generator to torch a building near the compound's entrance that had been used to house guards and to torch several vehicles parked outside that building (almost all of the photographs and stock footage that are seen in the media are of that building and those vehicles.)

In fact, each and every "official" detail pertaining to the circumstances of the "event" at the compound defies logic -- from the intruders' entry into the compound to the rescuers' return to the Annex -- A series of circumstances that might well be called "The Immaculate Confrontation" since the intruders, the occupants, and the rescuers engaged in firefights for over an hour -- -and nobody got shot!

A long, illustrated discussion of the circumstances of the "event" can be found here, and a collection of images of the compound can be found here.

I have produced below an enhanced and annotated picture of the chart/map that was introduced by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Charlene Lamb during her appearance before the House Oversight Committee Hearing on the "Security Failures in Benghazi" on Oct. 10, 2012, and I ask that readers keep it in mind as I proceed to discuss the "official" details of the "event":

 

I have made countless searches and read countless descriptions of the "event," and I have found that no one -- journalist, blogger, or writer -- has explored or questioned:

How the Blue Mountain guards outside the gate and the armed but poorly skilled Libyan February 17 Martyrs' Brigade militia members inside the gate escaped injury or capture as the firing and exploding began (AP reports that a guard beaten by the intruders has been interviewed, but no details of that interview have surfaced) -- and ARB report said they fled "to points south and east in the compound, towards the Villa B area" but thereafter is silent on all but one them;

How the entry gate escaped damage as the "dozens" of intruders came through it;

Why the intruders did not break into the main building until several minutes after they had entered the compound;

How four of the security agents inside the compound could have escaped injury or capture in several confrontations with a heavily-armed and firing crowd that overwhelmingly outnumbered them;

Why the intruders did not torch or destroy the SUV that was parked near the two secondary buildings during the intruders' assault of those buildings and entry into one of them (the report says the intruders were unable to use empty fuel containers to do this but does not question why no other vandalism was committed on the vehicles);

Why the intruders did not even begin to attempt to break into the main building's secure area;

How the security agents could have escaped injury or capture in several attempts to remove Sean Smith's body and search for Ambassador Stevens' body while confronting a heavily-armed and firing crowd that overwhelmingly outnumbered them:

Why the intruders suddenly withdrew from the compound less than an hour after entering it without, apparently, having achieved any possible objective; and

How CIA agent Tyrone Woods and the other members of his rescue party could have entered the compound through the gate via the single approach from the East (the above-linked AP story said that approach roads were blocked) without encountering and engaging confronting a heavily-armed and firing crowd that overwhelmingly outnumbered them -- a crowd that may or may not have exited through that gate immediately prior to the rescue party's arrival.

Note: The ARB report says the Annex team remained behind whilst the original 5 agents departed, and it describes another immaculate firefight with the returning intruders before the rescue team also leaves through the crowd.

It is extremely unlikely that these questions will ever be answered by anyone in the administration because each of the questions may pertain to the pre-"event" operations in Benghazi and the possible reasons that the "event" occurred.

I have dubbed the pre-"event" operations "Fast and Furious in the Maghreb" and described the operations here and here.  The operations were a major part of a gun-running operation (described here) conducted by Team Obama and its various Muslim allies that allowed for the clandestine arming of the rebels in Syria.  The reports do not address these operations at all.

The "event" itself was almost certainly directed at those operations in a fashion that will probably never be known, and that fact explains the shortcomings of the various descriptions of the details of the "event" itself.

Doug Hagmann has produced a number of pieces at CFP here, here, here, and here exploring the operations in Benghazi and on the probable identities and motives of the intruders (some of the conjecture by his contacts approach "black helicopter" territory, but it is well worth the time needed to read them all).

The reports confirm Senator Dianne Feinstein's press conference comments that the "dozens" of intruders came through an open gate, but neither addresses when the gatekeepers and near-by Libyan security personnel left their posts nor do they address if the gatekeepers and security personnel were connected to the intruders or if they joined the intruders or simply absconded.

The major unanswered question arising from the several "official" versions is the "why" question -- Why did the intruders intrude, i.e., what was their motive?  It could not just have been to set the "mission" on fire, but that seems to have been all that they did during the "event."

As noted above, the intruders did not initially make the 100-yard charge at Villa C, the compound's main building, where Ambassador Chris Stevens, Information Management Officer (IMO) Sean Smith, and four Diplomatic Security (DS) agents were located.  Instead, some of the intruders gathered up containers holding fuel for generators and set fires, and others made a rather leisurely move towards and surround the various buildings within the compound.

Villas C and B were quite large -- perhaps as big as 10,000 sq. ft. and 5,000 sq. ft. respectively -- much larger than the buildings would need to be to house so few people.

And from one piece in another excellent series of articles, Clare Lopez suggested that they were large warehouse-type buildings that probably contained arms collected by the operation.  Adm. James A. Lyons writes about the "event" here, and he agrees with Ms. Lopez and thinks that the buildings were probably looted.

These conjectures are interesting, but there is no evidence that the intruders did any looting during the short period of time that they were in the compound.  However, they may have made the intrusion in order to search for the things that they thought were in the buildings.

WND's senior reporter and ABC radio host, Aaron Klein, discusses intrusion and motivations here:

    The difference between branding the Benghazi facility a "mission" or a "consulate" may be crucial in determining what was really going on in the building [.]...  [It] was routinely used by Stevens and others to coordinate with the Turkish, Saudi and Qatari governments on supporting the insurgencies in the Middle East, most prominently the rebels opposing Assad's regime in Syria.

Knowing that the "mission" was being used in "aiding the rebels fighting Assad's regime in Syria" gives rise to a very big unanswered question: Who was behind the operation at the "mission"?

It is highly unlikely that Team Obama wants that question asked, and the ongoing dribbling of information is convenient in preventing its being asked.

State, itself, probably was not running the operation -- just facilitating an operation run either by the CIA, itself, or by some other "agent or agency," possibly illegally absent a Presidential Finding authorizing it.

Think of it as a possible modern-day Iran-Contra affair run by a modern-day John Poindexter (John Batchelor has an interesting discussion here [starting at 19:00] of this possibility -- that there was no finding).

Amb. John Bolton writes about the operations at the compound and Team Obama's failed policies here:

    Libya was a centerpiece of supposed success in Obama's foreign policy, not some country of small significance and low threat levels. It is important to establish not only the actual paper trail in this case, but even more importantly why, on such a critical foreign-policy issue, it did not automatically come to Clinton's seventh-floor office.

    ...Obama will hold office for four more years, and Clinton apparently aspires to succeed him. Their worldview and its policy consequences must not be allowed to escape scrutiny as they did in the just-concluded presidential campaign. Most of the media have certainly shown little interest in exposing administration failures. Clinton's testimony may be the last chance to do so for a long time.

And we must not forget that Hillary promised Tyrone Woods' father that "they were going to 'arrest and prosecute the man that made" the Mohammed video, and Mark Bassely Youssef has been in jail since the 7th of November on a one-year sentence for "probation" violations.

Well, now that Hillary has recovered following her "Immaculate Concussion" and blood clot (the two seem to be medically unrelated) she will purportedly be appearing before Congress.

Let us hope that Sens. Feinstein and Chambliss and Congressmen Issa and Chaffetz ask for and receive answers to some of these and other questions.

Note, too, the opinions of key leader of the intruders who remains free today:

    As part of his response to a question about the attack on the US consulate, Boukhtala said, "Let's first ask about the reason for their presence in Benghazi in this suspicious and secret way. The other thing is: what is the nature of work they were doing in Benghazi? What was the role that the consulate was playing and who gave it permission to violate Libya's sovereignty and intervene in Libyan politics?"

Indeed!

(CNSNews.com) - The gun control policies of the post-Gaddafi government in Libya delayed the arming of bodyguards for U.S. diplomats in that country and left the local guard force hired to watch over the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi unarmed, according to internal State Department memos and written testimony by the State Department officer who was in charge of the department’s security in Libya until six weeks before the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks.

“Our long term security plan in Libya was to recruit and deploy an armed, locally hired Libyan bodyguard unit,” State Department Regional Security Officer Eric Nordstrom told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in written testimony.

“However, because of Libyan political sensitivities, armed private security companies were not allowed to operate in Libya,” Nordstrom said in his testimony submitted on Oct. 10. “Therefore, our existing, uniformed static local guard force, both in Tripoli and Benghazi were unarmed, similar to our

Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice have asked a federal court to indefinitely delay a lawsuit brought by watchdog group Judicial Watch. The lawsuit seeks the enforcement of open records requests relating to Operation Fast and Furious, as required by law.

Judicial Watch had filed, on June 22, 2012, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious and “specifically [a]ll records subject to the claim of executive privilege invoked by President Barack Obama on or about June 20, 2012.”

The administration has refused to comply with Judicial Watch’s FOIA request, and in mid-September the group filed a lawsuit challenging Holder’s denial. That lawsuit remains ongoing but within the past week President Barack Obama’s administration filed what’s called a “motion to stay” the suit. Such a motion is something that if granted would delay the lawsuit indefinitely.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that Holder’s and Obama’s desire to continually hide these Fast and Furious documents is “ironic” now that they’re so gung-ho on gun control. “It is beyond ironic that the Obama administration has initiated an anti-gun violence push as it seeking to keep secret key documents about its very own Fast and Furious gun walking scandal,” Fitton said in a statement. “Getting beyond the Obama administration’s smokescreen, this lawsuit is about a very simple principle: the public’s right to know the full truth about an egregious political scandal that led to the death of at least one American and countless others in Mexico. The American people are sick and tired of the Obama administration trying to rewrite FOIA law to protect this president and his appointees. Americans want answers about Fast and Furious killings and lies.”

The only justification Holder uses to ask the court to indefinitely delay Judicial Watch’s suit is that there’s another lawsuit ongoing for the same documents – one filed by the U.S. House of Representatives. Judicial Watch has filed a brief opposing the DOJ’s motion to stay.

As the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was voting Holder into contempt of Congress for his refusal to cooperate with congressional investigators by failing to turn over tens of thousands of pages of Fast and Furious documents, Obama asserted the executive privilege over them. The full House of Representatives soon after voted on a bipartisan basis to hold Holder in contempt.

There were two parts of the contempt resolution. Holder was, and still is, in both civil and criminal contempt of Congress. The criminal resolution was forwarded to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ronald Machen–who works for Holder–for prosecution.

(CNSNews.com) - Retired Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin—who is the former commander of the U.S. Special Forces Command, the former deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence and who, in the 1990s, worked with the CIA—told CNSNews.com in a video interview last week that he believes it is a reasonable supposition that the U.S. was supporting or planning to support the Syrian rebels via Benghazi, Libya.

The CIA, however, says Boykin’s supposition is erroneous and that the U.S. was not conducting or planning covert action to support Syrian rebels through Benghazi.

“These assertions are both baseless and flat wrong,” a CIA spokesperson told CNSNews.com on Tuesday.

Boykin believes that such an action, or planned action, would help explain why Amb. Chris Stevens was in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, visiting that city for the first time since he had departed from it in November 2011 after having served there as a special envoy to the Libyan rebels who overthrew the Qaddafi regime.

“Then what was Stevens doing there on September 11 of 2012?” Boykin said in an interview with CNSNews.com. “More supposition was that he was now funneling guns to the rebel forces in Syria, using essentially the Turks to facilitate that.”

Before terrorists attacked the State Department’s Special Mission Compound in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, Amb. Stevens had met there with a Turkish diplomat.

About two hours after Amb. Stevens escorted the diplomat out of the main gate of the compound, dozens of terrorists swarmed through the same gate, beginning the series of attacks that would result in the deaths of Amb. Stevens, State Department Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and former Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, who were working for the CIA.

According to the State Department Accountability Review Board report, a Greek cargo ship first delivered then-Special Envoy Chris Stevens to Benghazi on April 5, 2011. Benghazi was then the center of the Libyan rebellion, and Stevens was accompanied at that time by ten State Department Diplomatic Security agents.

Stevens stayed initially in Benghazi at the Tibesti Hotel. But because of security concerns, he moved into the CIA Annex in Benghazi on June 1, 2011.

“Benghazi, however, was still very much a conflict zone,” said the ARB report. “On June 1, 2011, a car bomb exploded outside the Tibesti Hotel, and shortly thereafter a credible threat against the Special Envoy mission prompted Stevens to move to the Annex.”

Three weeks after that, Stevens moved into the State Department’s own facility in Benghazi. “On June 21, 2011, he and his security contingent moved

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked about ascertaining whether the Benghazi terror attack was the result of a protest by Senator Ron Johnson. "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Clinton shouted, seemingly losing her cool.



"With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?"

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday lashed out over the claim that the administration misled Americans about the nature of the Libya terror attack by asserting that it was the result of a protest, raising her voice during a Senate hearing and asking: "What difference, at this point, does it make?"

Clinton, in what may be her final set of testimony as secretary, pointedly challenged Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson when he claimed the department could have "easily" determined what happened that night by interviewing staffers who were evacuated.

He was referring to the administration's initial claim that the attack sprung out of a protest. It was later determined there was no protest on the ground in Benghazi. Diplomatic security agents said as much to the FBI during interviews on Sept. 14, despite administration claims to the contrary two days later.

"That was a piece of information that could have been easily -- easily -- ascertained, within hours if not days," Johnson said.

"We were misled that there were supposedly protests and something sprang out of that. ... The American people could have known that (there was no protest) within days, and they didn't know that."

At that point, Clinton began to raise her voice.

"With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans," she said.

"I understand," Johnson said.

Clinton continued to speak, raising her voice and gesturing: "Was it because of a protest or is it because of guys out for a walk one night and they decide they go kill some Americans?

"What difference, at this point, does it make?"

Clinton, lowering her voice, then said it is the administration's job to "figure out what happened" and prevent it from happening again.

Later in the testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Clinton acknowledged the administration did not have a "clear picture" of what happened in the immediate aftermath. She said perhaps officials didn't do a good enough job explaining that they "didn't have a clear picture."

But Clinton still said the motivations of the attackers, to this day, is not clear. "Even today there are questions being raised," she said, referring to findings in the classified version of a recent report that she could not describe in detail.

The secretary continued to take heat from Republican senators as the hearing proceeded. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said that if he were president, "I would have relieved you from your post." He suggested


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/23/clinton-denies-delay-in-benghazi-response-despite-accounts/#ixzz2IpJbBYOT

Because Clinton testified that she has only talked to one of the survivors, she could not possibly have even personally thanked--let alone heard the eyewitness accounts of--four of the five Diplomatic Security officers who put their lives on the line to protect Amb. Stevens and the U.S. facility in Benghazi.

She did not reach out to them in the hours or days after the attack to get their personal accounts of what had happened--information that clearly would have been valuable to her and her subordinates as they explained to the nation what actually happened that day.

As it was, rather than getting the eyewitness accounts of the State Department's own people there--accounts that would attest to the fact that the terrorist attack was a sudden assault on the State Department compound and was not in any way preceded by a protest--Clinton and her department for days put out the false story that the attack had arisen from a protest against an anti-Muslim video.

On Wednesday, Clinton told Sen. Johnson that there were approximately 25-30 survivors evacuated from Libya after the attack, but does not know precisely how many “because of our other friends”--a reference to the CIA.

Most of the U.S. personnel in Benghazi that day apparently worked for the CIA. Other than the five State Department Diplomatic Security agents who were at the State Department's Special Mission Compound at the time of the attack and survived, the only other State Department personnel in the city were Amb. Stevens and Information Management Officer Smith, who were both killed.

“Did you personally speak to those folks?” Sen. Johnson asked Clinton of the American survivors of the attack.

“I have spoken to one of them,” said Clinton, “but I waited until the ARB [Accountability Review Board] had done its investigation because I did not want there to be anybody raising an issue that I had spoken to anyone before the ARB had conducted its investigation.”

The ARB report was published more than a month ago on Dec. 18.

CNSNews.com) - The State Department took two dramatically different approaches to dealing with the identities of the Diplomatic Security (DS) agents it sent to Benghazi, Libya, to protect Amb. Chris Stevens and the small number of other temporary U.S. diplomatic personnel the department rotated through what its own review board would later admit was a "lawless town."

Before the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, the department undertook a calculated effort to publicize the agents’ names and faces--presenting them in a State Department promotional magazine posted on the Internet. After the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks, the State Department has treated the names and faces of the DS agents who survived those attacks as if they were classified information.

This remarkable about-face raises two questions: Why can’t the American people know the names--and hear the stories--of the heroic DS agents who fought the terrorists who attacked our mission in Benghazi? Why can’t these courageous survivors deliver their eyewitnesses accounts directly to the U.S. Congress?





So far, the Obama administration has publicly released only the names of the Americans whom the terrorists killed in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. These were Amb. Chris Stevens and Information Management Officer Sean Smith, who worked for the State Department, and former Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.



The December 2011 issue of the State Department's State Magazine featured a cover story about then-Special Envoy Chris Stevens mission to Benghazi during the 2011 Libyan rebellion. The story, which began as the centerfold of the magazine, was written by DS Special Agent Mario Montoya, named the DS special agents protecting Stevens, and carried photographs of some of them.
All U.S. government personnel who were in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012 and survived remain unnamed.


The report that the State Department’s Accountability Review Board published on Dec. 19 refers to the five DS agents who survived only by acronyms: “RSO,” and “ARSO 1,” “ARSO 2,” “ARSO 3” and “ARSO 4.” RSO stands for regional security officer. ARSO stands for assistant regional security officer.

Last October, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing on the Benghazi attack. The committee took testimony from Charlene Lamb, who ran the department’s suburban-Virginia-based Bureau of Diplomatic Security. It also took testimony from Eric Nordstrom, who was the RSO at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli until July 26, 2012--and was no longer in Libya at the time of the Benghazi terrorist attack. And it additionally took testimony from Amb. Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary of state for management.

But the committee did not talk to the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security regional security officer (RSO) and the assistant regional security officers (ARSOs) who actually witnessed and resisted the terrorist attack on the department's Benghazi compound. “State has not given Oversight access to the DS agents,” a committee spokesperson told CNSNews.com this week.

The firing on the Annex during this first phase of the battle ceased at about 1:00 a.m. Benghazi time--which was about three hours and twenty minutes after the attack started at about 9:40 pm Benghazi time, and about two and a half hours after Gen. Dempsey and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had been notified at 10:32 p.m Benghazi time that the attack was happening.

The second phase of the terrorist attack started at about 5:15 a.m. Benghazi time--or about four hours and fifteen minutes after the first phase ended. This second phase lasted about 11 minutes.

An accurate summation of the Sept. 11-12 event in Benghazi, based on the CIA and State Department accounts, is that it was a three hour and 20 minute series of attacks followed four hours and fifteen minutes later by an eleven minute attack. That is significantly different than Gen. Dempsey's claim--while trying to defend not sending any military assets to the rescue--that Benghazi was two 20 minute battles separated by six hours.

The Benghazi terrorists killed Amb. Chris Stevens and State Department Information Management Officer Sean Smith during the first phase of the attack by burning the building in which they were taking refuge. The terrorists killed former Navy SEALS Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, who worked for the CIA, and severely wounded a State Department security officer, in the second phase of the attack when they fired mortars into the CIA Annex.

Dempsey made his claim that the Benghazi event was really two discrete 20-minute attacks six hours apart in responding to CNN’s Candy Crowley, who had asked him why a U.S. military force could not have gone to help out in Benghazi if the terror attack was a seven-hour battle.

A partial transcript of the senator’s Thursday appearance on Fox News featuring his key points on the issue is featured below [emphasis added]:

I really think part of the cause may have been there was a gun running operation going on in Benghazi, leaving Libya and going to Turkey and distributing arms to the rebels… They’ve interviewed the captain of the ship. A ship from Libya sailed for Turkey a week before the ambassador was killed. It was full of arms and they interviewed the captain and he actually specifically talks about the distribution of the arms to Syrian rebels… And I think the administration needs to answer, ‘are they running guns through Turkey to Syria?’

Apart from identifying and apprehending those who carried out the attack, the questions include:

• What happened to Stevens between being separated from his security detail during the attack and turning up dead several hours later at a Benghazi hospital?

• Who was watching the live-streaming feed of images from drones over the area of the attack that night?

• Which officials from the White House and the Pentagon were in the decision chain about how the U.S. military should respond?

• Was Mr. Obama involved in that decision chain in real time?


Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/7/panetta-no-time-military-response-benghazi-attack/#ixzz2KFfc0xbR
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

While giving Senate testimony regarding Benghazi on Feb. 7, Sec. of Defense Leon Panetta said Obama was not present nor did he communicate with the Sec. of Defense during the Benghazi attack.

Panetta was answering questions from Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) when he made it clear he had no communication with Obama outside the normal, "pre-scheduled" 5 p.m. meeting on September 11.

When asked if Obama at least called to check in as the attack unfolded Panetta said "No."

When asked if anyone from the White House called that night, Panetta said "No."

According to Panetta, the President trusted that the Sec. of Defense and Joint Chiefs of

Two weeks ago, Senator Rand Paul asked then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton if Benghazi served as a gateway for the United States to run weapons to Syrian rebels through Turkey. Today during testimony on Capitol Hill, outgoing CIA director Leon Panetta admitted there was a plan, supported by Clinton and former CIA Director David Petreaus, put in place to arm Syrian rebels but was stopped by President Obama.

  Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mr. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were asked by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, if they had supported the recommendation that weapons be provided to the Syrian resistance.

 “We did,” Mr. Panetta said.

 “You did support that” Mr. McCain asked again.

 “We did,” General Dempsey added.

 The White House, however, was worried about the risks of getting more deeply involved in the crisis in Syria. And with President Obama in the midst of a re-election bid, the White House

Panetta: Obama Absent Night of Benghazi

http://www.stink-eye.net/forum/index.php?topic=14986.0

irrelevant, even if it's true.  the president is still culpable because he SHOULD have been involved.  an embassy was under attack.  what the hell was he doing INSTEAD?

Neither the secretary of defense nor the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff spoke to the secretary of state during the 8-hour attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012. At a Thursday hearing in the Senate, Republican Ted Cruz asked both Leon Panetta and Martin Dempsey, "In between 9:42 p.m., Benghazi time, when the first attacks started, and 5:15 am, when Mr. Doherty and Mr. Woods lost their lives, what converations did either of you have with Secretary Clinton?"

"We did not have any conversations with Secretary Clinton," Panetta responded.

"And General Dempsey, the same is true for you?" Cruz asked. Dempsey confirmed this. Watch the video below:

(CNN) -- There was a fiery exchange between Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Republican Sen. John McCain on Thursday during Panetta's testimony about a deadly attack last September in Libya.

Panetta began his remarks to the Senate Armed Services Committee by saying there was not enough time to fly armed military assets to Benghazi to fend off attackers at the U.S. Consulate. Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, were killed.

Panetta said the response to the attack was "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."

McCain, who has constantly lambasted the Obama administration's response to the attack, forcefully challenged Panetta's assertion that the Defense Department did everything it could.

Panetta: Not enough time to respond to Benghazi attack

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/07/us/panetta-benghazi-hearing/index.html

TYRONE WOODS  WAS ON THE ROOF OF THE CONSULATE USING THE LASER POINTER TO SHOW WHERE THE BAD GUYS LOCATION AT LEAST 3 TIMES RIGHT? HOW LONG DID THAT GO ON PANETTA? WHY DID HE GIVE AWAY HIS LOCATION KNOWING HE COULD BE KILLED? WHY WASTE THE TIME IF HE HADN'T SPOKEN TO SOMEONE THINKING HE WAS GETTING HELP???????????

According to a timeline released by the Office of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the chartered private plane took off from Tripoli and headed to Benghazi with the rescue team about 2 hours and 48 minutes after the terrorist attack in Benghazi started at 9:42 p.m. Libya time.

According to the State Department Accountability Review Board (ARB) report, the department’s temporary duty regional security officer (TDY RSO) in charge of the security detail at the department’s Benghazi mission on Sept. 11, 2012 was monitoring a security camera and saw the terrorists swarm through the front gate of the compound at the start of the attack.

Using his cell phone, this security officer notified the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli within three minutes. He also notified the nearby Annex operated by the CIA. Within eight minutes of the start of the attack, Amb. Chris Stevens, who was in the Benghazi compound, used a cell phone given to him by a State Department Diplomatic Security agent to talk to his deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli and tell that deputy personally that the Benghazi compound was under attack.

“Upon notification of the attack from the TDY RSO around 2145 local, Embassy Tripoli set up a command center and notified Washington,” said the ARB report.

“About 2150 local, the DCM was able to reach Ambassador Stevens, who briefly reported that the SMC [Special Mission Compound] was under attack before the call cut off.”

After Amb. Stevens' incomplete we-are-under-attack phone call to his deputy in Tripoli, it took almost three hours for the U.S. government to get a solitary private charter plane on the way to Benghazi--and almost four hours to get that plane landed at the Benghazi airport.

“Within hours,” said the ARB report, “Embassy Tripoli chartered a private airplane and deployed a seven-person security team, which included two U.S. military personnel, to Benghazi.”

While not stating that this plane was a private charter, the DOD's timeline specifies that it took off from Tripoli at 12:30 a.m. Libya time—or 2 hours and 48 minutes after the attack started.

The DOD timeline and the State Department ARB report differ on the number of people included in the security team that traveled on this chartered plane. DOD’s timeline says it was six; State’s ARB report, as quoted above, says it was seven. “12:30 am A six man security team from U.S. Embassy Tripoli, including two DoD personnel, departs for Benghazi,” says the DOD timeline.

Neither the DOD timeline nor the ARB report described any of the members of the security team that took that private chartered flight from Tripoli to Benghazi as State Department personnel.

In a Nov. 2 piece in the Washington Post, David Ignatius reported--in a timeline described to him by a “senior intelligence official”--that the security team that flew to Benghazi on that chartered plane was in fact comprised of CIA people and military personnel working with the CIA.

In fact, the timeline Ignatius published in the Post seems to indicate the CIA chartered the plane.

“1:15 a.m.: CIA reinforcements arrive on a 45-minute flight from Tripoli in a plane they've hastily chartered,” reported Ignatius. “The Tripoli team includes four GRS [CIA Global Response Staff] security officers, a CIA case officer and two U.S. military personnel on loan to the agency. They don't leave the Benghazi airport until 4:30 a.m. The delay is caused by negotiations with Libyan authorities over permission to leave the airport; obtaining vehicles; and the need to frame a clear mission plan. The first idea is to go to a Benghazi hospital to recover Stevens, who they rightly suspect is already dead. (Also killed was a State Department communication specialist.) But the hospital is surrounded by the al-Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sharia militia that mounted the consulate attack.”

Nothing. That is what President Barack Obama did on the night of September 11, 2012, as terrorists attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and killed four Americans, among them Ambassador Christopher Stevens. President Obama’s inaction was revealed in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday by outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey.

Under direct questioning by Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Panetta admitted that he had no communication with President Obama after their “pre-scheduled” meeting at 5:00 p.m. EDT. The attack on the consulate had already been under way for 90 minutes at that time. Neither the president nor anyone else from the White House called afterwards to check what was happening; the Commander-in-Chief had left it “up to us,” said Panetta.

Panetta’s testimony directly contradicts President Obama’s own claim to have issued “three direectives” as soon as he learned “what was going on” in Benghazi. As he told a Denver reporter in October:

I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure we are securing our personnel and that we are doing whatever we need to. Number two, we are going to investigate exactly what happened and make sure it doesn't happen again. Number three, find out who did this so we can bring them to justice.

So Ted Cruz, "Between 9:42 p.m. Benghazi time when the first attack started and 5:15 a.m., that's eight hours, essentially, when Mr. Doherty and Mr. Woods lost their lives, what conversations did either of you have with Secretary Clinton?"  That's the secretary of state who runs consulates, who runs embassies.  "Uh, we didn't have any conversations with secretary, uh, Clinton."  "And General Dempsey, is the same true for you?" Cruz asked, and Dempsey confirmed that it was.  So what was Hillary doing to save lives?

Now, the Democrats did their best to change this hearing on Benghazi into a hearing about the impact of the sequester on the Pentagon.  They did.  They tried to shift the focus to the sequester, 'cause this did not go well.  It could have been a lot worse for the regime, but it still didn't go well.  Obama said (paraphrasing), "Well, do what you gotta do," and left.  And not a word spoken for eight hours during all of this with Obama, and they never talked to Hillary at all during this thing.  And General Dempsey, "I never got an order to send troops."  You know, which raises a question.  One of the SEALs, I forget which one, forgive me for that, by the way, went over there. They had violated orders. They were told to stand down.  That's another thing about this, that consulate personnel were told to stand down.

Not only was there no military, they went anyway to try to save lives.  And one of the SEALs, remember, lit up one of the terrorists with his laser as though he was expecting a laser guided bomb to follow.  And all he did was expose his position when he did this, and they were able to kill him as a result of that.  Now, this guy would not have lit up the terrorists, and he wouldn't have exposed himself if he hadn't thought there was something up there that was gonna fire a bomb targeted by his laser.  I've always been curious about that.  At some point the question needs to be asked, "Did they think that there were reinforcements in the air?  Did they think they had air support at that point?"

They went over to the consulate, these guys, and they lit up the target, and in so doing, exposed themselves, by the way, to the terrorists.  But they lit up the target, and that enables an American aircraft with laser guided bombs above to fire the bombs guided to the target by virtue of the laser being focused on it by the Navy SEAL.  There's no reason to laser the terrorist target if you're not gonna launch a laser-guided missile, bomb, whatever weapon.  Why did they think they had air support?  I would love to have the answer to that question.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  I remember in the early days of the aftermath of the Benghazi attack, I remember one of the focal points, one of the questions was, why all this effort to blame the video? Why all this effort to blame forces outside of Washington, to blame protests from a video?  And somebody said to me, "Rush, when it gets down to brass tacks what's gonna be revealed is, where was Obama?"  That's what they're trying to massage here.  And the way it was explained to me was, the question, was Obama disengaged, meaning could he be found?  We just heard Panetta say that after five o'clock, that was it, there were no more conversations with Obama.  After five that was it, Obama said (paraphrasing), "Look, do what you have to do."

Through it all, Obama's White House simply did not respond or engage.  Given the auspiciousness of the date and the seriousness of the attack, we must now ask, with the utmost gravity, "Why not?"


Remember that we are not talking about the president's weak response after the fact; the issue is what he was (or was not) doing in real time, as the event unfolded.  An attack was ongoing.  Distress calls were coming in.  At that point, presumably, neither Obama nor anyone else in the U.S. government could have known for certain that this attack was an isolated case.  It might, after all, have been one stage in a possible series of attacks.  And while it was ongoing, there was, presumably, no way of knowing how the situation would develop, how large the attack force was, whether the Libyan government was complicit in the assault, or how many Americans might be in jeopardy.


And yet in spite of all this uncertainty, mayhem, and danger, Obama remained disengaged, neither responding to nor initiating any communication with his national security apparatus.


If Panetta is to be believed -- and we can only assume that if he is lying, he is doing so to protect his boss from even worse revelations -- then Obama was either completely unavailable that night (September 11!) or completely unwilling to take steps to help Americans who he knew were in the process of being killed in Benghazi.


In a semi-rational world, no government could withstand the exposure of such inhumanity, not to mention such a total failure to carry out its primary duty -- namely, to protect its citizens against foreign aggression.  In our current, thoroughly irrational world, there remains little doubt that Obama will emerge unscathed from Panetta's testimony, just as Hillary Clinton will remain untarnished after openly declaring, during her own belated testimony, that the clock has run out on any attempt to unravel the administration's web of lies about Benghazi, since "What difference -- at this point -- does it make?"  (I explained this here.)


Heavily armed terrorists carried out a planned attack on a U.S. ambassador.  Four Americans, including the ambassador, were killed.  The attack lasted for more than seven hours.  The U.S. government was aware of the attack from a very early stage and was monitoring events with surveillance technology.


The secretary of defense and his military commanders did nothing.  The secretary of state did nothing.  The president never called to ask, "How are things going?"  His previous evasions of questions about his orders and actions at the time revealed that he took no direct action in response to the attacks.  We now learn that he was not even in the communication loop that night.


Thanks to Panetta's testimony, we have once again been forced to drop the veil of humanity we sometimes hold up before this administration in order to keep our sanity.  ("Surely he was aware, surely he didn't simply let people die without a thought.")  At last, sadly, we have been reduced by Panetta to having to wonder where Obama was that night, what he was doing, and why he was apparently unavailable to involve himself in the biggest national security emergency of his presidency.


Finally, Hillary Clinton's grotesque plea seems appropriate: "What difference -- at this point -- does it make?"  Do you really want to know?  Or isn't this all just too twisted to contemplate?

As Woods was thanking Doherty, though, the attackers were adjusting their mortar fire, and getting closer with each volley. A French 81 mm round ended Woods’ life, though as he fell, his body shielded another security agent, saving his life.

Doherty was killed instantly by a direct hit on his position from another mortar round.

From below, several other agents rushed up to the roof and put themselves in the line of fire while they saved the other two men’s lives. They lowered the bodies down with rope they had cut down from their gym. One JSOC agent strapped a wounded DSS man to his back, then climbed down a ladder under fire.


Everyone at the CIA compound might well have been killed if they had remained, but an unmanned intelligence drone overhead signalled, by tracing heat signatures, that a much larger hostile force was gathering.

Some 30 Americans loaded into vehicles and evacuated the area. They were fired on again during the drive to the airport, but made it and escaped to Tripoli on two flights, at 7:30 and 8:30 a.m. Sept. 12. Stevens’ body was finally recovered when a local was sent to the Benghazi morgue and “there was likely a money exchange,” the authors say, to release the remains, which were on the 8:30 plane.

Did the President not care about their safety specifically or did he not expect things to escalate further. No one knows.   

The President stated in a press conference on November 14, 2012 as reported in the Canada Free Press:

"If people don't think that we did everything we can to make sure that we saved the lives of folks who I sent there, and who were carrying out missions on behalf of the United States, then you don't know how our Defense Department thinks or our State Department thinks or our CIA thinks," Obama said. "Their number one priority is obviously to protect American lives."

"As Henry raised his hand to follow up, Obama interrupted him and continued with his answer.

"I can can tell you that immediately upon finding out that our folks were in danger, that my orders to my national security team were do whatever we need to do to make sure they're safe. And that's the same order I would give any time that I see Americans are in danger -- whether they're civilian or military -- because that's our number one priority."

This President was negligent is many ways by failing to engage directly in these events.  We all hope that if this were us or one of our family members we could count on the support of our President.   Maybe he was not interested and just didn't have time for that "3:00 AM phone call."  He was in the middle of a difficult re-election campaign. 

With something that ended so badly the President was going to need a statement that would insulate him from liability.  His minions would accept it, his detractors would not and the compliant media would protect him. 

When the President said "immediately" that must have meant when I woke up the next morning.  Here we go again.

“And so it would be my objective to see if we could meet those interests,” Brennan continued. “At the same time, our Founding Fathers did sort of separate the branches of government; judicial, legislative, and executive. And so I want to be mindful of that separation, but at the same time, meet your legitimate interests.”

President Obama didn’t make any phone calls the night of the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, the White House said in a letter to Congress released Thursday.

“During the entire attack, the president of the United States never picked up the phone to put the weight of his office in the mix,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, who had held up Mr. Obama’s defense secretary nominee to force the information to be released.

Mr. Graham said that if Mr. Obama had picked up the phone, at least two of the Americans killed in the attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi might still be alive because he might have been able to push U.S. aid to get to the scene faster.

The White House has said Mr. Obama was kept up to date on the attack by his staff, though after being alerted to the attack in a pre-scheduled afternoon meeting he never spoke again with the defense secretary or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Current Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told Congress last week that he knew immediately the attacks were a terrorist assault, though the White House downplayed that notion in the first five days after the attack.

Republican senators said they will still push for more information on who changed the talking points given to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who went on the Sunday talk shows after the attacks and blamed protests against an anti-Islam video.


Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/14/white-house-no-phone-calls-benghazi/#ixzz2KuYudpdn
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

BREAKING: Obama made no phone calls on night of Benghazi attack, White House says


He did call Netanyahu , so he did use the phone once after he knew about the Benghazi attack.

President Obama knew about the IED attacks on the Benghazi consulate in the run-up to the deadly Sept. 11 assault, a top Republican lawmaker claims, suggesting the president was aware of the deteriorating security situation.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Thursday that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told him "the president was informed of the April and June attacks." One of those attacks, in June, blew a hole in the perimeter wall of the Benghazi compound. The two strikes were among dozens of security incidents recorded in the region in the months preceding Sept. 11, and in hindsight have been described as warning signs.

The disclosure about Obama comes after a string of Capitol Hill hearings in which top administration officials downplayed how much they knew about the security situation at the compound in advance of the September attack.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, at a hearing shortly before she left the administration, said she never saw an Aug. 16 State Department cable sent to her office that warned the consulate could not sustain a coordinated attack.

"I have made it very clear that the security cables did not come to my attention," she said. The cable was first reported by Fox News.

While Clinton claims her deputies never showed her the cable -- which has been described as the smoking-gun warning -- Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey later said they were in fact apprised of that cable.

Asked whether Obama had wanted anything done about the unraveling security situation in Benghazi, neither Clapper's office nor the National Security Council would address the question.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/15/obama-knew-attacks-in-run-up-to-benghazi-strike-lawmaker-says/?test=latestnews#ixzz2L0mFVID2

The late Ted Kennedy became known as “the Hero of Chappaquiddick” for leaving a young lady to die after accidentally driving his car off a bridge on the night of July 18, 1969. Kennedy, who swam free, said nothing to police until 10 a.m. the following day.

In the subsequent inquest, John Farrar, a professional diver and the captain of the Edgartown Fire Rescue unit on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts, discovered the body of Mary Jo Kopechne in the well of the backseat of the overturned and submerged car. He said in his testimony:

It looked as if she were holding herself up to get a last breath of air. It was a consciously assumed position.… She didn’t drown. She died of suffocation in her own air void. It took her at least three or four hours to die. I could have had her out of that car twenty-five minutes after I had the call. But he (Ted Kennedy) didn’t call.

President Barack Obama deserves similar obloquy as “the Commander-in-Chief who went AWOL” on September 12, 2012 — during the eight-hour siege in which heavily-armed terrorists burnt the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

To be sure, there are major differences between the two events. Unlike Kennedy, the president did not directly endanger the life or lives of others. Like Kennedy, however, he went missing when he could have tried to mount a rescue mission, or at least weighed

There isn’t a special operations trooper who wouldn’t have gone into Benghazi “blind” if it was necessary to rescue a contingent of Americans. The idea that critical intelligence must be gathered, analyzed, and evaluated before a SO force proceeds on a critical retrieval mission may be academically correct, but not strictly followed in real life critical combat rescue. U.S. special forces of every kind go into harm’s way when and where they are needed with little regard for themselves. It’s the mission that counts, and the mission clearly was to rescue the guys in Benghazi. For some reason this fact escaped Washington’s high military command.

Why is it that after over eleven years of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq that the Senate Intelligence Committee will swallow the story that no forces were available in adequate time and distance to relieve Benghazi? To begin with, why wasn’t some high ranking White House or Pentagon official on the phone to commercial airlines serving Spain to see who could aid in the mission by redirecting existing transport so the Marine FAST team could be wheels-up in minimal time if no military air assets were available? The concept of chartering or even commandeering available U.S. civilian transport has been in existence since the days of General Washington. When faced with a military crisis, such actions have considerable precedent.

The White House now claims President Barack Obama called former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at approximately 10 PM on the night of the Benghazi attacks, September 11, 2012.

This is "about the same time" Clinton released a statement condemning a YouTube video which Islamists claimed incited the attacks.

Obama's claimed phone call to Hillary and Hillary's statement would occur approximately six hours after the attacks had started.

The White House made this assertion only after outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told Congress that Obama did not contact him the night of the attacks after a "pre-scheduled" 5 PM meeting. Panetta said neither he nor General Martin Dempsey heard from Obama after this meeting and that no one from the White House called at any point during the attacks.

White House spokesman Jay Carney insisted that the President remained in contact with his national security team: "Like every president before him, [Obama] has a national security and deputy national security adviser. He was in regular contact with his national security team directly, and spoke with the Secretary of State at approximately 10 p.m."

The Obama administration has agreed to provide emails pertaining to the controversial CIA talking points which critics say pushed an inaccurate picture of what happened during the terror attack last September in Benghazi, a congressional source tells Fox News.

“We expect that will be done early next week,” the source said, adding the administration has agreed to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s request to review the emails.

The source did not immediately make clear whether members of the committee would go into a room and read the emails, or whether hard copies would be permanently supplied to the committee.

The source noted that the committee has already seen details on how the controversial talking points were changed from their original drafting. Terms like Al Qaeda were stripped out, which led Republican lawmakers to charge the talking points were deliberately watered down -- it’s unclear which versions of the talking points members of the Senate committee might see.

The intelligence community’s talking points were provided to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice and formed the basis of her controversial comments on all the major Sunday talk shows five

Although Congressional hearings regarding the deadly attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi brought both Hillary Clinton to Capitol Hill as well as CIA Director Leon Panetta to answer questions, Republicans still want more questions answered about the assault that took the lives of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Congressman Frank Wolf (R - VA), Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and Congressman Jim Gerlach (R - PA), a House Ways and Means Committee member, sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday and indicated that he was contacted by a "reliable source who provided information that there are wounded American personnel, including State Department employees, currently in rehabilitation and recovery at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center."

Wolf's letter continues saying that the source told him that as many as seven Americans have been or were given medical treatment at the facility, a number of which were State employees.  According to both Wolf and Gerlach, another source corroborated the claim and "indicated that as many as 30 Americans (including State Department and CIA personnel and government contractors) may have been injured in the attack."

The Congressmen told Secretary Kerry they would like to visit the survivors of the Benghazi attack at Walter Reed, "as they have endured much for their country and we owe them a debt of gratitude." They are also requesting from Sec. Kerry the names and contact information to all the State Department employees who survived the Benghazi attack.
 - See more at: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/03/01/Wolf-to-Kerry-Turn-Over-Benghazi-Survivors#sthash.cONP6ovl.dpuf

But the first batch of documents contained hundreds of pages that were of no use, the source said.

“It was so redacted that there was no information whatsoever,” said the source, who spoke to Fox on the condition they not be identified. “There were some documents that were 100 pages with every word on the page redacted. They were worthless.”

A second set of documents were delivered to Capitol Hill Thursday night which had only minimal redactions. 

The source speculated that the administration had two sets of documents ready to go: one that was redacted and another that didn’t. Senators have asked to see the documents as a part of their inquiry into the attack on Benghazi. Senators also wanted the documents before they were willing to vote on John Brennan to be Director of Central Intelligence.

A committee vote on Brennan’s nomination is set for Tuesday.

The documents reveal various email traffic about the “talking points” which were passed through a litany of Washington power centers: The White House, the FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department. The source questions why it took the Obama administration months to deliver the information when all of these agencies had dealt with the email traffic.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/01/senators-complain-after-getting-worthless-redacted-version-benghazi-talking/#ixzz2MQLRk4po

Since CBS News learned that the Obama administration delivered Benghazi documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee last Thursday, a source who has viewed the documents is telling the network that someone “in a federal agency ‘press shop’ was involved in changing the talking points to remove al-Qaeda.”


 In fact, CBS’s source says the docs say that there were warnings from Libya that were sent to Washington days before the deadly attack on the U.S. mission that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens that specifically alerted the administration about an imminent attack on the U.S. consulate.

 The source who read the Benghazi material also said that the documents say most of the correspondence between Libya and Washington from the beginning of the attacks to point to al Qaeda or al Qaeda affiliates “as being the likely instigators.”

 Another source, CBS says who saw the documents, states the litt

According to a source interviewed by CBS, officials in the “press shops” of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the White House, and the FBI were responsible, at least in part, for altering the Benghazi talking points given to U.N. ambassador Susan Rice:

Prior to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s vote on CIA director nominee John Brennan to move to a full Senate vote, the Obama administration provided much of the information the Senate Intelligence Committee had been requesting for five months regarding the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S consulate in Benghazi, Libya, CBS News has learned. The documents are voluminous and both Republicans and Democrats on the committee had the opportunity to review them.

Documents provided include emails regarding “who changed the Benghazi talking points” and many communications between officials in Libya and Washington, D.C., leading up to and during the attack.

Regarding the talking points: one source who reviewed the documents said removal of the word “al Qaeda” from the talking points was initiated, at least in part, by one of the “press shops.” The source said press officers from the Defense Intelligence agency, the White House and the FBI were “looped in” from the start and that some of them expressed concerns in writing that the media would ask follow up questions if certain words or phrases were used. The source added that the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then-Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell were included in these emails.

CBS had previously reported that references to “al-Qaeda” and “terrorism” were cut by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which Clapper heads, and that these changes were signed off on by the CIA and FBI. But that report was called into question by the closed-door testimony of Clapper and acting CIA director Mike Morrell in November, who reportedly insisted that they were not sure who had finalized the talking points.

They may have been less than forthcoming on that point, according to CBS’s latest report:

When asked whether Clapper and Morell misled Congress when they didn’t disclose who changed the talking points (because they knew), one source said “the exact right question wasn’t asked.”

There’s also this detail from CBS’s source,

“The documents indicated numerous other changes were made to the talking points, including removal of certain references to an “attack.”

which seems to be at odds with the line taken by a “senior U.S. official” in their earlier report:

“The points were not, as has been insinuated by some, edited to minimize the role of extremists, diminish terrorist affiliations, or play down that this was an attack,” the official tells CBS.

Just as a reminder, Susan Rice told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday immediately after the attack that:

The information, the best information and the best assessment we have today is that in fact this was not a preplanned, premeditated attack. That what happened initially was that it was a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in Cairo as a consequence of the

One of the hopeful outcomes of the Senate confirmation hearings for John Brennan to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency and Chuck Hagel to be the secretary of Defense was to gain some concrete answers to the Benghazi tragedy. So far, though, no additional useful information has been released. Further, the testimony of former Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey on Feb. 7 before the Senate Armed Services Committee only raised more questions. The cloud of a cover-up continues.

In that sense, much of the focus by the various congressional committees has been on “who made the changes to the talking points” used by our UN Ambassador Susan Rice on her marathon Sunday interviews in September. Though important, this question diverts attention away from the key issues. For example, what activity was actually being conducted at our Benghazi Special Mission Compound (SMC)? Was it involved in transferring arms to Syrian rebels and al Qaeda-affiliated militias fighting Russia’s key ally in the Middle East, Bashar al-Assad?

The out-of-control security situation in Eastern Libya including Benghazi was well known. After an assassination attempt on the UK ambassador in June, the Brits closed their Benghazi consulate, as did the International Red Cross. We had a bomb go off at our Benghazi SMC compound on June 6. We know Ambassador Christopher J. Stevens put out a classified message on Aug. 16 stating that the SMC could not be defended and requesting additional security personnel, but he was turned down.   

With the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi, why did Stevens find it necessary to be there on the 11th anniversary of Sept. 11 when we know he feared for his safety? Having dinner with the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin is not a compelling reason. Further, on that day, there were tactical warning signs that something was not right. Even the Blue Mountain Security manager of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade that was contracted to provide security for the SMC sensed that “something” was wrong and put out an alert on both his radios and cell phone. We know one of the local policemen who was assigned to guard the SMC was found taking pictures of the inside of the compound, and a memo later found written by Stevens shows he found this to be “troubling.” We know roadblocks were established by the Ansar al-Shariah militia who carried out the assault hours before the attack.

Was Stevens targeted to be killed, or was he supposed to be taken hostage in exchange for the return of the Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman? We know his body was taken to the hospital controlled by the militia that carried out the attack. Why?

The Accountability Review Board appointed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton provided few answers. It was like having the mafia investigate a crime scene.

Why there was no military response remains an open question. According to testimony given by then-Secretary Panetta, President Obama ordered the Defense Department to respond to the attack with “all available DOD assets.” Implicit within such an order is the authority for cross-border operations (CBO). With that directive, subsequent statements by the secretary of Defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff explaining why military forces could not be deployed in time to assist our ambassador and his staff with their cries for help were simply not credible.

It is understood that a “stand down order” was given. General David Petreaus has stated no such order came from the CIA. As Americans, we don’t leave our people under duress on the battlefield. The American people need to know if such an order was given and by whom.

The chairman’s statement that it would have taken 20 hours to deploy aircraft from Aviano, Italy, to Benghazi is simply not true. We had two squadrons of F-16 fighter aircraft stationed at Aviano. As part of their normal readiness status, designated aircraft are kept on alert to be able to respond instantly to any mission. Even if we allowed 10 minutes to “hot-refuel,” the F-16s could have arrived over Benghazi in 90 minutes. There is no question they would have made a difference. Tanker aircraft could have followed the F-16s, which would have permitted them to remain on station over Benghazi for hours. They may not have been able to save Stevens or Sean Smith, but they certainly could have saved our two Navy SEALs, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. They would have carried out attacks on the jihadist that Woods had illuminated with his laser, instead of allowing Woods and Doherty to become the targets.


Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/7/lyons-benghazi-cover-continues-nearly-six-months-l/#ixzz2MyhrSgyB
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Republican lawmakers are stepping up their campaign to gain access to the survivors of the Benghazi terror attack, with one claiming the Obama administration is engaging in a "cover-up" and another threatening to bring "legal charges."

The frustration is mounting six months after the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya. Republicans have sparred with the Obama administration over a range of issues -- from the faulty explanation over what caused the attack to the warning signs missed in advance of it -- but have focused recently on the surviving victims. They say they've been stonewalled in their attempts to get a list of survivors and speak with them.

Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., told Fox News on Tuesday that some have been at a Washington-area military hospital since the attack, saying their injuries must be "serious."

Yet, he said, "we don't honor these people, we don't mention their names."

"It's like it's a dark hole, and I think we're now at a point -- now there is a cover-up," Wolf told Fox News, calling for a "select committee" to investigate Benghazi.   

On Monday, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., also sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, complaining that the department "appears to be stonewalling a legitimate request for information, perhaps as part of an effort to cover up evidence of wrongdoing or incompetence."

He wrote that the House Foreign Affairs Committee, on which he sits, has the right to know "what the survivors saw and experienced ... on that dreadful night."

The congressman said he would recommend to top Republican lawmakers that "legal charges" be brought if the situation does not "immediately improve." It's not clear who those charges might be leveled against, but it was an apparent reference to lawmakers' ability to bring contempt of Congress claims.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, in an interview with Fox News, alleged that the injured survivors of the Benghazi terror attack have been "told to be quiet" and feel they can't come forward to tell their stories -- escalating his push for more information about survivors who have never been publicly identified.

The White House is denying any attempt to exert pressure on them.

"I'm sure that the White House is not preventing anyone from speaking," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, when asked about the survivors.

But Graham told Fox News that "the bottom line is they feel that they can't come forth, they've been told to be quiet."

"We cannot let this administration or any other administration get away with hiding from the American people and Congress, people who were there in real time to tell the story," Graham said


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/15/sen-graham-claims-benghazi-survivors-told-to-be-quiet-by-administration/?intcmp=trending#ixzz2NeQy3adF

CAPT Larry Bailey, USN (Ret.), a former senior SEAL commander and co-founder of Special Operation Speaks, demands to know, "Where the heck is Admiral Gaouette?" ADM Gaouette was the commander of the USS Stennis Carrier Strike Group on station in the Persian Gulf area who was mysteriously summarily stripped of his command during the attack in Benghazi, Libya, in which Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were murdered.

Several days afterward, it was reported that ADM Gaouette was summarily relieved of his command during a major operational contingency event during the Benghazi attacks for the alleged claim of "inappropriate leadership judgment." ADM Gaouette's detention and total disappearance weeks before the November 2012 presidential election was a story that CAPT Bailey says "disappeared into a black hole of silence."

CAPT Bailey, as a "Brother-in-the-Navy" of ADM Gaouette, has some urgent and vital questions:

Where is ADM Gaouette now, and where has he been for over 4 months?

Why hasn't Congress called ADM Gaouette to testify about the 2012 Benghazi fiasco, when he clearly was a key operational senior commander in-theater?

If ADM Gaouette is under some type of detention, what does "inappropriate leadership judgment" mean, what is he specifically charged with, and does he have proper legal counsel?

CAPT Bailey urges anyone who heard or saw anything, or has even the smallest most innocuous piece of the puzzle, to tell them what that piece is. He says, "The more questions SOS asks, the bigger the black hole of silence becomes."

Col. Richard F. (Dick) Brauer, Jr, USAF (Ret.), SOS Air Commando Coordinator co-Founder of SOS, has a slightly different, but still vital question: "Where was President Obama's CBA (Cross Border Authority) for the Benghazi ‘rescue’ attempt when US Defense Secretary Panetta claimed Obama told him, ‘Do whatever you gotta do to save American life.’?”

Col. Brauer explains that an insertion of any US forces into Benghazi, Libya, or across any international border into a country where US forces were not deployed, would have required a special US Presidential CBA authorization to be issued. So, in effect, Obama's telling Secretary Panetta to "Do whatever you gotta do" without simultaneously issuing a specific CBA enabling such action is like "telling a fire station to extinguish a 5-alarm blaze while the firemen were not legally allowed to even leave the fire house, go to the fire, or douse the burning building."

Where are the survivors? The unseemly efforts undertaken by the Obama administration, Democratic collaborators and a calculatingly uninterested mainstream media to avoid answering one of the fundamental questions of the Benghazi debacle will no longer suffice. Republicans in both the House and the Senate have made it clear they have run out of patience with the administration?s effort to keep the survivors isolated. If they are successful, this scandal may finally get the kind of national attention it so richly deserves.

The effort to keep the Benghazi survivors under wraps is nothing new. On December 12, 2012, Breitbart News revealed that Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R- UT) had been ?thwarted? by the State Department from seeing any of these Americans, some of whom had been badly injured. ?My understanding is that we still have some people in the hospital,? Chaffetz said at the time. ?I?d like to visit with them and wish them nothing but the best but the State Department has seen it unfit for me to know who those people are?or even how many there are. I don?t know who they are. I don?t know where they live. I don?t know what state they?re from. I don?t even know how many there are. It doesn?t seem right to me.?

One would think that such an allegation would command the attention of investigative journalists across the nation. One would be wrong. Other than media referring back to the Breitbart story, there wasn?t one other news outlet interested in either the survivors or the disturbing reality that the State Department was keeping them secret.

Questions about them were revived when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton successfully stonewalled clueless Republicans during her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last January. At that time it was reported that five of the 20-30 people who survived the attack were State Department Diplomatic Security agents evacuated to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. When Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) questioned Clinton, she revealed that she had only talked to one unnamed survivor, and that she felt it was ?inappropriate? to talk to the others until they had been interrogated by the FBI. Not a single Republican bothered to ask why contact with the State Department would have tainted an FBI investigation. Clinton, who helped perpetrate the administration lie that the Benghazi attack was precipitated by an incendiary video posted months beforehand on the Internet, walked away unscathed.

After Clinton?s appearance, Sen. John McCain claimed he wanted to hear directly from the survivors, saying they should come to Capitol Hill and report their own versions of what occurred on September 11. ?They should certainly [do so]. If not come up to Capitol Hill at least be identified and take their statements as to what they saw,? he said. He continued. ?We still want the questions answered. We?ll do everything we can to get answers to questions. The American people deserve them. Like Hillary said, ?there are four dead Americans.??

In February, Breitbart reported that Bill Bransford, a Washington, D.C. attorney at Shaw Bransford & Roth P.C. who specializes in federal employment law, contended that the survivors cannot legally reveal to the press or most members of Congress that they were even witnesses to the carnage. ?First of all, I?m assuming that most of these people who witnessed the attack, except for the State Department folks, would be intelligence people, and they are not covered by the whistle blower protection laws,? Bransford explained.

He further revealed that State Department employees must sign non-disclosure agreements. ?If somebody violates one of these non-disclosure agreements, the consequences could include interfering with a criminal investigation, obstruction of justice, criminal charges for releasing classified information, and those are pretty serious,? he warned. Yet Bransford also said that State Department employees are covered by the Whistleblower Protection Act, but that a revision of the law, the Whistle Blower Protection Enhancement Act of 2012, was so new, some of the changes may not yet be in effect.

Benghazi Scandal: A Virginia congressman says the witnesses to an act of war on sovereign U.S. territory are being held incommunicado in a Washington, D.C., hospital by their own government. Free the American 30.

When 52 Americans were seized and held hostage by the foreign government of Iran and held for 444 days, it was a national embarrassment that helped bring down a presidency and spawned a late-night news program, "America Held Hostage," which would become ABC's Nightline.

The Sept. 11, 2012, organized and planned terrorist attack on our diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, is a similar national embarrassment, an event prompted by what in a court would be deemed criminal negligence as U.S. diplomats were denied the security they needed and requested as a callous administration, through its Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, would later say, "What difference, at this point, does it make?"

It makes a difference how and why it happened, and that the survivors of that terrorist attack could tell us the how and why if they weren't being held hostage by their own government under the cover of an "ongoing" investigation that is seemingly going nowhere.

Worse yet, they may be held in plain sight, right under the eyes of a sleeping Washington press corps.

It matters to GOP representatives Frank Wolf of Virginia and Jim Gerlach of Pennsylvania, who have written to new Secretary of State John Kerry asking him for the names and contact information for each of the individuals who survived Benghazi.

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A fifth person died as a result of the attack on our outpost at Benghazi, say sources familiar with events that took place there on 11 September 2012.

"This is not being reported by State or White House," said one source, who has knowledge of events surrounding the attack that killed former SEAL Glen Doherty, computer tech Sean Smith, Ambassador Chris Stevens, and former SEAL Tyrone Woods.

The source did not specify whether the fifth person killed was American, nor in what capacity the person worked.

"There were people stationed there in a clandestine capacity," the source said.

A second source who is intimately familiar with the investigation affirmed the fifth death.

"You are correct about that," the source said.

Neither source divulged whether the person died at the scene or afterward.

JERUSALEM – As media reports present evidence the U.S. has played a central role in arming Syrian rebels, new questions now emerge about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the controversial scheme.

The questions prompt a second look at the perplexing security decisions made by Clinton and other top Obama administration officials the night of the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on American facilities in Benghazi.


One of those key decisions reportedly delayed an investigative FBI team from arriving at the Benghazi site for 24 days. The site was widely reported to have contained classified documents.

WND raised the Thursday of whether Clinton was telling the truth when she claimed in a Senate hearing that she had no information about whether the U.S. mission in Libya was procuring or transferring weapons to Turkey and other Arab countries.

Her claim appears to contradict a New York Times report that the CIA has been aiding Arab governments and Turkey in obtaining and shipping weapons to the Syrian rebels.

The goal of the alleged weapons shipments was to arm the rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Any training or arming of the Syrian rebels would be considered highly controversial. A major issue is the inclusion of jihadists, including al-Qaida, among the ranks of the Free Syrian Army and other Syrian opposition groups

Now a closer reading of two separate reports from the New York Times paints a picture of Clinton as the ring leader of the plan to arm Syrian rebels.

Confirming WND’s exclusive reporting for over a year, the New York Times last week reported that since early 2012, the CIA has been aiding the Arab governments and Turkey in shopping for and transporting weapons to the Syrian rebels.

The reported plan to arm the rebels mirrors a plan that, according to the New York Times, was concocted by Clinton herself.

Last month, the New York Times described Clinton as one of the driving forces advocating a plan to arm the Syrian rebels. At the time, the newspaper quoted White House officials stating they rejected the plan, which was also proposed by then-CIA Director David Petraeus.

A comparison of the Clinton plan to arms the rebels, as first reported by the Times, and the new Times report of American-aided shipments to the rebels since last year makes clear the Clinton plan was apparently put into action.

Last month, the Times reported that the idea of the Clinton plan was to “vet the rebel groups and train fighters, who would be supplied with weapons.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/hillary-clinton-snagged-in-benghazi-cover-up/#dBJg7B4SpYg6eQr9.99

On Friday, Sean Hannity brought Pat Smith, mother of the late Sean Smith, on his radio program. The 34-year-old information management officer was one of four Americans murdered in the Benghazi embassy attack on September 11, 2012.

In the chilling interview, a distraught Ms. Smith, in tears, pleaded for answers and spoke of the efforts to silence her.

Ms. Smith first relayed how her son, prior to the attack, requested additional security in advance and warned the State Department:

He did tell them, ahead of time, he typed it into his little typewriter over there, that they were going to be attacked, ‘please they needed more security,’ and they were ignored. And I don’t appreciate everybody going to bed and going to sleep and not taking care of the guys that they put in harm’s way, one of them being my son.

[Ms. Smith is likely referring to reports that President Obama went back to bed after learning of the attack on the compound.]

When Hannity asked how many times Sean warned the State Department or whom he warned, Smith replied:

My son himself told me that he warned them…. He said: ‘I told them, I sent messages’…. He was on the tele-type of whatever it is… he was on there telling them, just before it happened, and that the guy out there was taking pictures of the place. He was telling them that. He was a communications guy and he was communicating that.

Smith then spoke of the intimidation she has experienced, in her quest for answers, noting she is being silenced, though Hannity clarified it is not by someone in the government:

They don’t tell me much. They want me to shut up…. I was told, and I really would rather not say by who, [though] I can if you need it, but I was told that I’m causing a lot of problems and to shut up…. I told them ‘I will not! I will not shut up until I find out what really happened!’

More than 700 Special Operations veterans are urging members of Congress to back a select committee to investigate last year’s Benghazi terrorist attack, according to a letter first obtained by Fox News.

The letter from the group, “Special Operations Speaks,” supports the appointment of a special committee tasked with the single mission of investigating the attack that left Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead, and shut down the CIA operation in an annex of the Benghazi consulate, in the Sept. 11, 2012 attack.

“Congress must show some leadership and provide answers to the public as to what actually occurred in Benghazi.  Americans have a right to demand a full accounting on this issue," the letter stated. 

Special Operations Speaks is a political action committee whose primary mission is to “emphasize the pressing need for the nation and its representatives to understand the value of our Constitution and actively support a return to its application in all phases of government,” according to the group’s website.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/07/special-ops-veterans-group-calls-for-select-probe-benghazi-attack/?intcmp=trending#ixzz2PtL9CI00

700 Retired Military Special Ops Tell Congress to Form Select Committee on Benghazi

Seven hundred retired Military Special Operations professionals from the organization "Special Operations Speaks" sent a letter to the House of Representatives urging members to support H.Res 36, which will create a House Select Committee to investigate last September’s deadly terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. 

 “It appears that many of the facts and details surrounding the terrorist attack which resulted in four American deaths and an undetermined number of American casualties have not yet been ascertained by previous hearings and inquiries,” the letter states. It continues further, "Additional information is now slowly surfacing in the media, which makes a comprehensive bipartisan inquiry an imperative. Many questions have not been answered thus far." The letter puts forth over twenty unanswered questions the select committee should address.

 Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA), a sub-committee chairman on the House Appropriations Committee, issued a resolution for a House Select Committee to investigate issues surrounding the Benghazi Attack last November in the 112th Congress. He re-issued his resolution for the select committee when the 113th Congress began. The resolution currently has over 60 co–sponsors.

 Only Speaker John Boehner (R–OH) can appoint a Select Committee and Boehner appears to mainly rely on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to investigate the Benghazi attack. However, any information that may be garnered from that committee will, as always, remain classified.

(CNSNews.com) - Patricia Smith--the mother of Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, who was murdered by terrorists in Benghazi seven months ago today--says that President Barack Obama and other administration officials did not follow-up on promises they made to her personally when she traveled to Washington, D.C. last September to meet the return to the United States of her son’s casket.

Mrs. Smith says she wants to know why her son and the others at the State Department compound in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012 were abandoned by their government.

“Please, Please help me find out who is responsible and fix it so no more of our sons and daughters are abandoned by the country they love,” she said in a letter sent Monday to Rep. Frank Wolf (R.-Va.)

“When I was in Wash. DC at the reception of the caskets, I asked for and received promises from Pres. Obama, Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, VP Biden and several other dignitaries in attendance,” Mrs. Smith said in her letter. “They all looked me directly in the eyes and promised they would find out and let me know. I got only one call from a clerk about a month later quoting from the time line, which I already had.”

The mother of slain State Department employee Sean Smith has endorsed Republicans' call for a select committee to investigate last year's attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.

In a letter to Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), Patricia Smith wrote that her son and the three other Americans killed on Sept. 11, 2012 — including Ambassador Christopher Stevens — were “abandoned” by the White House. Wolf is the sponsor of H. Res. 36, which has 89 co-sponsors.

 “Please, Please help me find out who is responsible and fix it so no more of our sons & daughters are abandoned by the country they love,” Smith wrote.


Smith was an IT officer at the U.S. mission, according to the State Department. Hours before the attack, he posted a message on a gaming forum saying the installation appeared to be under surveillance.

“Assuming we don't die tonight,” he said. “We saw one of our ‘police' that guard the compound taking pictures.”

In her letter, his mother says he shared those concerns with her as well.

“I especially want to know WHY the four were abandoned the way they were,” she wrote. “My son told me that he saw someone taking pictures just before this happened and reported it. He told me they asked repeatedly for better security.”

Smith's letter comes days after 700 special operations veterans endorsed the resolution.

Wolf's resolution would combine all existing investigations into a single review of the attack and the administration's response, similar to the select committees that were established during Watergate and the Iran Contra scandals of the 1970s. He has urged Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to establish the panel.

Here's Smith's full letter:

Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday he will appoint a special department liaison to help Congress with unanswered questions about the 2012 fatal terror attacks on a United States outpost in Libya.

Kerry said the appointment will be made as early as Thursday, following repeated questions about the incident, during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.

“I’ll appoint somebody tomorrow,” Kerry said.

Kerry’s remark followed sharp comments from California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who suggested the Obama administration has lied to congressional investigators.

“Nobody has lied to anybody,” responded Kerry, who became the country's top diplomat after the attacks.

Congressional Republicans have led efforts since the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans were killed, to learn more about what preceded the incident and the aftermath.

There have been no arrests in direct connection to the killings.

However, Kerry said Wednesday that officials are working with the Libyan government and “building a case.”


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/17/kerry-vows-benghazi-liaison-to-congress-within-24-hours-amid-lingering/?test=latestnews#ixzz2Qjy867Ca

CNSNews.com) - Secretary of State John Kerry reminded the House Foreign Affairs Committee Wednesday that he was "on the other side of the podium" when U.S. interests came under attack in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, and he said if the State Department is trying to impede the committee's investigation into embassy security, he's "not aware" of it.

"There's certainly no position by me to delay anything," Kerry said, "and I was not aware that -- you know, if there's anything that is appropriate to turn over." Kerry said he wants to check "historical precedent" regarding investigative and FBI documents relating to the terror attack.

Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) told Kerry that instead of handing over documents and records requested by the committee, as has happened in the past, the State Department "has insisted that the committee staff sift through thousands of pages of materials in a room in which they are monitored by the Department. And they can't remove any or make electronic copies of those documents," Royce said.

CBS News has learned that multiple new whistleblowers are privately speaking to investigators with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee regarding the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. compounds in Benghazi, Libya.


The nature of the communications with the whistleblowers and their identities are not being made public at this time. But in response, the Oversight Committee yesterday sent letters to the three federal agencies involved: the CIA, the Defense Department and the State Department.

Six months later, where are the Benghazi survivors?
Man questioned in Libya over Benghazi attack

The letters make the case for the whistleblowers to be able to share sensitive or classified information with their own attorneys, and ask for each agency's official description of the legal steps that process must follow. The letters also state that additional witnesses may be "compelled by subpoena to give testimony."


Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in the Benghazi attacks seven months ago. No arrests have been made.


Various Republican members of Congress and congressional committees have been investigating several facets of the incident including lax security, the U.S. response during the attacks, and the Obama administration's initial statements blaming a "spontaneous protest" gone awry, rather than planned terrorist attacks. A State Department board of investigators issued a series of recommendations on ways to try to avoid a similar tragedy in the future, and the department is implementing them.

REP. DANA ROHRABACHER (R-CA): Mr. Secretary, we think that there was a coverup of some kind of wrongdoing that led this administration to lie to the American people about the nature of the attack immediately after the attack and for a week after that attack. We need to have these questions answered. We need to talk to the people who are on the scene. Can you give us a commitment now that for this administration you will be coming up with the request, the honest request of this investigative committee as to who was evacuated and how to talk to them so we can get a straight answer and an understanding of what happened in Benghazi?

 SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: Well, before I became Secretary, Congressman, I believe I got the answers to who was evacuated and had a pretty good sense of what happened there. But now that I am the Secretary and I am responsible to you and the Congress, I can promise you that if you're not getting something that you have evidence of or you think you ought to be getting, we'll work with you. And I will appoint somebody to work directly with you starting tomorrow, with you, Mr. Chairman, to have a review of anything you don't think you've gotten that you're supposed to get. Let's get this done with, folks.

 ROHRABACHER: Thanks.

 KERRY: Let's figure out what it is that's missing, if it's legitimate or if it isn't. I don't think anybody lied to anybody. And let's find out exactly, together, what happened, because we need -- we got a lot more important things to move on to and get done. (House Foreign Affairs Committee, April 17, 2013)

Benghazi: As new whistle-blowers emerge and Congress tells CIA staffers to lawyer up, a grieving father demands to know how and why his son died and why no one in the administration wants to talk to him.

As long as we're on the subject of finding the terrorists responsible for killing U.S. citizens on American soil, the father of a former Navy SEAL killed in Benghazi last September was on Capitol Hill Wednesday to urge support of a special committee to investigate the attacks.

As we search for answers on Boston, we still have no real answers on Benghazi seven months after the terrorist attack on our diplomatic mission there.

Charles Woods and several members of Congress held a press conference in an effort to highlight what they say is the Obama administration's failure to fully disclose the circumstances that led to the deaths of four Americans, including Ty Woods and U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

The elder Woods said he is still waiting for real answers from the White House and the State Department.

"We don't just want another paper report," Woods said. "We want people who were on the ground" to testify and explain "why they failed to provide support and protection" to Tyrone and others. "This is extraordinary and we need to know ... who was it that gave the order to stand down," Woods said.


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House Speaker John Boehner Monday defended the way he has handled the investigation into last year's attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, insisting a select committee is not needed to probe the incident.

 The Ohio Republican told the media that he has resisted lawmakers’ calls for a select committee because he doesn't think one is necessary.

 “The five committees that have jurisdiction over this matter are working closely together,” said Boehner. “They're getting the job done.”

 As of Monday, The Hill reports, 117 of Boehner's fellow lawmakers have signed onto a resolution from Republican Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia, seeking a select committee. However, Boehner, defending his handling into the Benghazi incident, said it would be a waste of time and money, a claim backed by leaders of the Oversight, Foreign Affairs, Armed Services, Intelligence, and Judiciary committees.

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 However, conservative groups say the standing committees' investigations are not focused, and claim a select committee would have more power to get information from the White House and State department.

 Boehner said the committees have reached out to witnesses in the attack, which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, and there is a lot more information to be gathered.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Tuesday unveiled a report on last's year attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that blames then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for lapses in security.

The 46-page report by the five committees of jurisdiction concludes that reductions in security levels prior to the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were approved at the highest levels of the State Department, including by Clinton herself.

The report also concludes that talking points from the intelligence community were altered to protect the State Department from criticism of inadequate security levels.

After the attacks, the Administration perpetuated a deliberately misleading and incomplete narrative that the violence grew out of a demonstration caused by a YouTube video. The Administration consciously decided not to discuss extremist involvement or previous attacks against Western interests in Benghazi.

The U.S. government immediately had information that the attacks were conducted by al-Qa’ida-affiliated terrorists, yet Administration officials downplayed those connections, and focused on the idea that provocation for violence resulted from a YouTube video.

Contrary to Administration rhetoric, the talking points were not edited to protect classified information. Concern for classified information is never mentioned in email traffic among senior Administration officials.

Repeated requests for additional security were denied at the highest levels of the State Department.

The report suggests that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, failed to proactively anticipate the significance of September 11 and provide the Department of Defense with the authority to launch offensive operations beyond self-defense.

Wednesday after House committee chairmen asked President Obama to release a State Department cable that they said would prove Hillary Rodham Clinton, as secretary off state, signed off on security cuts at the diplomatic post in Benghazi ahead of the attack Sept. 11.

According to the committee chairmen, the April 2012 Clinton cable denies the U.S. Embassy in Libya’s request for more security. Five months later, the outpost in Benghazi was attacked and four Americans were killed, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

SPECIAL COVERAGE: Benghazi Attack Under Microscope

“An April 19, 2012, cable bearing Secretary Clinton’s signature acknowledged requests for additional security, but nevertheless ordered the withdrawal of security assets to proceed as planned,” the chairmen of five House committees wrote in a letter to Mr. Obama.

“Given the gravity of this issue, we request that you immediately make the April 19, 2012, State Department cable public.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Mrs. Clinton’s signature on the cable was standard for all diplomatic cables and was a practice continued from prior administrations.

He accused the Republicans of trying to “stoke a false controversy.”

(CNSNews.com) ? The White House dismissed the signature of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on documents ignoring security concerns in Benghazi, calling it ?protocol? for government official ?signatures? to appear on documents they did not sign.


?It is standard protocol that cables originating from the department in Washington go out under the authority of the current Secretary of State with their signature, i.e. their name, typed at the bottom,? White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday, using his fingers for quote marks when he said ?signature.? He continued. ?This practice has been in place throughout this administration and across prior administrations, both Democratic and Republican.?

A report by five House committees released Tuesday found that Senior State Department officials, including Clinton, approved reductions in security at the facilities in Benghazi, Libya. The report cites an April 19, 2012, cable bearing Clinton's signature acknowledging a March 28, 2012, request from then-U.S. Ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz for more security, yet allowing further reductions.

It’s clear from a reading of the interim report on Benghazi- and consultation with sources in the Intelligence Community (IC)- that policy and politics-- not intelligence failures-- led to the deaths of four Americans when Al Qaeda attacked the consulate in that Libyan city on September 11, 2012.

 But we knew that already, didn’t we?

 What we don’t know, still, is who in the administration is responsible for the alteration of key talking points generated by the IC in wake of the attack and who else knew about the alterations. 

 The report authors, who work for congress, have detailed information about the editors of the talking points, apparently. I’m guessing that they know very well who ordered them.

 Why haven’t they named names?

 Why have Republicans teamed up with the administration to conceal the fact that top Obama officials altered national security documents in a way that could be criminal.

 “It is clear that the State Department expressed concerns — and was backed by the White House — that the information be removed to avoid criticism for ignoring the general threat environment in Benghazi,” the Washington Times quotes the report in saying.

 And so he information was removed.

 Here’s what you may not know: Talking points generated by security agencies for events like the Benghazi assault are official documents. The alteration of the talking points in order to protect senior members of the State Department and/or the White House is a felony that calls for up to 12 years in prison, a $25,000 fine and immediate dismissal from the service of the United States government --including elected officials-- with a lifetime ban from further federal employment.

 The authors also reveal that Hillary Clinton denied requests directly for additional security, which is in contradiction to her testimony to congress that she never saw a request for extra security from Benghazi.

The interim report sets out copious evidence of the rash of security threats in Libya during 2012. There were more than 200 "security incidents" between June 2011 and July 2012 in Libya, 50 of them in Benghazi, it reports.

Britain and international agencies withdrew personnel from Benghazi. The United States reduced security forces despite a plea for increases from then-Ambassador Gene Cretz in March 2012.

"In a cable signed by Secretary Clinton in April 2012," the Interim Report reads, "the State Department settled on a plan to scale back security assets in the U.S. Mission in Libya, including Benghazi."

Later requests from Stevens after he replaced Cretz in May were also denied.

That contradicts Clinton's testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in January 2013. She said the cable traffic never made its way to her.

If so, why was her name appended to a response? Maybe there's an explanation in the internal processes of the State Department. And, it should be said, high officials often make decisions that with hindsight seem obvious mistakes. But she has given us just an exclamation, not an explanation.

And, as the Interim Report goes on to explain, the accounts given by the Obama administration at the time were misleading -- deliberately so.

It noted that State immediately reported the attack to the White House Situation Room and two hours later noted an al-Qaida affiliate's claim of responsibility. There was no mention of a spontaneous protest of an anti-Muslim video.

Yet Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and press secretary Jay Carney spoke repeatedly for days later of a video and a protest. Clinton assured one victim's family member that the video-maker was being prosecuted.

In the meantime, a CIA draft of talking points for the House intelligence committee was edited at the behest of State Department officials. Omitted were references to previous Benghazi attacks, the al-Qaida affiliate in Benghazi and intelligence estimates of threats in Libya. Also struck, the Interim Report says, were "any and all suggestions that the State Department had been previously warned of threats in the region."

These changes were made, the chairmen conclude, not to protect classified information -- reviews of the draft were circulated on unsecure email systems -- and not to protect the investigation by the FBI.

A 46-page “progress report”  (http://www.speaker.gov/report/benghazi-interim-report/?ref=home)released by five Republican House committees of jurisdiction indicates that security cuts at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi prior to the terrorist attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were approved by then-Secretary of State Clinton. This contradicts her January 23, 2013 testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee declaring exactly the opposite. On that occasion she said under oath: “I have made it very clear that the security cables did not come to my attention or above the assistant secretary level where the ARB (Accountability Review Board) placed that responsibility.” Yet a cable bearing her signature dated March 28, 2012, acknowledges a formal request from then-U.S. Ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz for additional security assets, but orders the withdrawal of security elements to proceed as planned.

Hillary clearly wanted to put all accountabilities for the ugly Benghazi matter out of public sight and mind. When Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) asked her why she, her State Department and the White House, who immediately knew differently, continued to blame the deadly assault on our consulate upon an obscure anti-Muslim video for weeks afterwards, she angrily pounded the table and retorted: “With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference at this point, does it make?”

Liberals don’t want honest Americans like you to have guns. Liberals just want to arm foreign rebels in crapshoot attempts to “end global violence.” But liberals feign ignorance when the rebels they arm end up being criminals who kill innocent Americans like the late U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.

Why did Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans die in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012? We now know that President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA Director David Petraeus were likely behind a mishandled gun-trafficking program that ended up arming the radical jihadist rebels who stormed the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya on that fateful day.

Our CIA is still playing the role of vetting which Syrian rebel groups will obtain arms including machine guns, ammunition, and rocket-propelled grenades. While Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are directly purchasing the weaponry, the Obama administration is aiding the Arab governments in shopping for these arms and transferring them from Libya, to Turkey, and finally into Syria.

Unfortunately the CIA has “vetted” shady intermediaries (including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood) and shady recipients of thousands of tons worth of military equipment and millions of rounds of ammo. Consequently, weapons have fallen into the wrong hands. In the case of Benghazi, anti-tank weapons appear to have landed in the hands of terrorists.

Now, Clinton is denying even knowing about the program, although the evidence indicates it was largely her idea. Of

Rep. Trey Gowdy, appearing on Fox News on Saturday afternoon, promised that “explosive” congressional hearings over the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, are “coming quickly.”

“There are more Benghazi hearings coming; I think they’re going to be explosive,” Mr. Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican who is a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told Fox’s Uma Pemmaraju.

SPECIAL COVERAGE: Benghazi Attack Under Microscope

Mr. Gowdy wasn’t able to give out too many details, but he hinted that the public for the first time might hear from witnesses to the terror attack that left four Americans dead.

“I am bound by certain measures of confidentiality, but I would tell you that you are getting very warm,” Mr.  Gowdy said when asked by Ms. Pemmaraju whether witnesses could be coming forward. “[The hearings] are coming sooner rather than later.”

"I'm not familiar with this notion that anybody has been blocked from testifying," said Obama. "So what I'll do is i will find out what exactly you are referring to."

Fox News has reported that whistleblowers are being blocked:

At least four career officials at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have retained lawyers or are in the process of doing so, as they prepare to provide sensitive information about the Benghazi attacks to Congress, Fox News has learned.

Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official and Republican counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, is now representing one of the State Department employees. She told Fox News her client and some of the others, who consider themselves whistle-blowers, have been threatened by unnamed Obama administration officials.

The State Department on Monday defended its decision not to have lower-level employees testify before Congress about last year's attack in Benghazi, Libya.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is pushing ahead with his investigation of the terrorist assault, and has asked for legal protections for lower-level employees who might be called to testify.

The State Department pushed back on Monday and said the independent probe into the attack "should be enough" for lawmakers.

“We think that we've done an independent investigation, that it's been transparent, thorough, credible, and detailed, and that we've shared those findings with the U.S. Congress,” State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said. “And that should be enough.”

Were they? Kerry Picket snags this clip from a Fox News exclusive last night for Breitbart, but pay close attention to the timing expressed by the Benghazi survivor/witness, and remember the attack didn’t stay constant:



A special operations member who witnessed the attack on the U.S. Mission unfold in Benghazi, Libya on September 11 last year, as well as debriefed those who took part in the response, spoke with Fox News’ Adam Housley on Monday night and revealed information that directly contradicts the administration’s insistence that there was not enough time nor resources to send to Benghazi to help State Department employees, contractors, and intel operatives who were under a terrorist attack. FNC kept their source’s identity hidden, as witnesses to the Benghazi attack have reportedly been intimidated by the administration into silence. The assault left four Americans dead, including U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens.

“I know for a fact that C110 was doing a training exercise not in the region of northern Africa but in Europe and they have the ability to react and respond,” the special ops member told FNC.

The C110 is a 40-man special operations commanders and extremists force. They are capable of rapid response and deployment and are specifically trained for Benghazi attack-like incidents. The night of the attack, according to the special op, they were training 3 & 1/2 hours away in Croatia.

“We have the ability to load out, get on birds, at a minimum stage. C110 had the ability to be there, in my opinion, in 4 to 6 hours from their European theater to react. They would have been there before the second attack,” he said, adding, “And you hear a whole bunch of advisers say, ‘We wouldn’t have sent them there, because the security was an unknown situation.’ If it’s an unknown situation, at a minimum, you send forces there to facilitate the exfill—medical, injuries. We could have sent a C130 to provide medical evacuation for the injured.”

All true — but consider that what we think of as the attack on the Benghazi consulate was actually two separate attacks. The first on the consulate began at 9:30 pm, when the first shots were fired, and was over by 11 pm. Security reinforcements from Tripoli arrived at the fallback annex at 1:45 am, about 4 hours after the first attack began and slightly under 3 hours after it ended. Shortly after, a second attack hits the annex and lasts for a little over an hour, when Glenn Doherty and Tyrone Woods were killed.

Now, if the C110 group had been called to Benghazi from Europe right at 9:30 pm, they might have arrived in time to fight the second attack on the annex — but only just barely, based on the estimate of this survivor/witness; 4 hours would have been 1:30 am. The security detail from Tripoli, which was much closer, had only just arrived in time for the second firefight, at 1:45. Bear in mind, though, that the Tripoli detachment came on their own rather than waiting for orders from State, which were not forthcoming anyway:

Instead, seven men who were American reinforcements in Tripoli, along with Agent Glenn Doherty, commandeered a jet and flew to Benghazi. Ultimately, Doherty and Tyrone Woods would be killed on the roof of the CIA annex.

The special op member told Fox News, “If it wasn’t for that decision, I think we would be talking completely different about this situation. I think you would be looking at 20 plus hostages captured by AQ or you would be looking at a lot of dead Americans in Benghazi.”

WASHINGTON – House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) made the following statement in response to President Barack Obama’s assertion that he’s “not familiar” with Benghazi whistleblowers being blocked from telling their stories:

“A lawyer for Benghazi whistleblowers has publicly stated that the State Department is blocking her client’s ability to talk freely with counsel.  Over the past two weeks, I have sent four letters requesting that this Administration make information available about how lawyers – who already have security clearances and are representing Benghazi whistleblowers – can be cleared to fully hear their clients’ stories. I have yet to receive any response from the Obama Administration.

“Even if the President really doesn’t know anything about someone wanting to come forward, his position should be that whistleblowers deserve protection and that anyone who has different information about Benghazi is free to come forward to Congress.  The President’s unwillingness to commit himself to protecting whistleblowers only aids those in his Administration who are intimidating them.”

On the night of the Benghazi terror attack, special operations put out multiple calls for all available military and other assets to be moved into position to help -- but the State Department and White House never gave the military permission to cross into Libya, sources told Fox News.

The disconnect was one example of what sources described as a communication breakdown that left those on the ground without outside help.

"When you are on the ground, you depend on each other -- we're gonna get through this situation. But when you look up and then nothing outside of the stratosphere is coming to help you or rescue you, that's a bad feeling," one source said.

Multiple sources spoke to Fox News about what they described as a lack of action in Benghazi on Sept. 11 last year, when four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed.

Pressed during a May 1 “media briefing” on whether the Obama administration had threatened the careers of State Department officials who wanted to offer new facts about the September 2012 attacks in Benghazi, here’s the White House’s defensive response to a reporter’s question (Video):


“
Benghazi happened a long time ago. – Jay Carney, White House spokesperson

Related: Pentagon denies claims General was fired over Benghazi

Sitting in the front row, Fox News’ Ed Henry referred to Barack Obama’s statement during a Tuesday press conference – only the president’s third for the calendar year – that he (Obama) didn’t know anything about hi