The White House found itself with another press corps controversy on its hands on Friday, after it emerged that it held a secret briefing about the Benghazi attacks with a select group of White House reporters.
Spokesperson Jay Carney was initially supposed to hold a briefing at 12:30 PM on Friday. However, ABC's Jon Karl threw a wrench in that plan when he reported that the State Department had been involved in lengthy revisions of CIA talking points about the attacks.
All of a sudden, the press briefing was pushed back to 1:45 PM. Then, Politico reported that the White House had held a secret briefing about the Benghazi developments with reporters. The site reported that, while the contents of the briefing were on "deep background," meaning that they could be used as background information in reporting, the existence of the meeting itself was off the record.
However, not all reporters were invited to the briefing. White House journalists have complained many times in the past about their level of access to administration officials. On Friday, at least one, April Ryan, made her feelings about the briefing very clear:
Big mistake!!!!!!Reporters are not happy with this off the record briefing before the briefing with a handful of the Press Corps.
-- AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) May 10, 2013
This off the record briefing is not a partisan issue but a matter of journalism and getting true on the record quotes for reports.
-- AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) May 10, 2013
After the Politico report, the public briefing was again pushed back, this time to 3:15 PM. Politico's Roger Simon mocked the White House's handling of events:
WH brief pushed back from 12:30 to 1:45 to 3:15 as elite press are schmoozed off the record on Benghazi. Gosh, what deft stagecraft.
-- Roger Simon (@politicoroger) May 10, 2013
When he finally started the briefing, Carney addressed the issue:
"We did, as many of you know, have a background briefing here at the White House earlier. I think 14 news organizations were represented, ranging from online to broadcast TV, print and the like. We do those periodically. We hope that participants find them helpful. I will say that no one here believes that briefings like that are a substitute for this briefing."
May 10th, 2013, 20:20
American Patriot
Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya crisis: Benghazi
State Dept refuses to identify ‘leadership’ who demanded edits of Benghazi talking points
May 10, 2013 | 3:41 pm 0 Comments
State Department spokesperson Patrick Ventrell refused to identify the member of State Department “leadership” who demanded that information about the role of terrorists in the Benghazi attack be edited from the official talking points.
“I can’t speak to every word that’s been cherry-picked from this email,” Ventrell said today.
“The email” in question was written by State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, as ABC reported, who feared that the CIA information about terrorists “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either?”
When the FBI recommended only minor changes, Nuland replied that “These changes don’t resolve all of my issues or those of my buildings leadership.”
May 10th, 2013, 20:21
American Patriot
Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya crisis: Benghazi
With an ABC News report raising new questions about whether the White House changed the controversial talking points delivered days after last September's Libya attack, the White House is pushing back its daily press briefing by the hour.
ABC News reported that it had obtained 12 different versions of the talking points "that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on 5 talk shows the Sunday after that attack."
The White House has said it's editing was minimal, but the briefing was originally scheduled for 12:30 p.m. Then it was 1:45 p.m. -- and now, it's 3:15 p.m.That's for the general press: Politico reports that the White House pushed back the original briefing in order to hold an off-the-record session with invited reporters. The White House didn't confirm the off the record briefing.
Republican members of Congress raised no objections when they first saw internal emails detailing the evolution of the administration’s talking points on Benghazi almost two months ago, senior administration officials said in response to a question from Salon today, and House Speaker John Boehner declined to attend or send a representative to that briefing.
Lawyers with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence briefed House and Senate Intelligence Committee members in March about the emails, which ABC News released today to much hullabaloo, after officials said they would make them available to members of Congress in February.
Yesterday, Boehner called for the release of the emails, but the administration officials, who agreed to speak on a conference call with reporters only on the condition of anonymity, said today that Boehner would have seen them had he attend the briefing, to which he and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were also invited.
On the Senate side, lawyers briefed Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the Vice Chairman of the Intelligence Committee and Sen. Richard Burr, who said the briefing satisfied many of his concerns. “It answers a lot, if not all, of the questions that the committee [had] from an oversight standpoint,” he told The Hill at the time. On the House side, those briefed included Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael McCaul. Republican members in neither chamber raised substantive concerns about the emails, the official said, and were free to discuss them publicly as they were not classified.
The emails about the September 2012 attack on the diplomatic post in Libya were shared with members of Congress during negotiations over the confirmation of CIA Director John Brennan. If Republicans had had major problems with what the emails revealed, they probably would have said something at the time and not confirmed Brennan 63-34, White House Spokesperson Jay Carney said during his daily press briefing this afternoon. “This is an effort to accuse the administration of hiding something that we did not hide,” Carney said.
May 10th, 2013, 20:23
American Patriot
Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya crisis: Benghazi
WASHINGTON — The White House says Friday's public disclosure of emails related to the attack on a U.S. compound in Libya is an attempt by Republicans to "politicize" the investigation.
Spokesman Jay Carney says lawmakers have known about the emails since earlier this year. And he disputed the notion that the emails suggest the White House was more involved in the crafting of talking points about the attacks than previously indicated.
The talking points suggested that the attacks on the Benghazi compound were spontaneous. It was later revealed that the attacks were planned.
The emails show White House officials were aware of the concerns from other agencies, including the State Department, about mentioning that specific groups might have been behind the attacks.
May 10th, 2013, 20:29
vector7
Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya crisis: Benghazi
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., issued a sharp and unusual challenge to the truthfulness of the nation’s top uniformed military commander on Thursday, demanding that U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, return to Capitol Hill to provide fresh testimony on the Benghazi attacks.
The point of contention involved whether any military officers issued an order to U.S. armed forces personnel on the night of Sept. 11, when the U.S. consulate and a nearby annex came under terrorist attack, to “stand down” from providing assistance.
“I asked [Gen. Dempsey] directly,” Graham said in an exclusive interview with Fox News. “Were there any military assets in motion, to help folks in Benghazi, [that were] told to stand down? And what did [State Department whistleblower] Greg Hicks say? That Lt. Col. [Steve] Gibson -- a DOD employee, a member of the Army -- was in Tripoli, ready and willing to go to Benghazi, preparing to go to Benghazi, and was told to stand down.”
“Clearly,” Graham added, “our chairman of the Joint Chiefs' rendition that no one was told to stand down is now in question.”
What’s more, Graham lumped the chairman into a group of prominent Democrats whom the Senate Republican said he would like to see summoned, or recalled, to the witness chair to testify on Benghazi. These included former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff.
The roles of Clinton and Mills occasioned much dispute at Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing where two career State Department employees who consider themselves whistleblowers -- Hicks and Mark Thompson, of the department’s counterterrorism bureau -- offered testimony that pointedly challenged the Obama administration account of the Benghazi attacks.
But the only mentions of Chairman Dempsey on Wednesday were admiring in tone, as Democrats repeatedly cited prior testimony by the general indicating that no military assets could be rallied in time to help the Americans killed in Benghazi.
Then-U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, information officer Sean Smith, and security agents Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were killed in two waves of attacks orchestrated, over eight hours’ time on the evening of Sept. 11, by terrorists with links to Al Qaeda. The hearing on Wednesday provided fresh evidence that Obama administration officials knew Benghazi was a terrorist attack “from the get-go,” as Hicks put it, but pressed a false narrative for weeks that depicted the deaths as the result of a spontaneous “protest” over an offensive YouTube video.
Asked to comment on Graham’s challenge to the chairman’s veracity, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Rob Firman told Fox News: “They weren’t told to stand down. They were simply told not to go to Benghazi. They were told to go to the airport in Tripoli to provide security there.”
Lt. Col. Patrick Seiber, a spokesman for the Joint Staff, said separately that Graham could call on Dempsey to testify again, but that the chairman’s remarks “will not change.”
In two exchanges during Dempsey’s appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 7, Graham elicited testimony about allegations that some military personnel were told to “stand down” in their desire to launch operations to assist the beleaguered Americans in Benghazi.
“Did [then-AFRICOM Commander] General Ham on that night,” Graham asked, “did he order a military asset in motion and someone told him to stand down?” “No,” Dempsey testified.
In calling out Dempsey on Thursday, however, the senator at one point appeared to have recalled his prior interrogation of Dempsey inaccurately. He recalled having asked Dempsey “point blank,” in their exchange in February, where was the closest C-130 plane on the night of Sept. 11.
Graham further recalled that the chairman testified the nearest such plane was in Djibouti, Africa.
But the transcript of the Feb. 7 hearing shows Graham in fact asked the general on that occasion about AC-130 gunships, and that Dempsey never provided any information about the approximate distance between the nearest such planes and Benghazi.
May 13th, 2013, 11:15
vector7
Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya crisis: Benghazi
"CBS News President David Rhodes and ABC News President Ben Sherwood, both of them have siblings that not only work at the White House, that not only work for President Obama, but they work at the NSC on foreign policy issues directly related to Benghazi."
So stated political consultant and media commentator Richard Grenell on Saturday's Fox News Watch (video follows with transcript and commentary):
RICHARD GRENELL: I think the media's becoming the story, let's face it. CBS News President David Rhodes and ABC News President Ben Sherwood, both of them have siblings that not only work at the White House, that not only work for President Obama, but they work at the NSC on foreign policy issues directly related to Benghazi. Let's call a spade a spade.
Let's also show you why CNN did not go very far in covering these hearings because the CNN deputy bureau chief, Virginia Moseley, is married to Hillary Clinton’s deputy, Tom Nides. It is time for the media to start asking questions why are they not covering this. It's a family matter for some of them.
JON SCOTT, HOST: So they don't want to bring embarrassment upon folks who, who they're close to?
GRENELL: Who directly are related to this story. Absolutely. They're covering for them. There's no question about it.
For the record, Ben Sherwood's sister, Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, is the Special Assistant to Barack Obama.
Virginia Moseley's husband, Tom Nides, is the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources.
As for David Rhodes' brother Ben, he is Obama's Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communication.
As ABCNews.com reported Friday, Rhodes was a key player in revising the White House's Benghazi talking points last September:
In an email dated 9/14/12 at 9:34 p.m. — three days after the attack and two days before Ambassador Rice appeared on the Sunday shows – Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes wrote an email saying the State Department’s concerns needed to be addressed.
“We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation. We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.”
After that meeting, which took place Saturday morning at the White House, the CIA drafted the final version of the talking points – deleting all references to al Qaeda and to the security warnings in Benghazi prior to the attack.
Consider, too, that CBS News executives possibly including Rhodes have allegedly come down on their own investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson for "wading dangerously close to advocacy on" Benghazi.
If Attkisson gets the boot, it could very well be with a foot attached to the brother of an Obama administration official directly involved in the cover-up.
Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard has a must read column regarding the Benghazi cover-up by White House officials.
CIA career officials clearly and repeatedly identified Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda-linked Islamic terrorists as the culprits behind the murder of four Americans.
Of course, this would cause embarrassment for the Obama team, especially in the few weeks before the election. They had been boasting for years that Al Qaeda had been decimated, the "tide of war" was receding; they had been on a mission to whitewash the prospect of Islamic terrorism as a threat to America (see Lauri Regan's superb column ("Can a President who has promised to stand with Muslims protect America? ). Obama's Cairo speech before an audience that included Muslim Brotherhood officials that he compelled Egypt to include, was a paean to Islam. It was also, to a great extent, a work of fiction that included grandiose and subsequently disproven claims about the positive contributions Islam has made to America and the world.
That speech was written by Obama's foreign policy speechwriter and now National Security Council team member, Ben Rhodes.
That is the man who Hayes "outs" as a key person behind the Benghazi cover-up.
He reportedly altered the CIA talking points to delete references to Islamic terrorists, "attacks" (they became "demonstrations") and other negative references to Islamism. Also, someone at the White House level apparently dreamt up the idea of blaming an inconsequential video for triggering a spontaneous protest, that in the frenzy of events, led to the murder of Americans. These CIA talking points were eviscerated to whitewash the role of Islamic terrorism.
There was a White House whitewash that should not be dismissed over events that occurred a 'long time ago;" contrary to Hillary Clinton saying that responsibility for the deaths of Americans serving their nation does "matter." And despite Secretary of State's John Kerry's dismissiveness towards the Benghazi murders - "we got a lot more important things to move on to" - justice for the America's dead demands we find who is responsible.
Ben Rhodes should be called to account for trying to divert blame away from Islamic terrorists and the Obama team members whose feckless negligence led to the Benghazi massacre.
I have previously written about Ben Rhodes and his role in the Obama White House. It is shameful that this "kid" (he is all of 35) has been given any responsibility at all in our government.
In "Does it bother anyone that this person is the Deputy National Security Adviser?" I noted his problematic background for someone given so much power by Obama. But then again he does specialize in fiction-writing.
He earned a master's degree in fiction-writing from New York University just a few years ago . He did not have a degree in government, diplomacy, national security; nor has he served in the CIA, or the military. He was toiling away not that long ago on a novel called 'The Oasis of Love" about a mega church in Houston, a dog track, and a failed romance.
Not long ago, Rhodes was one of the obscure guys who wrote Obama's campaign speeches in Starbucks and played video games into the early morning hours. Now he attends national security meetings and takes writer's refuge in a secret office on the third floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
Wow - what a meteoric rise! What qualifies him to have been given such power to lie to the American people? Why does he have so much influence with Barack Obama ?
Maybe it is just his avid willingness to do the bidding of his bosses, regardless of truth.
Why do I make this claim? Well, for one reason, Hayes notes he did it regarding Benghazi. But there is a pattern here that he puts his education as a fiction writer to work for political purposes.
Years ago, Democratic Senator and Obama-mentor Lee Hamilton plucked him from obscurity to write what became the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report. That report was rightly criticized for many reasons, among them was the stacking of its "expert list' with various pro-Arab apologist.
Incidentally, the commission ignored its mandate to focus on Iraq and instead devoted a lot of words to attack Israel. Some of the experts who were interviewed were appalled by the final written report because they felt it did not reflect facts, their testimony, or reality.
Who wrote this whitewash? Who was responsible for hitting the delete button of some of the expert testimony? Who tried to divert responsibility for terrorism away from where it belongs?
None other than Ben Rhodes - a man who has finally found a use for his fiction-writing education (since he failed as a novelist); to whitewash Islamists and the Obama administration.
One hopes the House calls Rhodes as a witness in this week's hearings regarding the Benghazi massacre and the miscarriage of justice in Washington. Will his fiction-writing on behalf of Obama come to light?
He bears responsibility for a great deal of what has gone wrong in American foreign and national security policy for the past few years.
The brother of a top Obama administration official is also the president of CBS News, and the network may be days away from dropping one of its top investigative reporters for covering the administration’s scandals too aggressively.
CBS News executives have reportedly expressed frustration with their own reporter, Sharyl Attkisson, who has steadily covered the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi terrorist attack in Libya since late last year.
“Network sources” told Politico Wednesday that CBS executives feel Attkisson’s Benghazi coverage is bordering on advocacy, and Attkisson “can’t get some of her stories on the air.”
Attkisson, who is in talks to leave the network before her contract expires, has been attempting to figure out who changed the Benghazi talking points for more than five months.
“We still don’t know who changed talking points but have had at least 4 diff explanations so far,” Attkisson tweeted on November 27, 2012.
But on Friday, ABC News reported that the Benghazi talking points went through 12 revisions before they were used on the public. The White House was intimately involved in that process, ABC reported, and the talking points were scrubbed free of their original references to a terror attack.
That reporting revealed that President Obama’s deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes — brother of CBS News president David Rhodes — was instrumental in changing the talking points in September 2012.
ABC’s reporting revealed that Ben Rhodes, who has a masters in fiction from NYU, called a meeting to discuss the talking points at the White House on September 15, 2012.
“We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation,” Rhodes wrote to his colleagues in the Obama administration. “We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.”
Ben Rhodes, a 35-year old New York City native and former Giuliani staffer who has worked for Obama since the president’s tenure in the U.S. Senate, has established himself as a hawkish force on the Obama foreign policy team, advocating for military intervention in Libya during the president’s first term and reportedly advocating for intervention in Syria, as well.
But despite his hawkish views, Rhodes identifies himself first and foremost as a strategist and mouthpiece for the president’s agenda.
“My main job, which has always been my job, is to be the person who represents the president’s view on these issues,” Rhodes said in March.
David Rhodes has been the president of CBS News since February 2011.
Neither the White House nor CBS News responded to requests for comment for this report.
You knew the mainstream media was biased, but this is incredible. It was revealed today that CBS News President David Rhodes' brother is Obama Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, who was instrumental in rewriting the Benghazi talking points. But it gets worse.
It is now learned that ABC President Ben Sherwood's sister, Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, is a Special Assistant to Barack Obama on national security affairs. But even this isn't it! CNN's deputy bureau chief, Virginia Moseley, is the wife of Tom Nides, who until February was Hillary Clinton's deputy.
Ben Rhodes is a top NSC advisor with absolutely no foreign policy or military experience. None! This idiot has advocated intervention both in Libya and now Syria. How has that worked out for us? He is responsible for helping to massage the Benghazi talking points to watered down drivel. His greatest accomplishment appears to be a Master's Degree in fiction writing received from New York University.
So perhaps we should call him Obama's fiction writer!
In what may be a belated effort to salvage its reputation, or perhaps an effort to get the best scoop now that keeping quiet is out of the question, ABC published a story revealing that there were twelve revisions of the Benghazi memo. The final version eradicated all references to terrorists and al Qaeda.
Nice work, Mr. Fiction Writer!
Is there any doubt that CBS, ABC and CNN lose all credibility as objective news sources when their top leadership have siblings in top positions in the Obama administration, and do everything they can to suppress absolutely critical national security newsfor months?
1973: reporters investigate All the President's Men.
2013: reporters are All the President's Men.
Indeed.
The only mainstream media reporter really doing her job is CBS's Sharyl Attkison. Attkison has also done a heroic job on the Fast N' Furious Eric Holder gun running scandal. Now it appears CBS is pressuring her to leave.
Gee, wonder why?
Whatever shred of credibility existed among the network news organizations has now been utterly obliterated. We can only hope that the American people get the message. I think it is too late for the networks. And for those who think this is just "old news," not worth worrying about, I will quote the mother of the murdered Sean Smith:
"I want to wish Hillary a happy Mother's Day. She's got her child. I don't have mine - because of her."
May 13th, 2013, 12:34
American Patriot
Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya crisis: Benghazi
:comp:
May 13th, 2013, 13:12
American Patriot
Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya crisis: Benghazi
Obama may be asked about Benghazi, IRS
David Jackson8:04 a.m. EDT May 13, 2013
President Obama holds a brief news conference Monday morning with British Prime Minister David Cameron, but he is likely to be asked about pressing domestic issues: Benghazi and the IRS.
As Republicans call for a select committee to investigate the administration over the Sept. 11 attack on a diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, Obama and his aides must also deal with reports that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups.
Obama and Cameron are scheduled to face the press at 11:15 a.m. in the White House Rose Garden.
Obama has not commented publicly on the IRS admission that it gave extra scrutiny to the tax-exempt status of groups with "Tea Party" and "Patriot" in their names, though White House aides have criticized the practice.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the IRS, which is conducting its own investigation, is a non-partisan entity and has only two political appointees.
"We certainly find the actions taken, as reported, to be inappropriate," Carney said.
Rep. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told CNN's State of the Union that it is "almost as disturbing that President Obama and treasury secretary Jack Lew have not personally apologized to the American people and promised a full investigation."
Some congressional Republicans are also calling for a select committee to investigate administration actions surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and other Republicans say Obama aides tried to cover up the fact that the attack was carried out by a terrorist group. The aides, who initially attributed the attack to protests over an anti-Islam film, said the story changed because the evidence did.
Carney has accused the Republicans of trying to "politicize" an attack that killed four Americans, including ambassador Christopher Stevens.
May 13th, 2013, 13:13
American Patriot
Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya crisis: Benghazi
Republicans call for depositions in Benghazi probe, amid revelation Clinton barely interviewed
Published May 12, 2013
FoxNews.com
Congressional Republicans on Sunday pressed their investigation into the Benghazi attacks, suggesting depositions for high-ranking officials and more whistle-blowers testifying amid further questions about why then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was not thoroughly interviewed about the issue.
Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told “Fox News Sunday” that more potential and self-proclaimed “whistle-blowers” might come forward after three of them – career State Department foreign service employees – testified last week before the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee.
“We have had people come forward because of the (hearing) and say we would also like to talk," the Michigan Republican told “Fox News Sunday.” "I do think we're going to see more whistle-blowers. Certainly my committee has been contacted; I think other committees as well."
Rogers’ remarks came as Thomas Pickering, the former U.S. ambassador who helped write a report on security at a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, defended his assessment but absolved Clinton.
"We knew where the responsibility rested," Pickering told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “They've tried to point a finger at people more senior than where we found the decisions were made.”
Pickering said he and retired Adm. Mike Mullen had to work within the legal scope of the investigation and that they “knew and understood” Clinton’s role based upon “talking to other people at meetings.”
Four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed in the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. outpost.
Congressional Republicans have since led efforts to learn whether the Obama administration provided adequate security and if the explanation of events was altered as part of a possible political cover-up.
Among the lingering questions are whether Clinton was involved in changing a CIA memo about how the attacks started and was she at least partially responsible for the apparent lack of adequate security.
The Accountability and Review Board, led by Pickering and Mullen, did not question Clinton at length about the attacks but concluded the decisions about the consulate were made well below the secretary's level.
However, Pickering's defense Sunday of the panel's conclusions appeared to do little to quiet Republicans' calls for more accountability for the attacks, which killed Stevens, Information Officer Sean Smith, and two embassy security personnel, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, both former Navy SEALs.
Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House oversight committee, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” he would like to interview under oath Pickering and Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein told NBC that Congress' review seems aimed at discrediting Clinton and her potential 2016 presidential bid.
Pickering and Mullen's report, released in December, found that "systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels" of the State Department meant that security was "inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place."
The House oversight committee hearing last week included testimony from Gregory Hicks, a former deputy chief of mission to Libya.
Hicks, a self-proclaimed whistle-blower, detailed his phone conversations from Tripoli with Stevens, who died during the two nighttime attacks.
Hicks and two other State Department witnesses criticized the Pickering and Mullen review. Their complaints centered on a report they consider incomplete, with individuals who weren't interviewed and a focus on the assistant secretary level and lower.
The hours-long hearing produced no major revelation but renewed interest in the attacks that happened during the lead-up to the November 2012 presidential election.
Five days after the attacks, in the final weeks of President Obama’s re-election bid, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice went on Sunday talk shows and said the attacks were “spontaneous” and sparked by protests elsewhere in the Middle East over an anti-Islamic video.
However, new reports show the original CIA memo on the incident was scrubbed of the mention of “Islamic militants” and early intelligence about Al Qaeda in the region.
The series of emails that circulated between the State Department and the CIA led to weakened -- and, in some cases, wrong -- language that Rice used to describe the assault.
Issa also said he will on Monday request private testimonies from Pickering and Mullen and that his oversight panel has not been provided sufficient details on the State Department review.
Pickering, who was sitting next to Issa during “Meet the Press,” said he wanted to appear at the Republican-led hearing Wednesday but was blocked.
Issa said Democrats could have invited their own witnesses, such as Pickering, but did not.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on Sunday renewed congressional Republicans’ call for a House select committee on Benghazi -- like the one used to investigate Watergate -- and called the Obama administration’s handling of the terror attacks “a cover-up.”
"I would call it a cover-up in the extent that there was willful removal of information, which was obvious,” McCain said on ABC’s “This Week."
Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya crisis: Benghazi
The crap coming out of Jay the Carney's mouth is pretty disgusting.
The White House JUST wants Benghazi to "go away", it can not be clearer.
He's calling it a "political sideshow" and other names.
What a bunch of bullshit.
if anything when the WH uses those phrases it means "Shut up, we don't want to tell you about this". And it means that the MEDIA needs to rip it to shreds. Now.
May 14th, 2013, 18:27
vector7
Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya crisis: Benghazi
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, that it seemed like Obama out-Clintoned the Clintons,” Wilkow said. “But Clinton seems to have gone along with all of this because he knew that Hillary would be exonerated in the end.”
He then asked Klein whether he thought Clinton would resign over the Libya scandal and expose the truth.
“No,” the author said immediately. “I can’t imagine that she would resign. It would bring down the entire administration. [Obama] would lose the election and she would be essentially blamed by the left-wing base of the party.”
“She will not be tarred with the blame for bringing down this administration,” Klein added.
Watch the segment via TheBlazeTV below:
In an exclusive interview with TheBlaze, Klein confirmed that Bill and Hillary Clinton have been engaging in “heated discussions” where the former president has urged his wife to “release the documents that would exonerate her.” He reiterated that Clinton has refused to do so because she fears she would look like a “Judas,” or a traitor, in the administration and it might hurt her chances for a presidential nomination in 2016.
If the claims turn out to be true and Clinton did suggest more security be sent to Benghazi, it is appropriate to ask: why didn’t it happen?
Klein said Clinton’s request for beefed up security would have to go through CIA special ops and or the Pentagon.
“But none of that would happen with the National Security advisor to the president of the United States Tom Donilon going to the president and saying, ‘We want to send reinforcements to Libya because our ambassador is in jeopardy,’” Klein explained.
Ultimately, he indicated the ultimate authority would have been President Obama.
Wilkow and Klein also discussed what role Obama’s closest advisor, Valerie Jarrett, played in the Benghazi cover-up.
By Obama’s own admission, Klein said, the president never makes a big decision without first consulting with Jarrett.
“We have to assume that Valerie Jarrett, who is also by the way hooked into the Chicago campaign…that she was part of this cover-up in the White House.”
He continued: “The CIA got cables, the Department of Defense got cables, the NSA got cables during the attack on Benghazi, in addition to the emails that have since been made public. We know that there are cables that we haven’t seen yet, confirming the State Department cables that this was an al-Qaeda linked attack.”
These new revelations, following Tuesday night’s explosive report that 300 to 400 national security officials received emails detailing the Benghazi terrorist attack as it was happening, raise fresh questions about the truth behind the Benghazi attack.
The emails revealed that the Libyan radical Islamic group Ansar al-Sharia claimed responsibility for the attack just two hours after it began. White House officials told CBS News that an unmanned Predator drone was sent over the U.S. mission in Libya, providing Washington with a live feed to the chaos that unfolded.
The father of a former Navy SEAL killed in the Libya terror attack last month said Friday that U.S. officials who denied a request for help while the diplomatic compound in Benghazi was under attack “are murderers of my son.”
Charles Woods was reacting to accounts by Fox News sources that a request from the CIA annex for backup was denied by U.S. officials. His son, Tyrone Woods, was killed in the Sept. 11 assault. “They refused to pull the trigger,” Woods said. “Those people who made the decision and who knew about the decision and lied about it are murderers of my son.”
Woods said he forgives whoever denied the apparent request, but he urged them to “stand up.”
Sources also said Tyrone Woods and others, who were at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate, ignored orders by their superiors to stand down and not go to the consulate to help. Woods went to the consulate, and hours later he was killed back at the annex.
Charles Woods said his son’s action “does not surprise me.”
“I wish that the leadership in the White House had the same level of moral courage and heroism that my son displayed,” he said.
UPDATE 2.: BREAKING NEWS!!! Obama a Hitman or Terrorist Arms Dealer??? Why He Hid the Truth of Benghazi…
Published on Oct 29, 2012
Was Obama finished with our Ambassador to Libya where the Arms Trading was concerned???? Did he believe Chris Stevens was going to go public with what he knew about this administrations illegal trading of weapons to the enemy??? Was this like the dreadful murderous colladeral damage of ‘Fast and Furious’ ???The Turkish leader left the meeting he was having with our Ambassador 1 hour before the attack without being touched, while the building was being watched by the attackers, according to the reports coming from onsite officials at the time, to the white house and to the internet. The whitehouse WATCHED THE ATTACK on Benghazi go down, via drone recon. They were told as it went down it was a terrorist attack and while it happened THE WHITEHOUSE WATCHED OUR PEOPLE DIE FROM THE SITUATION ROOM!!!
And then lied about it!!!
Hillary Clinton said the buck stopped with her, taking the fall after the lies were being outted and blame had to be placed. I have always said,it is a deadly dangerous business to be one of Hillary Clinton’s ‘friends!!!’ Any ‘friend’ of hers involved with the Whitewater Scandal could tell you that, if any of them were alive today! Every last one of them, even the ones who went to prison, died mysteriously!
Remember Vincent Foster… Foster’s death became part of a broad investigation of President and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s financial dealings in Arkansas when Whitewater records were discovered to have been in his office six months after his death. He was found sitting up – dead – in Virginia State Park. Some theorized he died elsewhere, was wrapped in a carpet and brought to the park. Strangely, his death was ruled a suicide.
I said it on the day this took place, and I will say it again. This is a false flag. It had nothing to do with a 13 minute Youtube video. But for the public to know who the terrorist was who did it, would point the finger at the person who sold the terrorist the weapons to do it with!!! And that would be inconvenient just now. As he is trying to win a presidential election!
Published on Oct 29, 2012
CIA operatives have now confirmed that they were told by the Obama Administration to hold back and not come to the rescue of Ambassador Chris Stevens or the other 3 USA officials butchered in Benghazi Sept 11,2012.rescue
May 15th, 2013, 12:46
American Patriot
Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya crisis: Benghazi
Sometimes I think people lose credibility on their spelling....
"colladeral damage"
should read:
"collateral damage".
(I know I misspell words often enough, but I usually use a spelling checker, and at least I DO go back and re-read things several times before I post it. Even so I still miss certain words, like "teh")
lol
May 15th, 2013, 12:46
American Patriot
Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya crisis: Benghazi
Chris Stevens was killed on purpose.
May 15th, 2013, 14:47
American Patriot
Re: Are Tunisia and Egypt Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
Heads of Benghazi review board say they'll testify before Congress after criticism
Published May 14, 2013
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – The leaders of the panel that independently reviewed last year's deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, said Tuesday they were prepared to testify publicly before Congress to counter what they consider unfounded criticism of their work.
In a letter to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, veteran diplomat Thomas Pickering said he and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen would answer any questions lawmakers have. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the panel, is pressing for the two men to agree to an interview with staff investigators prior to a public hearing.
The work of the Accountability Review Board is the latest focus of a broader Republican inquest into their claims that the Obama administration misled Congress and the American people after the Sept. 11, 2012, attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
The blistering report released in December by Pickering, Mullen and three other reviewers found that "systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels" of the State Department meant security was "inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place."
Pickering, however, noted how recently "some have called into question the integrity of the board and its work."
"We believe that such criticisms are unfounded and, if left unaddressed, undermine the essential work that the board has done," he wrote. "It is therefore important that we be afforded the opportunity to appear at a public hearing before the committee and answer directly questions regarding the board's procedures, findings and recommendations."
Republicans believe the report was flawed, and they want to know why top officials like Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton weren't interviewed. The panel absolved Clinton of any wrongdoing, faulting lower level State Department officials. Four were given paid suspensions.
On Monday, Issa asked Pickering and Mullen to meet privately with committee staff investigators to answer questions about their review. Democrats countered that if lawmakers wanted to talk to them, Issa should hold a full open hearing.
Pickering said the board "conducted a thorough review and produced a report that included detailed findings and frank and often highly critical assessments." It issued 29 recommendations for improving security at diplomatic facilities worldwide, and Pickering insisted that the board "fulfilled its role in identifying the lessons that must be learned and acted upon from Benghazi."
"We stand behind the board's report and look forward to discussing it in a public hearing," he wrote.
Frederick Hill, a spokesman for the committee, said late Tuesday that the panel was following up with Pickering and the State Department to determine whether he would appear voluntarily for an interview with committee staff investigators. Hill noted that Issa and Pickering appeared on a Sunday talk show together two days ago, and said the former diplomat had told the committee chairman that he would voluntarily submit to an interview.
"The committee is giving him a full opportunity to voluntarily follow through on his commitment," Hill said.
Issa, in his letter on Monday to Pickering and Mullen, had said that following the private interview, the committee would work with the report's authors on a date for a public hearing.
CNN has obtained an email sent by a top aide of President Barack Obama, in which the aide discusses the Obama administration reaction to the attack on the U.S. posts in Benghazi, Libya. The actual email differs from how sources were inaccurately quoted and paraphrased in previous media accounts.
The significance of the email seems to be that whomever leaked the inaccurate information earlier this month did so in a way that made it appear that the White House – specifically deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes – was more interested in the State Department’s desire to remove mentions of specific terrorist groups and warnings about these groups so as to not bring criticism to the State Department than Rhodes’ email actually stated.
The actual email is right here. The key portion is this:
“There is a ton of wrong information getting out into the public domain from Congress and people who are not particularly informed. Insofar as we have firmed up assessments that don’t compromise intel or the investigation, we need to have the capability to correct the record, as there are significant policy and messaging ramifications that would flow from a hardened mis-impression.”
Tapper says that ABC News, in its scoop last week, quoted from this email in a way that suggests more of an administration emphasis on resolving the State Department’s concerns with the talking points — i.e., that State wanted to remove mentions of specific terror groups and cut the CIA’s warnings about previous attacks.
But as Tapper puts it: “Whoever provided those quotes and paraphrases did so inaccurately, seemingly inventing the notion that Rhodes wanted the concerns of the State Department specifically addressed…Rhodes put no emphasis at all in his email on the State Department’s concerns.”
This would seem to do still more damage to the notion that there was any kind of cover up here. Remember, the desire by State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland to cut the talking points’ references to previous attacks was an area where the editing really did appear to be about managing appearances. It’s increasingly clear that this was merely a bureaucratic turf war at work, in which State wanted to get rid of the CIA’s efforts to insert into the talking points stuff seemingly designed to preempt blame against the agency. This new revelation from Tapper takes this even further — it suggests the administration didn’t even prioritize State’s demands and was simply looking to get agencies on the same page to prevent the spreading of misinformation.
Indeed, the email explicitly cites worry about the ”significant policy and messaging ramifications that would flow from a hardened mis-impression.” That suggests, again, that this internal debate was mainly about not getting out too far ahead of what was actually known — which could actually be a desirable thing under such circumstances.
Indeed, if this report bears out, it weakens the underpinning of this supposed scandal considerably. The edited talking points themselves actually don’t support what conservatives claim they do: Even the initial, unedited talking point describes the attack as spontaneous, noting that extremists with ties to Al Qaeda “participated” in it.
While the reference to Al Qaeda was cut out — and while the talking points watered down the initial claim by couching it as speculation — the talking points never, at any point, even before any editing, claimed this was a preplanned terror attack. What this means is that the administration, in its initial assessments, did not meaningfully deviate from the assessment the intelligence community was reaching in real time. So there’s no scandal there. Now the notion that the editing itself had overly political motives has been challenged.
The problematic piece that’s left is that the White House did, in fact, initially misrepresent the extent of the involvement in the editing of the talking points. I still believe the White House could clear that up by admitting error. But either way, if the editing itself is not problematic, then that doesn’t leave much of a scandal behind.
Tapper concludes: “whoever leaked the inaccurate information earlier this month did so in a way that made it appear that the White House – specifically Rhodes – was more interested in the State Department’s concerns, and more focused on the talking points, that the email actually stated.”
So who provided this seemingly changed version of the email to ABC News?
May 15th, 2013, 14:51
American Patriot
Re: Are Tunisia and Egypt Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
May 14, 2013 What the A.P. and Benghazi Scandals Have in Common
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...ton-ap-580.jpg
What does the A.P. scandal, in which the Justice Department grabbed A.P. journalists’ phone records with the indiscriminate eagerness of someone stuffing packets of Saltines in his pockets, have in common with the questions raised about Benghazi? In the next days and months, a number of answers will be offered, and measured in different balances: abuse of power, debased Republican scandalizing, the muddles of a second term. (The I.R.S. is also in the mix.) One story concerns twenty different phone lines, among them home numbers whose records would include personal calls that the government has no business knowing about; the other is about four diplomats, whose obituaries we shouldn’t have had to read for many years. But both have to do with transparency and, even more so, with how the Administration’s alternating evasions and manipulations of the legal requirements surrounding war and security have distorted its actions.
When it comes to Benghazi, one has to sort out which story line one is talking about. The first has to do with the actual chain of events surrounding an attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012; the other is a fight over talking points—how honest the Administration was about the incident, and, as the issue became a cover-up, how honest it was about its honesty. The latter is where there might be the most obvious surface similarity to the A.P. case: a fixation on controlling a message leads to bad behavior—though a difference is that this particular aspect of Benghazi has been subject to a good deal of disingenuous G.O.P. hysteria. Shortly after the attacks, Susan Rice, the U.N. Ambassador, was sent on the Sunday morning talk shows with talking points that were, to put it charitably, inadequate. She was a stand-in for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who did not want to go on. (She’d had a long week, apparently; when she did testify about Benghazi, months later, it didn’t go well.) The Republican use of those appearances to make sure that Rice wouldn’t be nominated as Secretary of State was ugly and, given that Rice was relying on vetted talking points, unfair—and in many ways gave the entire inquiry into Benghazi a bad, politicized name.
[Update: Here, I'd originally gone on to discuss a report by ABC News's Jon Karl, about edits of the talking points and associated E-mails. But as CNN’s Jake Tapper has reported, at least one of the E-mails was badly misquoted, and Karl's own explanation makes it unclear whether other quotes are verbatim. As TPM and others note, his description suggests that he may have been misled by Congressional staffers. So I've cut that passage.]
The A.P., meanwhile, had actually reported on an Obama success: the U.S. had stopped a terror plot centered in Yemen. What’s more, the A.P. had, for several days, held off on publishing the story—written by Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman, with contributions from Kimberly Dozier, Eileen Sullivan, and Alan Fram—after the Administration had cited security concerns. The A.P. was rewarded for this careful non-absolutism with an aggressive criminal-leaks investigation, led by U.S. Attorney Robert Machen—one of too many such investigations that this White House has put in motion. (John Cassidy has more on that.) That search for leaks has been the sorry excuse for the Justice Department getting the phone records of all the reporters involved in the story, as well as those of their editor, Ted Bridis, and, according to a letter of protest that Gary Pruitt, the President of the A.P., sent to Holder, “an AP general phone number in New York City as well as AP bureaus in New York City, Washington, D.C., Hartford, Connecticut, and at the House of Representatives.” The pursuit of these records affected perhaps a hundred journalists in all. As Pruitt writes,
There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection…. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know
The Justice Department obtained this information secretly and, it would appear, mendaciously. According to the D.O.J.’s own rules, it is supposed to tell a news organization before it subpoenas such records, to see if it can get them any other way (and as narrowly as possible), and to give the news organization a chance at getting the subpoena quashed. In this case the D.O.J. got the records some time ago, but only told the A.P. on Friday. The Washington, D.C., U.S. Attorney’s office, in a statement, cited an exception: it was allowed to not to tell if giving such a warning “would pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation.” How did that apply in the case of the A.P.? The office didn’t say. Given the A.P.’s long and distinguished record—we are not talking about Inspire, the Al Qaeda magazine—its restraint in delaying publication, and the fact that it would be hard to alter phone records, invoking that exception strikes one as close to slander.
Maybe the Justice Department’s idea of the “integrity of the investigation” in a national-security leaks case is that it gets to not be disturbed. This notion—that the White House ought to be left alone when it comes to questions of terrorism and war—may present the strongest parallel of all to Benghazi, and to the attacks themselves, not just the talking points.
The Administration has chosen practical answers when people ask why the diplomats couldn’t have been rescued, having to do with things like the distance of carrier groups and the refuelling needs of planes. “It’s sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces,” Robert Gates, the former Defense Secretary, said on “Face the Nation” this past weekend, referring to the idea of planes or soldiers swooping in. But the security situation before the attack may have reflected a cartoonish impression of non-war. When examining Obama’s motives in Libya, one has to return to his decision to initiate military action in March, 2011, without acceding to the War Powers Act, so that he wouldn’t have to get Congressional approval if it went on for sixty or ninety days (as it did). In explaining why, the Administration said that “U.S. military operations are distinct from the kind of ‘hostilities’ contemplated in the law,” even as we were bombing Libya and handing out guns, supposedly because it was limited and small and no Americans would get hurt. That never made any sense. And it may have committed the Administration to the idea that the Libyan denouement was a simpler story than it was. One of the lines edited out of the talking points was this:
The wide availability of weapons and experienced fighters in Libya almost certainly contribute to the lethality of the attacks.
That may have been the worst cut of all. One could at least argue that there was uncertainty about the Al Qaeda intelligence, but this point, on the other hand, was simply true.
Avoiding the War Powers Act also meant that Congress—by the Administration’s own insistence—would have no full, true purchase on the project, however many Senators made speeches calling for no-fly zones. By avoiding legitimate political processes in starting a war, the Administration just made it easier for that war’s aftermath to be politicized.
What the A.P. and Benghazi cases might have most in common, then, is the Obama Administration’s strange belief that if it can just find the right words, that reality will comply and bend to meet it—that its challenges are so extraordinary that the use of any exceptions built into normal processes should be regarded as unexceptional. In fairness, almost every President is susceptible to this—George W. Bush conspicuously so. But Obama was supposed to learn something from that.
Above: Then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in January. Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty.
May 16th, 2013, 16:02
vector7
Re: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya crisis: Benghazi
Published on Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Tags:Attorney General Eric Holder|AWR Hawkins|Benghazi|Obama Administration
Holder Says 'NO' to Special Counsel to Investigate Benghazi ~ VideoReviewed by AWR Hawkins on May 15Rating: 5.0Mr. Holder, will you appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Benghazi? "No"... Mr. Holder, will you appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Benghazi? In equally clear tones, Holder answers, "No," and disappears into the building... By AWR Hawkins http://www.ammoland.com/wp-content/u...ric-Holder.jpg Holder Says ‘No’ to Special Counsel to Investigate Benghazi
Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- Breitbart News has obtained an exclusive video of Attorney General Eric Holder flatly rejecting the idea of appointing a special counsel to investigate Benghazi.
Filmed on May 15 2013 and provided to Breitbart News by Special Operations Speaks, the video shows Holder emerge from his car and walk towards the Rayburn House Office Building for hearings on the IRS scandal. Holder is clearly asked, “Mr. Holder, will you appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Benghazi?”
In equally clear tones, Holder answers, “No,” and disappears into the building.
About:
AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.
His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.