.
Tags: Marco Rubio, Sellout, video
Archive | International Scene RSS feed for this section
Scandalpalooza! Your Daley Gator Benghazi-gate Document Dump
22 May
………….
• State Department Leaking False Information To Smear Whistleblower Gregory Hicks
• Ex-Diplomats: Stevens’ Benghazi Mission Was To Buy Back Missiles Issued To Terrorists By State Department
• Benghazi Bombshell: CIA Warned Of Impending Jihadist Attack
• White House: ‘Irrelevant Fact’ Where Obama Was During Benghazi
• President Asshat Caught In Yet Another Benghazi-gate Lie
• Benghazi’s Smoking Guns (Jonah Goldberg)
• Washington Post Factchecker Destroys Obama’s Claim He Called Libya ‘Terrorism’
• Ben Rhodes: Obama’s Fixer Behind The Benghazi Cover-Up
• Geraldo: My Sources Tell Me They Were In Benghazi To Round Up Missiles To Send To Syrian Rebels Via Turkey
• *VIDEO* Judge Jeanine Pirro Verbally Bitchslaps Obama Regime Over Benghazi Lies
• The Benghazi Scandal Grows (Stephen Hayes)
• Top GOP Senator Says Obama Could Be Impeached Over ‘Most Egregious Cover-Up In American History’
• Top Obama Official’s Brother Is President Of CBS News, May Drop Reporter Over Benghazi Coverage
• *VIDEO* Benghazi Calling – By Edward L. Daley
• House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman: More Benghazi Hearings Coming
• Benghazi Talking Points Changed 12 Times By Obama Regime, Scrubbed Of Terror References
• Blow-By-Blow: How Obama & Hillary Left Americans To Die (Arnold Ahlert)
• *AUDIO* Mark Levin Berates Obama Lackeys In The News Media Over Their Lack Of Benghazi Coverage
• Obama Used Taxpayer Money In Benghazi Cover-Up (Video)
• 7 Things We Learned From The Benghazi Whistleblower Hearing
• Benghazi Continues: Hillary De Medici (Roger L. Simon)
• *VIDEO* Complete Benghazi Whistleblower Hearing
• *VIDEO* Everything You Need To Know About Benghazi
• *VIDEO* Mother Of Benghazi Victim: I Blame Hillary
• Thanks Barack… Terrorist Group Linked To 9/11 Benghazi Attack Operates Freely In City
• Hillary Clinton Sought End-Run Around Counterterrorism Bureau On Night Of Benghazi Attack
• How Obama Betrayed America (David Horowitz)
• Benghazi Whistleblower Says U.S. Has Identified Terrorist Behind 9/11 Attack But Refuses To Capture Him
• *VIDEO* Lawyer For Benghazi Whistleblower: Obama State Department Breaking Federal Law
• Obama On Benghazi Whistleblowers Scandal: I Know Nothing… Nothing!
• Benghazi Whistleblower Says Obama Regime Is Lying, Multiple Assets Could Have Been Used To Save Our People
• Obama State Department Blocking Lawyers From Representing Benghazi Whistleblowers (Audio)
• Congressman Gowdy: Explosive Benghazi Hearings Coming (Video)
• Benghazigate Congressional Report: Obama Inc. Lied About Video, Hillary Knew About Inadequate Security
• *VIDEO* Benghazi: Unaware, Unresponsive, Unaccountable – OPSEC
• 700 Retired Military Special Ops Tell Congress To Form Select Committee On Benghazi
• Benghazi’s Silenced Witnesses Hidden In Plain Sight?
• Obama Regime’s Benghazi Cover-Up Continues
• *VIDEO* Afterburner With Bill Whittle: What Difference Does It Make?
• *VIDEO* Rush Limbaugh: Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi Testimony Was “Flat Out Bullshit”
• *VIDEOS* Republican Lawmakers Grill Secretary Of State Clinton During Benghazi Hearing
• *VIDEO* Congressman Duncan Lays Into Secretary Of State Clinton During Benghazi Hearing
• *VIDEOS* Senators Paul And McCain Slam Secretary Of State Clinton During Benghazi Hearing
• Benghazi Terrorists, Skating Free
• Senate Republicans Refuse To Confirm Kerry Until Hillary Testifies About Benghazi
• *VIDEO* Glenn Beck: Obama May Go To Prison For Arming America’s Enemies, Cover-Up Of Treason
• Hillary Clinton’s Head Fake
• BenghaziGate: Obama Regime Knew Libyan Terrorists Had US-Provided Weapons
• *VIDEO* John Bolton: Susan Rice’s Meeting With GOP Senators A Disaster For Her
• Another Laughable Benghazi Lie
• Krauthammer: White House ‘Held Affair Over Petraeus’s Head’ For Favorable Testimony On Benghazi
• Report: Petraeus Agrees To Testify Before Congressional Committees About Libya Attacks
• *VIDEO* Lt. Col. Ralph Peters On Petraeus Resignation: “Timing Is Just Too Perfect”
• Proof: Obama Refused To Call Benghazi ‘Terror,’ CBS Covered Up (Video)
• Criminal Negligence: Benghazi Gave 1-Month Warning
• Benghazi Blunder: Obama Unworthy Commander-In-Chief
• Congress Wants Answers On Newly Found Benghazi Documents
• Benghazi Culpability: Walls Closing In On Administration
• ABC And CBS Ignore Their Own Reporters As Benghazi Blackout Reaches 7 Days
• Scandal Deepens With New Benghazi Documents: At A Minimum, Hillary Clinton Must Go
• Report: Obama Never Convened Counterterrorism Task Force During Benghazi Attack
• Documents: Consulate Warned Of ‘No Police Support’
• Obama ‘Has Not Participated In The Investigation’ Of Benghazi
• *VIDEO* Security Insider Explains What Happens In Intelligence, Military & Diplomatic Communities During Consulate Attacks
• Retired Lt. Col.: My Sources Say Obama Was In The Room Watching Benghazi Attack Happen (Video)
• Top AFRICOM Commander General Carter Ham Was Never Ordered To Save U.S. Men In Benghazi (Video)
• Early Briefings On Benghazi Focused On Al Qaeda, Not Video
• If Reelected, Obama Should Be Impeached Over Benghazi (Roger L. Simon)
• Father Of Fallen Benghazi SEAL: Obama Regime Sat And Watched, Did Nothing While My Son Died (Videos)
• *VIDEO* Benghazi-gate: Obama’s Lying Cronies
• Emails: White House Told Two Hours Into Benghazi Attack That Islamic Terrorist Group Claimed Responsibility
• Obama Camp: Benghazi Attack Was Not A ‘Foreign Policy Failure’ (Video)
• Former CIA Officials Say No Way WH Didn’t Know Benghazi Was A Terrorist Attack, Even During The Attack (Video)
• *VIDEO* Special Report With Bret Baier: ‘Death And Deceit In Benghazi’
• ‘My Son Is Not Very Optimal, He Is Very Dead’: Mother Of Diplomat Killed In Benghazi Attack Slams Obama’s Comment On Raid
• Obama On Benghazi Attack: ‘If Four Americans Get Killed, It’s Not Optimal’ (Video)
• Obama Regime Used Unarmed Guards At Benghazi Consulate Despite Previous Terror Attacks
• Obama Regime Didn’t Reach Benghazi For 17 Days Because They Were Waiting On Visas
• Stunning Incompetence: Up To 20,000 Shoulder-Fired, Surface-To-Air Missiles Are Missing In Libya
• Rep. Trey Gowdy Explodes At Libya Hearing: ‘I Want To Know Why We Were Lied To’ (Videos)
• *VIDEO* Mother Of Benghazi Victim Angry At Being Stonewalled By Obama Regime
• *VIDEO* Ex-Benghazi Security Officer Frustrated By Cuts In Security
• *VIDEO* American Crossroads: “Intelligence”
• There Was No Protest Outside Libyan Consulate; Everything The Obama Regime Told Us Was A Lie
• Intelligence Officials Angered By Obama Regime Cover-Up Of Intelligence On Iranian, Al Qaeda Surge In Egypt And Libya
• President Asshat Rejected Military Intervention In Benghazi DURING The Attack
• Reuters: “Within Hours” Obama Admin Had A Dozen Intel Reports Al-Qaeda Behind Benghazi Attack
• Obama Regime Ignored Requests For Increased Security In Libya Prior To 9/11 Anniversary Attack
• Report: FBI Still Hasn’t Arrived In Benghazi To Begin Investigation Into Consulate Attack
• The White House’s Scandalous Lies About Libya (Stephen Hayes)
• The World Burns: Will The GOP Investigate?
• Suspected Killer Of U.S. Ambassador Was Leader Of U.S.-Backed Libyan Rebel Forces And Former Gitmo Detainee
• Rodeo Clown Media Frantically Distract From Obama’s Foreign Policy Disaster
• U.S. Intelligence: Benghazi Attack Wasn’t Spontaneous
• Video Proof Of Obama’s Embassy Attack Lies… (Warning: Graphic Content)
• No Protest Before Benghazi Attack, Wounded Libyan Guard Says
• *VIDEO* Rep. Allen West Calls Ambassador Rice ‘Asinine, Naive, Inept, Incompetent And Borderline Ignorant’
• Al-Qaeda Says Attack On U.S. Consulate In Benghazi “Revenge” For Recent Drone Killing Of Abu Yahya Al-Libi
• Despite Four Previous Benghazi Attacks, State Department Refused Even “Standard Security” At Consulate (Video)
• Why Barack Obama Should Resign
• Former Secret Service Agent Says Obama Administration Has Shown ‘Sheer Incompetence’ In Handling Libya Attack (Video)
• Press Endangers Private Citizen To Hide Obama’s Middle East Failures
• *AUDIO* Mark Steyn: Every American Should Be Ashamed Of Buffoon Obama
• Obama State Department Ignored Warnings About U.S. Embassy Attack In Libya
• Leftist Media Wrong Again: Looks Like The Libyan Consulate Attack Wasn’t About Some YouTube Video After All
• UPenn Professor Doubles Down, Writes USA Today Op-Ed Calling For Arrest Of Mohammed Movie Filmmakers
• GOP Congressman Louie Gohmert Hammers Obama In Scathing House Floor Speech (Video)
• Obama Calls Libyan President To Thank Him For Support After U.S. Ambassador Murdered (Video)
• Romney Is Right: In Embassy Incidents, Obama Administration’s First Instinct Was To Sympathize With Attackers
• Romney: U.S. Response To Consulate Attack In Libya Disgraceful
• Radical Islamists Chant “We Are All Osama!” At U.S. Embassy In Egypt On 9-11
• Obama State Department: Egypt Attack Doesn’t Necessarily Reflect Growing Anti-American Sentiment
• Former Deputy National Security Adviser: U.S. Response To Embassy Attack ‘Bizarre And Unacceptable’
• Obama Camp Condemns Romney Before Condemning Attacks In Egypt, Libya
• MSNBC Panel Actually Debates If DOJ Should Prosecute Anti-Islam Pastor Terry Jones For Libya Deaths
• House Conservatives Call For Stripping Aid To Libya, Egypt From Spending Bill Following Attacks Ob U.S. Embassies
• Corrupt News Media Caught On Tape Conspiring Against Romney Over Embassy Attack Response
• *VIDEO* Mitt Romney Remarks And Q&A On Libya And Egypt Embassy Attacks
• After U.S. Consulate Torched And Ambassador Murdered, President Asshat Delivers A ‘Strongly Worded’ Speech
• *VIDEO* Raw Footage: Consulate In Benghazi On Fire, Ambassador To Libya Reported Killed
.
“Dead Man” Wakes Up In Coffin During Funeral
21 MayMourners Shocked As Dead Man Comes Back To Life In His Coffin At Funeral – New York Daily News
Mourners freaked out when a dead man came back to life at his own funeral.
.
Friends and family “jumped out of their skins” and “ran for their lives” when Brighton Dama Zanthe, 34, started moving in his coffin last Monday.
They thought their buddy – who they thought died following a long illness – had come back to haunt them.
Lot Gaka, the Zimbabwean transport worker’s boss, somehow managed to keep his cool – springing into action to save his pal.
He desperately pulled the blankets off Zanthe’s body and called an ambulance.
Rushed to the nearby Gweru Provincial Hospital, he spent two days in intensive care before being discharged last week.
“I don’t know what happened, and I only remember being on a life support system in hospital,” NewZimbabwe.com reports him as saying.
He added: “Everything is history to me. What I can only confirm is that people gathered at my house to mourn but I was given another chance and I am alive. I feel okay now.”
.
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.
Ex-Diplomats: Stevens’ Benghazi Mission Was To Buy Back Missiles Issued To Terrorists By State Department
21 MayMore whistleblowers will emerge shortly in the escalating Benghazi scandal, according to two former U.S. diplomats who spoke with PJ Media Monday afternoon.
These whistleblowers, colleagues of the former diplomats, are currently securing legal counsel because they work in areas not fully protected by the Whistleblower law.
According to the diplomats, what these whistleblowers will say will be at least as explosive as what we have already learned about the scandal, including details about what really transpired in Benghazi that are potentially devastating to both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
.
The former diplomats inform PJM the new revelations concentrate in two areas – what Ambassador Chris Stevens was actually doing in Benghazi and the pressure put on General Carter Ham, then in command of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and therefore responsible for Libya, not to act to protect jeopardized U.S. personnel.
Stevens’ mission in Benghazi, they will say, was to buy back Stinger missiles from al-Qaeda groups issued to them by the State Department, not by the CIA. Such a mission would usually be a CIA effort, but the intelligence agency had opposed the idea because of the high risk involved in arming “insurgents” with powerful weapons that endanger civilian aircraft.
Hillary Clinton still wanted to proceed because, in part, as one of the diplomats said, she wanted “to overthrow Gaddafi on the cheap.”
This left Stevens in the position of having to clean up the scandalous enterprise when it became clear that the “insurgents” actually were al-Qaeda – indeed, in the view of one of the diplomats, the same group that attacked the consulate and ended up killing Stevens.
The former diplomat who spoke with PJ Media regarded the whole enterprise as totally amateurish and likened it to the Mike Nichols film Charlie Wilson’s War about a clueless congressman who supplies Stingers to the Afghan guerrillas. “It’s as if Hillary and the others just watched that movie and said ‘Hey, let’s do that!’” the diplomat said.
He added that he and his colleagues think the leaking of General David Petraeus’ affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell was timed to silence the former CIA chief on these matters.
Regarding General Ham, military contacts of the diplomats tell them that AFRICOM had Special Ops “assets in place that could have come to the aid of the Benghazi consulate immediately (not in six hours).”
Ham was told by the White House not to send the aid to the trapped men, but Ham decided to disobey and did so anyway, whereupon the White House “called his deputy and had the deputy threaten to relieve Ham of his command.”
The White House motivation in all this is as yet unclear, but it is known that Ham retired quietly in April 2013 as head of AFRICOM.
PJ Media recognizes this is largely hearsay, but the two diplomats sounded quite credible. One of them was in a position of responsibility in a dangerous area of Iraq in 2004.
We will report more as we learn it.
.
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.
Muslims Fly Nazi Flag Next To Mosque Near Jerusalem
20 MayMuslims Fly Nazi Flag Next To Mosque Near Jerusalem – Jihad Watch
.
……….
Harmonic convergence. “Arabs Fly Nazi Flag near Hevron,” by Gil Ronen for Israel National News, May 20 (thanks to Avi):
Hundreds of residents of Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem, were astounded Monday morning to see an oversized Nazi flag flying next to a mosque in the Arab town of Beit Omar.
The residents notified the IDF.
A resident, Uri Arnon, told the Tazpit News Agency: “I felt we were going back 75 years, losing our hold on the land. The Arabs no longer feel the need to hide their murderous tendencies, announcing out loud that they wish to annihilate us.”
An IDF spokesman said that the flag was hung on an electrical line, and that they were waiting to professionals to come and remove it.
.
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.
Jihad Experts Decry White House Terror Training Guidelines
20 MayJihad Experts Decry White House Terror Training Guidelines – Daily Caller
Experts on Islam and terrorism are decrying the Department of Homeland Security’s recently revealed anti-terrorism training guidelines, which pressure cops to ignore Islamic beliefs when investigating terror crimes.
.
The Boston bombings demonstrated the impact of such training, Andrew McCarthy, a former New York prosecutor, told The Daily Caller.
“The Boston Marathon was bombed by a jihadist who had been investigated by the FBI… [and was confirmed in 2011 to be] an Islamist, which would have been hard not to do since he does not appear to have made any secret of it,” said McCarthy, who persuaded a New York jury in 1995 to convict “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman for his use of Islamic teaching to spur jihad attacks, including the 1993 attack against the Twin Towers.
But before the bombing, “the FBI closed its file [on Tamerlan Tsarnaev] because it found this did not constitute ‘derogatory information,’” McCarthy said.
McCarthy and other security experts, and even members of the American Islamic community, indicate that a culture of excessive concern for the sensibilities of Muslims supremacists is preventing law enforcement agencies from pursuing jihadists.
The 2011 guidelines unveiled Thursday by The Daily Caller are part of this pattern of deferring to Islamist chauvinism.
Under the federal guidelines, “agents are admonished to discount the possibility that an Islamist’s constitutionally protected abhorrence of the United States might possibly lead to violence,” McCarthy told TheDC.
Even if FBI officials had learned about Tsarnaev’s 2012 trip to a part of southern Russia that is embroiled in a jihadi war, they would not have restarted their 2011 investigation, a government official told the Washington Post in April.
“The FBI investigation into the individual in question had been closed six months prior to his departure from the United States and more than a year before his return. …Since there was no derogatory information, there was no reason to suggest that additional action was warranted,” the official said in April.
On his six-month trip, starting in January 2012, Tsarnaev visited several militant Islamic leaders and mosques in Dagestan, where jihadis are fighting the Russian government, according to several U.S. and Russian media sources.
“The fiasco regarding Boston is a prime example” of how bad training degrades security, said Robert Spencer, an authority on Islamic doctrine who is heavily criticized by Islamic groups in the United States. He noted that even though FBI agents had interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the FBI was unable to identify Tsarnaev in crowd photographs taken before and after the bomb strike.
After the attack, FBI officials also did not ask the main mosque in Boston for help in identifying the suspects, said Nichole Mossalam, a spokeswoman for the Islamic Society of Boston.
“We were the ones who reached out to them… on Friday” once the picture were released, Mossalam told TheDC.
Under the federal guideline, the FBI officials had “no reason to go to the mosque since the [Tsarnaev] brothers don’t show any outward signs in the [street] photos of being Muslims,” said McCarthy.
Because of the guidelines, it would be “a ‘profiling’ scandal to show the pictures at the mosque just because it was a bombing with… no other evidence of connection to Muslims,” he said.
The guidelines, titled “Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Training Do’s and Don’ts,” don’t merely promote respect for free expression but actively promote extremist views by telling officials to sideline experts who “venture too deep into the weeds of [Islamic] religious doctrines and history… [T]hese topics are not necessary in order to understand the [Muslim] community.”
The DHS also actively discourages engagement with moderate Muslims. “Don’t use trainers… who are self-professed ‘Muslim reformers’… [or who] equate radical thought [or] religious expressions… with criminal activity,” say the training guidelines.
The guidelines also advise cops, “Don’t use a trainer or training that has received repeated external negative feedback… don’t use training that treats the American Muslim community as a problem rather than as a partner… don’t use training that relies on fear [for example, by citing convictions that show] mainstream Muslim organizations have terrorist ties.”
The training guidelines go so far as to urge federal officials to rely on a political report by the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), a Los Angeles, California-based Islamic advocacy group with extensive ties to jihadists and Islamist groups, including the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood.
The group’s spokeswoman, Miriam Baja, declined to comment on the controversy. The group’s leader, Salam Al-Marayati, is on vacation, she said.
TheDC asked whether cops should consider religious observance and dress when considering people’s future behavior. “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Baja replied.
MPAC’s report [pdf], titled “Building Bridges,” downplays Islam’s role in spurring terrorism. “Despite the fact that only 8% of Muslims believe suicide bombing against civilians is ‘often/sometimes’ justified, some biased commentators have voiced doubt over the loyalty of Muslim Americans and argue they constitute a domestic security threat,” the report reads.
Security officials, the report claims, should delegate many anti-terror activities to local Islamist political groups. “This report argues the most effective way to deal with the challenge of radicalization and violent extremism is for law enforcement and Muslim American community leaders to partner together,” the report says.
The report’s recommendations were implemented by an August 2011 White House policy signed by President Barack.
“Communities – especially Muslim American communities whose children, families and neighbors are being targeted for recruitment by al-Qaida – are often best positioned to take the lead because they know their communities best,” said the directive [pdf], titled “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States.”
McCarthy called MPAC “an Islamist organization whose founders openly admired the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah, and whose director [Salam al-Marayati] suggested that the state of Israel should be a top suspect in the 9/11 attacks. I don’t find any of that particularly trustworthy.”
Marayati, however, claims he offered his services to law enforcement officials after the Boston Marathon attacks. “I then called the FBI to speak with the counterterrorism chief and asked him if there was any information we could share with our community leaders in Boston and what they should do if they had seen anything suspicious leading up to the bombing,” he wrote in an April 23 article for the Washington Post.
“I asked him if there was anything I could do to help. Like all Americans, I did not know the background of the culprits, and it did not matter. I offered my assistance as my civic duty to the country, no matter what others may think,” he wrote.
The article did not say how the FBI reacted to al-Marayati’s offer, or what he offered.
.
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.
Benghazi Bombshell: CIA Warned Of Impending Jihadist Attack
20 MayBombshell In The Benghazi E-mails: The CIA Warned Of Impending Jihadist Attack – World Tribune
The White House recently released more than 100 pages of e-mails between the CIA, State Department and the White House regarding the now infamous talking points.
.
President Barack Obama insists “there is no there, there,” as he stated during a May 13 press conference. Yet, the opposite is true. There is a bombshell there.
The CIA had warned on Sept. 10, 2012, one day before the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, of the possibility of a jihadist attack on an American embassy.
We now know that on Sept. 15, 2012, when then-CIA Director David Petraeus read the final version of the talking points, he wrote in an e-mail: “No mention of the cable to Cairo, either? I’d just as soon not use this, then… NSS’s (National Security Staff) call to be sure…”
At that point, all references to the perpetrators of the Benghazi attack, Ansar al-Sharia, a Libyan Al Qaida affiliate, had been redacted. The cable to Cairo contained a warning that Al Qaida-linked jihadists might strike the American embassy there, according to The Weekly Standard.
As an earlier version of the talking points put it: “On September 10 we warned of social media reports calling for a demonstration in front of the Embassy Cairo and that jihadists were threatening to break into the Embassy.”
In other words, America’s intelligence community feared there was danger in Cairo even before the rally occurred the following day. On September 11, there was no “spontaneous demonstration” protesting an anti-Muslim video in Egypt (or in Benghazi for that matter), as the administration would later claim, especially by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice who misled the public Sept.16 on five Sunday talk shows.
Instead, there was a rally in Cairo organized by five well-known Al Qaida-linked jihadists who had previously been jailed for terrorist activity, according to an Oct. 26 report by Thomas Joscelyn in The Long War Journal. This rally was an Al Qaida love-fest. Flags floated in the crowd honoring Al Qaida and the crowd chanted: “Obama, Obama! We are all Osama!” The five senior jihadist organizers were simply using the anti-Muslim video to gin up even more outrage and anti-American sentiment. The video was merely an appendage in their greater quest to proclaim, loudly and boldly that “Al Qaida’s ideology lives,” according to the detailed report.
Thus, Mr. Petraeus expressed his dismay on Sept.15 that a key piece of information – the essential context – was omitted. Without this, the talking points were one giant mess.
Yet, if this key piece of information were indeed revealed, the Obama administration would be exposed as having lied about the receding Al Qaida threat around the world. They would also appear to be incompetent in preventing another attack on sovereign American soil, right after having been warned that it might occur.
It was precisely this that Mr. Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were determined to conceal amidst the heated and closely contested 2012 presidential campaign. If they could convince the American people that both the Cairo and Benghazi events were spontaneous, then they could not be accused of failing to prevent the violent outbreaks that occurred.
The truth is now simple, stark and a scathing indictment of the Obama administration: On Sept. 10, the CIA knew that Al Qaida-linked jihadists posed a threat; they were stirring animosity, possibly endangering the American embassy in Cairo.
The Obama administration did not heed the warning of the intelligence community, nor have the good sense to fortify defenses in a “high-risk” outpost such as the consulate in Benghazi. Hence, when jihadists struck in Libya and four Americans died, Mr. Obama and his entourage grasped immediately that if the public understood the correct sequence of events, the Obama team would be lampooned out of office.
Every part of this story reveals the glaring failures of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy: The pro-jihadist rally in Cairo exposed the president as having badly miscalculated from the start of his term. There, in the very place where on June 4, 2009, he had proclaimed “a new beginning” for America and the Muslim world, terrorists now spewed hatred on the United States and celebrated Osama bin Laden as their champion and hero. And they also continued to threaten imminent violence.
In addition, the emails and cables the intelligence community had sent, warning of danger to a U.S. embassy on Sept. 11, 2012 (even if it was that in Cairo) should have put every security team in every American outpost on high alert for a possible strike, with contingency plans in place to counterattack and rescue Americans who might be in harm’s way. By contrast, Mr. Obama’s staff was caught completely flat-footed when jihadists struck in Benghazi.
When terrorists attacked in Libya, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens called his second-in-command, Deputy Chief of Mission Gregory Hicks and said, “Greg, we are under attack.” Mr. Hicks, as he testified in a May 8 congressional hearing, then called Mrs. Clinton and relayed that the U.S. diplomatic mission was besieged. And somewhere, somehow, as the horror unfolded, in the middle of that fateful night, an evil order to “stand down” was issued. A military rescue would not even be attempted. For the dark secret had to be preserved at all costs. If Americans had to die, so be it. In other words, the plot to conceal Mr. Obama’s glaring failures was concocted.
Thus, Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty became four casualties in the glorious cause of the re-election of the very man whose entire foreign policy had just gone up in smoke.
.
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
.
Related article:
.
White House: ‘Irrelevant Fact’ Where Obama Was During Benghazi – The Blaze
Senior White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer said Sunday it’s an “irrelevant fact” where exactly President Barack Obama was while the Benghazi attack was unfolding.
Pfeiffer told “Fox News Sunday” that Obama was “kept up to date on this as it was happening” last September, “from the moment it started until the very end.”
But host Chris Wallace, who had asked what specifically Obama did during the night of the deadly assault, said Pfeiffer didn’t answer his question.
Pfeiffer said Obama “was in constant touch that night with his national security team” and repeated that he “was kept up to date with the events that were happening.”
Wallace asked whether Obama was in the White House Situation Room.
“I don’t remember what room the president was in on that night. That’s a largely an irrelevant fact,” Pfeiffer replied. “The premise of your question is that somehow there was something that could have been done differently and would have changed the outcome here. The accountability review board has looked at this, people have looked at it. It’s a horrible tragedy what happened and what we have to do is make sure it never happens again.”
Continuing to press the point, Wallace said “no one knows where he was or how he was involved.”
“The suggestion of your question that somehow the president – ” Pfeiffer began.
“I just want to know what the answer is,” Wallace said.
“The assertions from Republicans here that somehow the president allowed this to happen or didn’t take action is offensive,” Pfeiffer said. “It is absolutely offensive. And there’s no evidence to support it.”
“I’m simply asking a question,” Wallace said. “Where was he? What did he do? How did he respond – who told him you can’t deploy forces and what was his response to that?”
Pfeiffer repeated, “The president was in the White House that day, he was kept up to date by his national security team, he spoke to the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs earlier, and as events unfolded he was kept up to date.”
.
.
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.
President Asshat Caught In Yet Another Benghazi-gate Lie
15 MayFor months, conservative media has been howling over the falsehood that the Accountability Review Board (ARB) offered a thorough investigation into the September 11 terror attack in Benghazi. The most frustrating part is that in order to ignore the legions of unanswered questions surrounding Libya, Obama and his media (most famously Slate’s Dave Weigel, who used the report to say GOP claims of a cover up were “pure fiction”) have hid behind the ARB’s report as though it were definitive. For months, conservative media has been howling over the falsehood that the Accountability Review Board (ARB) offered a thorough investigation into the September 11 terror attack in Benghazi. The most frustrating part is that in order to ignore the legions of unanswered questions surrounding Libya, Obama and his media (most famously Slate’s Dave Weigel, who used the report to say GOP claims of a cover up were “pure fiction”) have hid behind the ARB’s report as though it were definitive.
.
On Monday, President Obama tried this ruse again. But now that the media has finally woken up from a five-year infatuation, he isn’t getting away with it. PolitiFact has labeled as “mostly false,” Obama’s claim that…
Over the last several months, there was a review board headed by two distinguished Americans, Mike Mullen and Tom Pickering, who investigated every element of [the Benghazi incident.]
Here is PolitiFact’s reasoning:
While the [ARB] did investigate numerous angles of the security issues, it didn’t look at who perpetrated the attack, nor did it probe the administration’s public communications afterward. No less an authority than the board’s co-chairman undercut Obama’s sweeping claim that the board “investigated every element” with repeated comments on three Sunday shows. On balance, we rate Obama’s claim Mostly False.
Oh how times have changed. Back in December Weigel could get away with using the ARB report to falsely claim the Administration had been cleared of a cover up even though the ARB didn’t even look into the possibility of a cover up.
Today, Obama can’t even get away with it.
By the way, this is the second falsehood the President of the United States has been caught telling this week.
And it is only Wednesday.
.
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.
Benghazi’s Smoking Guns (Jonah Goldberg)
14 MayBenghazi’s Smoking Guns – Jonah Goldberg
President Obama was asked about the metastasizing Benghazi scandal in a joint news conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday. Referring to the Americans who died in Benghazi, the president said, “We dishonor them when we turn things like this into a political circus.” He added that “the whole issue of talking points, throughout this process, frankly, has been a sideshow… There’s no there there.”
.
.
He’s half right. The talking points drafted by the State Department, the CIA and the White House and given to congressional Republicans and, most famously, to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice are not the center of this story.
I think there was a lot of mischief behind those talking points, which we now know were sanitized, folded, spindled and mutilated to fit a political agenda.
But it’s worth remembering that Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton didn’t get their information from the talking points. They got their information earlier and from much higher authorities, like then-CIA Director David H. Petraeus. The CIA believed the attacks were terrorist-driven early on. According to ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl, when Petraeus saw the talking points, he thought they were useless.
More central are the talking points – written or unwritten – that Obama and Clinton used for weeks after the attacks. The president said Monday that he immediately referred to the Benghazi attacks as “terrorism.” This is at best a brutal bending of the truth. He used the word “terror” generically in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12. And then for the next two weeks, he went on a media blitz blaming a video, including in an interview recorded that day with “60 Minutes.” In a segment that “60 Minutes” helpfully sat on for almost two months, Obama told Steve Kroft that “it’s too early to know” whether the attack was terrorism. He then went on “The View,” Univision and David Letterman pushing the idea that it was all about a video. At the United Nations, he condemned a “crude and disgusting” video but didn’t mention terrorism.
Clinton followed suit. She told grieving family members of the fallen that the U.S. would track down the makers of the video. And, so far, the only person connected with the whole incident who has been punished is the filmmaker, who continues to languish in jail, admittedly on unrelated charges.
If you assume they knew the truth about the nature of the attack, how are those statements not proof of a coverup? The talking points are incidental.
But in a very serious way, so is the coverup.
As Washington Examiner columnist Byron York notes, the Republican obsession with the smoking gun stems from the fact that “they are captive to the Washington mind-set that the coverup is always worse than the crime.”
This Washington cliche isn’t an iron law of the universe. The media like it, I think, because the coverup invariably involves them. When the story is about how the media have been misled, the media can always be counted on to perk up, as we saw last Friday when White House spokesman Jay Carney was eaten alive on C-SPAN.
But the true core of this story has nothing to do with media vanity or talking points – or a political circus. The real issue is that for reasons yet to be determined – politics? ideology? incompetence? all three? – the administration was unprepared for an attack on Sept. 11, of all dates. When the attack came, they essentially did nothing as our own people were begging for help – other than to tell those begging to help that they must “stand down.”
Again, there’s an arsenal worth of smoking guns, from uncontested sworn testimony at the Benghazi hearings to the State Department’s flawed internal review to the four dead Americans, including a U.S. ambassador sent to Benghazi on Clinton’s orders. That’s the there there — regardless of what happened with the talking points. There is, from what we know so far, at best circumstantial evidence pointing to why they pushed this video story so hard. Though, as Thoreau once said, “some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”
.
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
.
Related article:
.
Washington Post Factchecker Destroys Obama’s Claim He Called Libya ‘Terrorism’ – Big Journalism
Monday, during his appearance before the media with British Prime Minister David Cameron, President Obama was again caught lying to coverup his lying and covering-up in the aftermath of a successful terror attack in Libya that cost four American lives. Obama actually claimed before the world that, “The day after [Libya] happened, I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism.”
That is a bald-faced lie. In fact it is such a bald-faced lie that Washington Post factchecker Glenn Kessler awarded the President the full-boat of four Pinnochios:
[T]he president’s claim that he said “act of terrorism” is taking revisionist history too far, given that he repeatedly refused to commit to that phrase when asked directly by reporters in the weeks after the attack. He appears to have gone out of his way to avoid saying it was a terrorist attack, so he has little standing to make that claim now.
Indeed, the initial unedited talking points did not call it an act of terrorism. Instead of pretending the right words were uttered, it would be far better to acknowledge that he was echoing what the intelligence community believed at the time – and that the administration’s phrasing could have been clearer and more forthright from the start.
[T]he president’s claim that he said “act of terrorism” is taking revisionist history too far, given that he repeatedly refused to commit to that phrase when asked directly by reporters in the weeks after the attack. He appears to have gone out of his way to avoid saying it was a terrorist attack, so he has little standing to make that claim now.
Indeed, the initial unedited talking points did not call it an act of terrorism. Instead of pretending the right words were uttered, it would be far better to acknowledge that he was echoing what the intelligence community believed at the time – and that the administration’s phrasing could have been clearer and more forthright from the start.
.
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.
It Figures… Obama Praises Pakistan For Electing Islamic Extremist
13 MayObama Praises Pakistan For Electing Extremist – Sweetness & Light
.
From the Politico:
Obama congratulates Pakistan on elections
By DONOVAN SLACK | May 12, 2013
President Obama congratulated the people of Pakistan on national elections Saturday that marked the country’s first democratic transfer of power.
“I congratulate the people of Pakistan on the successful completion of yesterday’s parliamentary elections,” Obama said in a statement. “The United States stands with all Pakistanis in welcoming this historic peaceful and transparent transfer of civilian power, which is a significant milestone in Pakistan’s democratic progress. By conducting competitive campaigns, freely exercising your democratic rights, and persevering despite intimidation by violent extremists, you have affirmed a commitment to democratic rule that will be critical to achieving peace and prosperity for all Pakistanis for years to come.”
Early tallies suggested former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif could be headed back to power as leader of a coalition government…
Who is former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, you ask? Well, he is a Muslim extremist, who also helped to give us the Taliban in Afghanistan in the first place.
Lest we forget, back when he was running for the US, Obama said that he would send missiles into Pakistan if if he thought radical Muslims might get a hold of their nuclear weapons. Then later, in August 2007, when he was running for President, Obama vowed that he would send ground troops into Pakistan if they did not do more to stop their support for terrorists.
But now, when Pakistan has elected a radical Muslim who has helped the Taliban in the past, Obama just congratulates them.
From the Associated Press:
Pakistan’s next premier an Islamist comeback kid
By SEBASTIAN ABBOT | May 13, 2013
ISLAMABAD (AP) – The man set to become Pakistan’s next prime minister after historic elections over the weekend could be called the Islamist comeback kid.
Nawaz Sharif has held the job twice before… After serving as the country’s main opposition leader, Sharif came roaring back in Saturday’s elections, in which his Pakistan Muslim League-N party scored a resounding victory…
Critics worry that Sharif, who is known to be personally very religious, is soft on Islamic extremism and won’t crack down on militants that pose a serious threat to Pakistan and other countries – chief among them the Taliban and al-Qaida-linked groups…
Sharif [had] intended to run in the 2008 election, but he was disqualified by a court because of a conviction on terrorism and hijacking charges, stemming from Musharraf’s coup. Sharif insisted the conviction was politically motivated, and it was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2009.
Uh huh.
Sharif… is perhaps best known for testing nuclear weapons in response to India’s nuclear test in 1998…
And, of course, Pakistan now has quite a few nuclear warheads, which will now be under the control of a Muslim extremist.
Sharif’s party, which controlled the Punjab government for the last five years, is more closely aligned with hard-line Islamist parties than the outgoing Pakistan People’s Party. The Pakistan Muslim League-N has been criticized for not going after militant outfits in Punjab, a stance analysts said was driven by its reliance on banned militant groups to deliver key votes.
During Sharif’s tenure as prime minister in the 1990s, he not only supported the Taliban regime in Afghanistan but also tried to vastly increase the powers of his office while pushing aside Pakistan’s penal code in favor of an Islamic justice system. Many saw these ill-fated moves as an attempt to “Talibanize” Pakistan, and they eroded his popularity.
But not enough that he wasn’t just, in effect, re-elected.
After returning from exile, Sharif admitted that the pro-Afghan Taliban policy he pursued when he was prime minister in the 1990s was a failure and said Pakistan should stop trying to influence affairs in Afghanistan…
And we believe him, too.
Sharif has criticized unpopular U.S. drone attacks targeting al-Qaida and Taliban militants in Pakistan, and has called the Afghan conflict “America’s war.” The Punjab government, controlled by Sharif’s party, turned down over $100 million in American aid in 2011 to protest the bin Laden raid…
And yet Obama is congratulating Pakistan for electing this man. And this is the man the Obama administration is now counting on to help us stop terrorism in Afghanistan and help us negotiate with the Taliban.
In fact, looking at the big picture, the tragic deaths of the four Americans in Benghazi should be viewed as a consequence of the bigger scandal of what is happening in the Middle East, where country after country is being taken over by radical Muslims. And which Obama is encouraging, via the ‘Arab Spring’ and other policies.
We are losing the entire Middle East to Islamic extremism. And yet our news media are pretending Obama has nothing to do with it.
.
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.
Ben Rhodes: Obama’s Fixer Behind The Benghazi Cover-Up
13 MayBen Rhodes: Obama’s Fixer Behind The Benghazi Cover-Up – American Thinker
Barack Obama’s “Tower of Fabrications,” as Peter Wehner describes the Benghazi scandal, is beginning to crack. And that crack will soon reveal a central figure behind the cover-up, a man close to Barack Obama for years but generally unknown to the public: Ben Rhodes.
.
Rhodes has risen from being an obscure and failed fiction writer to formulating foreign and national security policy for Obama precisely because he is willing to his superiors’ bidding regardless of facts. He has a history of using whatever talents he has with the pen to do so.
A few years ago he had drafted the Iraq Study Group report on the causes and mishaps of the Iraq War to focus on Israel – despite the fact that Israel was not part of the scope of the mission the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group was given. Witnesses and experts called by the Committee were appalled. Why did Rhodes distort the record? He seemingly was doing the bidding of his masters who have a history of animus towards Israel. Rhodes had attended Rice University, where the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy is housed; it was headed by Edward Djerejian. Both Baker and his friend Djerejian (a former Ambassador to Syria) have pro-Arab records; criticism of and pressure towards Israel have been hallmarks of their careers. Both Baker and Djerejian played key roles in choosing whom to hire for the Iraq Study Group and how the work was done.
Rhodes may also just be indulging his own pro-Muslim sympathies. He wrote Obama’s infamous Cairo Speech. That paean to the Muslim world was filled with fulsome praise of Islam that were factually incorrect (Rhodes’ post-graduate education, after all, was in fiction-writing and under Obama he seems to have finally found someone who will pay him for writing fiction). The speech avoided references to radical Islam and was filled with platitudes about Islam. The speech highlighted a tougher line towards Israel and “credited” that nation’s founding as due to European guilt over the Holocaust (ignoring 5000 years of history).
Rhodes has gone from writing reports and drafting speeches to playing a key role in formulating foreign and national security policy, according to the New York Times. His closeness to Obama – a man known for his aloofness (“he doesn’t like people” says a former aide) has become well-known.
There is a reason Rhodes is close to Obama.
Everyone in power needs a fixer and, according to the latest revelations, Ben Rhodes is Obama’s fixer.
.
Rhodes seems to be proud of his role. Patrick Howley of the Daily Caller notes that Rhodes “identifies himself first and foremost as a strategist and mouthpiece for the president’s agenda” whose, quoting Rhodes, “main job, which has always been my job, is to be the person who represents the president’s view on these issues”
When State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland requested changes to the original CIA talking points to eliminate reports regarding warnings of the upcoming attacks who responded positively to her wishes? Ben Rhodes.
Stephen Hayes writes at the Weekly Standard (The Benghazi Scandal Grows:
The CIA’s talking points, the ones that went out that Friday evening, were distributed via email to a group of top Obama administration officials. Forty-five minutes after receiving them, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland expressed concerns about their contents, particularly the likelihood that members of Congress would criticize the State Department for “not paying attention to Agency warnings.” CIA officials responded with a new draft, stripped of all references to Ansar al Sharia.
In an email a short time later, Nuland wrote that the changes did not “resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership.” She did not specify whom she meant by State Department “building leadership.” Ben Rhodes, a top Obama foreign policy and national security adviser, responded to the group, explaining that Nuland had raised valid concerns and advising that the issues would be resolved at a meeting of the National Security Council’s Deputies Committee the following morning.
As Charles Krauthammer noted, Rhodes had written in an email he wanted the revisions to reflect all the “equities” of the various departments involved in the Benghazi story – not reflect the truth but the “equities” (a Washington euphemism for reputations). Truth ended up on the cutting room floor.
This report was backed up by other journalists.
As Kevin Robillard wrote at Politico,”Terror References removed from Benghazi talking points”:
Nuland was backed up by Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes.
“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. “We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.”
After the meeting Rhodes mentioned, all references to Al Qaeda were deleted.
Hayes outlines what happened next:
Mike Morell, deputy director of the CIA, agreed to work with Jake Sullivan and Rhodes to edit the talking points. At the time, Sullivan was deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department’s director of policy planning; he is now the top national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.
It is highly doubtful that Morell, the deputy director of the CIA, a career official (not an Obama appointee), found this work comfortable or rewarding.
After all, he was being “asked” to distort the CIA’s original report – to eliminate references to Islamic terrorism, to delete warnings of an organized attack to come, to shield the Obama administration and cover-up the Benghazi disaster, a problem that would have plagued Barack Obama in the run-up to the election.
Then CIA-director David Petraeus was reportedly appalled at the revisions forced upon them by Team Obama (recall the constant references during the Bush era about the “politicizing of intelligence”?). He was particularly frustrated over the deleted references to terrorism.
So who pushed for such a radical alteration of the CIA talking points, who has a history of writing reports, drafting speeches, doing his bosses bidding regardless of ethics and fealty to facts, and who has a record of indulging in pro-Islam messaging? None other than Ben Rhodes.
Journalists have just begun to focus on his role.
James Rosen, the Fox News Washington correspondent, reported Friday night on the Bret Baier show, that the Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes at the White House was an early participant in the process of rewriting the CIA talking points and he lined up with State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland in a “way that served to accelerate the scrubbing of the talking points”.
Coincidentally (or not) Ben Rhodes’s brother, David Rhodes, is the head of CBS News. One of the most dogged journalists trying to peel away the covers behind the Benghazi scandal has been CBS journalist Sharyl Atkinson. She has had to endure pressure from liberal journalistic colleagues to stop digging. Politico reports that “network sources” say that she “can’t get some of her stories on the air.”
The coercion may be going into overdrive as the investigations gets closer to fingering Ben Rhodes as the key player behind the Benghazi cover-up. According to Patrick Howley of the Daily Caller, CBS News may be on the verge of firing Atkinson.
Furthermore, Ben Rhodes is married to Ann Norris, senior foreign and defense advisor to Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California). One might with some justification expect Sen. Boxer to run interference for Ben Rhodes should investigations begin to focus on his role in the Benghazi scandal.
Congress, or rather the Republican-held House since Harry Reid would never permit any truth-finding by the Democrat Senate, needs to step up the pace of their investigations, issue subpoenas, and call witnesses. America (and the wounded and dead victims and the family and friends who survive them) deserves to know the truth behind Benghazi.
And among those witnesses should be Ben Rhodes. Perhaps being forced to swear he will tell the truth will finally cause him to abandon fiction.
.
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
.
Related article:
.
CBS, ABC, CNN Execs Have Family Ties To Obama Aides – Centennial Institute
This you can hardly believe.
David Rhodes, president of CBS News, is the brother of Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser.
Ben Sherwood, president of ABC News, is the brother of Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Obama’s special assistant.
Ciaire Shipman, national correspondent for ABC’s “Good Morning America,” is married to Jay Carney, Obama’s press secretary.
Virginia Moseley, deputy bureau chief for CNN in Washington, is married to Tom Nides, deputy security state for management and resources (under Secretary Clinton and now under Secretary Kerry).
So how aggressively can we expect CBS, ABC, and CNN to pursue the truth about Benghazi?
If Cheryl Atkisson, the CBS reporter who seems to want to pursue the truth, is muzzled or let go, would the David Rhodes – Ben Rhodes brother team (covering for the latter’s key role in changing the talking points) possibly have something to do with it?
.
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
How many layers of scandal will there end up being in Benghazi? First, we have the talking points being altered to cover up the ineptitude of the Obama administration. Then we have stand down orders that were issues to prevent any military aid from helping our people in harms way. We have the State Dept. demoting Greg Hicks for questioning the misinformation being given by the administration.
And then there is this piece that hasn’t really gotten much attention at all, that Ambassador Stevens was in Benghazi to help facilitate the transfer of Libyan arms to the Syrian rebels by way of Turkey.
Well just yesterday morning, Geraldo revealed that he has sources telling him the same thing, that indeed Stevens was in Benghazi to help round up shoulder-to-air missiles to send to the Syrian rebels via Turkey (h/t: The Blaze):
.
.
I’m surprised this hasn’t gotten more attention. Fox News covered this back in Oct of last year and did an excellent report on it:
.
.
…………………….Click on image above to watch video.
.
Glenn Beck also covered it in great detail back in October as well:
.
.
If we were running weapons, as it seems we were, then it makes sense why Obama was so gung ho about going into Libya in the first place to help overthrow Qaddafi. Those weapons were needed to help further the so-called Arab Spring happening in Syria. And it was done all in the name of democracy.
.
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.
The Benghazi Scandal Grows (Stephen Hayes)
11 MayThe Benghazi Scandal Grows – Stephen Hayes
CIA director David Petraeus was surprised when he read the freshly rewritten talking points an aide had emailed him in the early afternoon of Saturday, September 15. One day earlier, analysts with the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis had drafted a set of unclassified talking points policymakers could use to discuss the attacks in Benghazi, Libya. But this new version - produced with input from senior Obama administration policymakers – was a shadow of the original.
.
The original CIA talking points had been blunt: The assault on U.S. facilities in Benghazi was a terrorist attack conducted by a large group of Islamic extremists, including some with ties to al Qaeda.
These were strong claims. The CIA usually qualifies its assessments, providing policymakers a sense of whether the conclusions of its analysis are offered with “high confidence,” “moderate confidence,” or “low confidence.” That first draft signaled confidence, even certainty: “We do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda participated in the attack.”
There was good reason for this conviction. Within 24 hours of the attack, the U.S. government had intercepted communications between two al Qaeda-linked terrorists discussing the attacks in Benghazi. One of the jihadists, a member of Ansar al Sharia, reported to the other that he had participated in the assault on the U.S. diplomatic post. Solid evidence. And there was more. Later that same day, the CIA station chief in Libya had sent a memo back to Washington, reporting that eyewitnesses to the attack said the participants were known jihadists, with ties to al Qaeda.
Before circulating the talking points to administration policymakers in the early evening of Friday, September 14, CIA officials changed “Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda” to simply “Islamic extremists.” But elsewhere, they added new contextual references to radical Islamists. They noted that initial press reports pointed to Ansar al Sharia involvement and added a bullet point highlighting the fact that the agency had warned about another potential attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in the region. “On 10 September we warned of social media reports calling for a demonstration in front of the [Cairo] Embassy and that jihadists were threatening to break into the Embassy.” All told, the draft of the CIA talking points that was sent to top Obama administration officials that Friday evening included more than a half-dozen references to the enemy – al Qaeda, Ansar al Sharia, jihadists, Islamic extremists, and so on.
The version Petraeus received in his inbox Saturday, however, had none. The only remaining allusion to the bad guys noted that “extremists” might have participated in “violent demonstrations.”
In an email at 2:44 p.m. to Chip Walter, head of the CIA’s legislative affairs office, Petraeus expressed frustration at the new, scrubbed talking points, noting that they had been stripped of much of the content his agency had provided. Petraeus noted with evident disappointment that the policymakers had even taken out the line about the CIA’s warning on Cairo. The CIA director, long regarded as a team player, declined to pick a fight with the White House and seemed resigned to the propagation of the administration’s preferred narrative. The final decisions about what to tell the American people rest with the national security staff, he reminded Walter, and not with the CIA.
This candid, real-time assessment from then-CIA director Petraeus offers a glimpse of what many intelligence officials were saying privately as top Obama officials set aside the truth about Benghazi and spun a fanciful tale about a movie that never mattered and a demonstration that never happened.
“The YouTube video was a nonevent in Libya,” said Gregory Hicks, a 22-year veteran diplomat and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Tripoli at the time of the attacks, in testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on May 8. “The only report that our mission made through every channel was that there had been an attack on a consulate… no protest.”
So how did Jay Carney, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and others come to sell the country a spurious narrative about a movie and a protest?
There are still more questions than answers. But one previously opaque aspect of the Obama administration’s efforts is becoming somewhat clearer. An email sent to Susan Rice following a key White House meeting where officials coordinated their public story lays out what happened in that meeting and offers more clues about who might have rewritten the talking points.
The CIA’s talking points, the ones that went out that Friday evening, were distributed via email to a group of top Obama administration officials. Forty-five minutes after receiving them, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland expressed concerns about their contents, particularly the likelihood that members of Congress would criticize the State Department for “not paying attention to Agency warnings.” CIA officials responded with a new draft, stripped of all references to Ansar al Sharia.
In an email a short time later, Nuland wrote that the changes did not “resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership.” She did not specify whom she meant by State Department “building leadership.” Ben Rhodes, a top Obama foreign policy and national security adviser, responded to the group, explaining that Nuland had raised valid concerns and advising that the issues would be resolved at a meeting of the National Security Council’s Deputies Committee the following morning. The Deputies Committee consists of high-ranking officials at the agencies with responsibility for national security – including State, Defense, and the CIA – as well as senior White House national security staffers.
The Deputies Committee convened the next morning, Saturday the 15th. Some participants met in person, while others joined via a Secure Video Teleconference System (abbreviated SVTS and pronounced “siv-its”).
The proceedings were summarized in an email to U.N. ambassador Rice shortly after the meeting ended. The subject line read: “SVTS on Movie/Protests/violence.” The name of the sender is redacted, but whoever it was had an email address suggesting a job working for the United States at the United Nations.
According to the email, several officials in the meeting shared the concern of Nuland, who was not part of the deliberations, that the CIA’s talking points might lead to criticism that the State Department had ignored the CIA’s warning about an attack. Mike Morell, deputy director of the CIA, agreed to work with Jake Sullivan and Rhodes to edit the talking points. At the time, Sullivan was deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department’s director of policy planning; he is now the top national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden. Denis McDonough, then a top national security adviser to Obama and now his chief of staff, deferred on Rhodes’s behalf to Sullivan.
The email to Rice reported that Sullivan would work with a small group of individuals from the intelligence community to finalize the talking points on Saturday before sending them on to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which had originated the request for talking points.
The sender of the email spoke with Sullivan after the meeting, reminding him that Rice would be doing the Sunday morning shows and needed to receive the final talking points. Sullivan committed to making sure Rice was updated before the Sunday shows. The sender told Sullivan the name of the staffer (redacted in the email) who would be running Rice’s prep session and encouraged the team to keep Rice in the loop.
At 2:44 p.m., the author of the email to Rice followed up directly with Sullivan, asking for a copy of the talking points to help with Rice’s preparation for TV. Sullivan promised to provide them.
A senior Obama administration official did not challenge the accuracy of the email to Rice, but disputed any implication that Sullivan was responsible for rewriting the talking points. “The CIA circulated revised talking points to the interagency after the Deputies Committee meeting and Jake Sullivan did not comment substantively on those points.”
This official pointed to Jay Carney’s comments this week. “What we said and what remains true to this day is that the intelligence community drafted and redrafted these points.”
But Carney’s claim raises an obvious question: Why would intelligence community officials want to redraft talking points they’d already finalized?
The major substantive changes came Friday evening, after a State Department official expressed concerns about criticism from members of Congress, and Saturday morning, following the Deputies Committee meeting, where, according to internal Obama administration emails, officials further revised the talking points.
What’s clear is that the final version did not reflect the views of the top intelligence official on the ground in Benghazi, who had reported days earlier that the assault had been a terrorist attack conducted by jihadists with links to al Qaeda, or the top U.S. diplomat in Libya, Gregory Hicks.
Hicks testified last week that he was not consulted on the talking points and was surprised when he saw Rice make a case that had little to do with what had happened in Benghazi. “I was stunned,” he said. “My jaw dropped.”
The hearings last week produced fresh details on virtually every aspect of the Benghazi controversy and raised new questions. By the end of some six hours of testimony, several Democrats on the committee had joined their Republican colleagues in calling for more hearings, additional witnesses, and the release of unclassified documents related to the attacks in Benghazi.
On May 9, House speaker John Boehner echoed the calls for those unclassified Benghazi documents to be made public. He had two specific requests. First, Boehner called for the release of an email from Beth Jones, acting assistant secretary for Near East affairs, sent on September 12. Jones wrote to her colleagues to describe a conversation she’d had with Libya’s ambassador to the United States. When the Libyan raised the possibility that loyalists to Muammar Qaddafi might have been involved, Jones corrected him. “When he said his government suspected that former Gadhafi regime elements carried out the attacks, I told him that the group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic terrorists.” Among those copied on the email: Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland, Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns, and Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff and longtime confidante.
Second, Boehner asked the White House to release the 100 pages of internal administration emails related to the drafting and editing of the talking points. Sources tell The Weekly Standard that House Republicans will subpoena them if the administration does not turn them over voluntarily.
Two weeks ago, Secretary of State John Kerry said it was time to “move on” from Benghazi. More recently, Jay Carney suggested the same thing, explaining that Benghazi had happened “a long time ago.”
But it’s increasingly clear that congressional Republicans, and many Americans, will not move on until the outstanding questions about Benghazi are answered.
.
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
.
Related articles:
The top-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee said President Barack Obama could possibly be impeached over what happened in Benghazi.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said in a radio interview Thursday that “of all the great cover-ups in history” – including the Pentagon papers, Iran-Contra and Watergate – Benghazi “is going to go down as most serious, most egregious cover-up in American history.”
“We may be starting to use the I-word before too long,” Inhofe said on the Las Vegas-based “Rusty Humphries Show.”
“The I-word meaning impeachment?” Humphries asked.
“Yeah,” Inhofe confirmed.
When Humphries questioned the likelihood of impeachment, Inhofe said it wouldn’t be immediate.
“I’m not talking about it now, this is something that could endure until after the ’14 election – this is not a short story, this is something that was re-discovered after eight months… this is clearly an orchestrated coverup,” he said.
Listen to the full interview here.
.
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
.
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.
.
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman: More Benghazi Hearings Coming
10 MayExclusive: House Foreign Affairs Chair: More Benghazi Hearings Coming – Big Peace
.
The day after the House Oversight Committee’s blockbuster hearing on the Benghazi terrorist attack of September 11, 2012, House Foreign Relations Committee chair Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) told Breitbart News that the Oversight Committee would hold more hearings:
The Committee continues its examination of the deadly Benghazi terrorist attacks so we can ensure that the bureaucratic failures that left State Department personnel vulnerable are not repeated. The Committee will continue to review the responsibility of senior State Department officials for the failure to provide proper security prior to the Benghazi attacks and needed improvements in embassy security.
Based on testimony in Wednesday’s Benghazi hearing that contradicted the rosy findings of the Obama-appointed Accountability Review Board, Royce has also introduced the Accountability Review Board Reform Act of 2013. He penned a letter to other House members on Thursday encouraging such reforms to the Accountability Review Board process. “Yesterday,” Royce wrote, “the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing that reaffirmed the flaws in the Benghazi ARB’s review. Specifically, the ARB found that the responsibility for the ‘systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies within the State Department stopped at the Assistant Secretary level. As we heard throughout the hearing, this was simply not the case.”
Royce’s proposed legislation would help sever the bond between the ARB and the State Department – currently, the Secretary of State “appoints four out of the ARB’s five members – a clear majority that could influence the outcome of any investigation.” It would change the ARB staffing so that it isn’t as reliant on the State Department. Board members with conflicts of interest would be banned. The Secretary of State would have to hand over a list of staffers to Congress. And the ARB report would have to go to Congress, not merely the Secretary of State.
“These improvements seek to strengthen future ARB investigations to help avoid disasters like Benghazi,” Royce wrote. “Please join me in co-sponsoring this legislation.”
.
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.
International Hacker Gang Stole $45 Million From ATMs
10 MayFeds In NYC: Hackers Stole $45M In ATM Card Breach – Yahoo News
A worldwide gang of criminals stole $45 million in a matter of hours by hacking their way into a database of prepaid debit cards and then draining cash machines around the globe, federal prosecutors said Thursday – and outmoded U.S. card technology may be partly to blame.
.
Seven people are under arrest in the U.S. in connection with the case, which prosecutors said involved thousands of thefts from ATMs using bogus magnetic swipe cards carrying information from Middle Eastern banks. The fraudsters moved with astounding speed to loot financial institutions around the world, working in cells including one in New York, Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said.
She called it “a massive 21st-century bank heist” carried out by brazen thieves.
One of the suspects was caught on surveillance cameras, his backpack increasingly loaded down with cash, authorities said. Others took photos of themselves with giant wads of bills as they made their way up and down Manhattan.
Here’s how it worked:
Hackers got into bank databases, eliminated withdrawal limits on pre-paid debit cards and created access codes. Others loaded that data onto any plastic card with a magnetic stripe – an old hotel key card or an expired credit card worked fine as long as it carried the account data and correct access codes.
A network of operatives then fanned out to rapidly withdraw money in multiple cities, authorities said. The cells would take a cut of the money, then launder it through expensive purchases or ship it wholesale to the global ringleaders. Lynch didn’t say where they were located.
It appears no individuals lost money. The thieves plundered funds held by the banks that back up prepaid credit cards, not individual or business accounts, Lynch said.
She called it a “virtual criminal flash mob,” and a security analyst said it was the biggest ATM fraud case she had heard of.
There were two separate attacks, one in December that reaped $5 million worldwide and one in February that snared about $40 million in 10 hours with about 36,000 transactions. The scheme involved attacks on two banks, Rakbank in the United Arab Emirates and the Bank of Muscat in Oman, prosecutors said.
The plundered ATMs were in Japan, Russia, Romania, Egypt, Colombia, Britain, Sri Lanka, Canada and several other countries, and law enforcement agencies from more than a dozen nations were involved in the investigation, U.S. prosecutors said.
The accused ringleader in the U.S. cell, Alberto Yusi Lajud-Pena, was reportedly killed in the Dominican Republic late last month, prosecutors said. More investigations continue and other arrests have been made in other countries, but prosecutors did not have details.
An indictment unsealed Thursday accused Lajud-Pena and the other seven New York suspects of withdrawing $2.8 million in cash from hacked accounts in less than a day.
Such ATM fraud schemes are not uncommon, but the $45 million stolen in this one was at least double the amount involved in previously known cases, said Avivah Litan, an analyst who covers security issues for Gartner Inc.
Middle Eastern banks and payment processors are “a bit behind” on security and screening technologies that are supposed to prevent this kind of fraud, but it happens around the world, she said.
“It’s a really easy way to turn digits into cash,” Litan said.
Some of the fault lies with the ubiquitous magnetic strips on the back of the cards. The rest of the world has largely abandoned cards with magnetic strips in favor of ones with built-in chips that are nearly impossible to copy. But because U.S. banks and merchants have stuck to cards with magnetic strips, they are still accepted around the world.
Lynch would not say who masterminded the attacks globally, who the hackers are or where they were located, citing an ongoing investigation.
The New York suspects were U.S. citizens originally from the Dominican Republic, lived in the New York City suburb orf Yonkers and were mostly in their 20s. Lynch said they all knew one another and were recruited together, as were cells in other countries. They were charged with conspiracy and money laundering. If convicted, they face 10 years in prison.
Arrests began in March.
Lajud-Pena was found dead with a suitcase full of about $100,000 in cash, and the investigation into his death is continuing separately. Dominican officials said they arrested a man in the killing who said it was a botched robbery, and two other suspects were on the lam.
The first federal study of ATM fraud was 30 years ago, when the use of computers in the financial community was growing rapidly. At the time, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found nationwide ATM bank loss from fraud ranged from $70 and $100 million a year.
By 2008, that had risen to about $1 billion a year, said Ken Pickering, who works in security intelligence at CORE Security, a white-hat hacking firm that offers security to businesses.
He said he expects news of the latest ring to inspire other criminals.
“Once you see a large attack like this, that they made off with $45 million, that’s going to wake up the cybercrime community,” he said.
“Ripping off cash, you don’t get that back,” he said. “There are suitcases full of cash floating around now, and that’s just gone.”
.
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.
darcprynce
Dave C
Gatordoug
