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Showing posts with label Benghazi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Benghazi. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 11, 2020
Tuesday, July 7, 2020
Monday, October 30, 2017
Thursday, February 9, 2017
Saturday, January 16, 2016
U.S. Rescue Team Was on Its Way to Benghazi, But Was Turned Back
Report: U.S. Rescue Team Was on Its Way to Benghazi, But Was Turned Back
CHAT 2020 COMMENTS
The evidence is overwhelming that the United States had several rescue teams ready to go during the 2012 Benghazi attacks, but someone -- possibly the president himself -- prevented them from acting. So said Emmy Award-winning journalist Sharyl Attkisson to talk show host Steve Malzberg in an interview on Wednesday.
This week on her show, "Full Measure," Attkisson looked into the aborted rescue mission in an in-depth two-part report, "Rescue Interrupted," which you can watchhere and here. She spoke with a Green Beret commander who told her that there were actually Special Forces on their way to Benghazi who were turned back.
Col. Andrew Wood had once commanded a Special Forces anti-terrorism team protecting Ambassador Chis Stevens and other diplomats in Libya. In October of 2012, Woods told Congress that one month before the attacks in Benghazi, his team had been removed from Libya by the Obama administration, despite the numerous warnings of impending terrorist attacks. Wood told Attkisson that Special Forces (the ones mentioned in the "spinning up" email from Jeremy Bash) were on their way to Benghazi, but were ordered to turn back.
"Those individuals I know loaded aircraft and got on their way to Benghazi to respond to that incident. They were not allowed to cross the border as per protocol until they got approval from the commander in chief," Wood explained. "That authority has to come from him or they're not allowed to enter the country."
Attkisson told Malzberg, "This is something that the president and the White House has steadfastly denied, but there's now what I would call an overwhelming body of evidence that leads us to believe that somebody stopped a number of teams and potential rescuers from entering Libya or going to Benghazi to help while those attacks were underway."
"They could have gotten there before the last two Americans died," Attkisson noted. "Those attacks went on for eight hours."
The email from Jeremy Bash to Jacob Sullivan, deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, came at 7:19 pm Washington time.
Attkisson notes in Part One of "Rescue Interrupted" that "the White House has refused to detail the involvement of President Obama -- the Commander-in-Chief -- while Americans were under attack on foreign soil."
On November 9, 2012, Jake Tapper asked White House Press Secretary Jay Carney if and when the White House was going to put out a detailed “tick-tock” surrounding its response to the Benghazi attacks. Instead of answering the question, Carney blathered on about the State Department investigation: “Nobody is more interested than the president in making sure the facts are collected, we find out exactly what happened, that we bring to justice those who killed four Americans and that we take measures to ensure that what happened in Benghazi does not happen again.”
“We’re never going to get a tick-tock,” one of the reporters complained at the time. As Attkisson notes, Obama "virtually disappears from the public narrative." All we know is he had a fundraiser to attend the next day in Las Vegas. Incredibly, in light of what happened in Benghazi, he didn't cancel the trip.
At a conference in Maryland last weekend, Benghazi security officer Kris “Tanto” Paronto revealed that two AC-130H “Spectre” gunships were “on call” that night, both within range of Benghazi.
One of them was a six-hour flight away, co-located with a U.S. special operations team in Djibouti. The other was at Naval Air Station Sigonella, in Sicily. “That’s a 45-minute flight,” Paronto said.The Spectre gunship with its 25mm rapid-fire Gatling guns, its 40mm precision Bofors gun, and its 105mm canon is “good in urban warfare because you have little collateral damage,” Paronto explained.In fact, it was just what the beleaguered security team needed. They could see the jihadis advancing on the Annex compound throughout the night and lit them up with lasers, which the airborne crew could have used for precision targeting purposes. On-line videos of the Spectre gunship in operation show that it can walk its cannons up narrow streets, killing fighters while leaving the surrounding buildings intact and people inside them unharmed.“I asked for the Spectre and ISR [an armed Predator drone] at 9:37 pm,” Paronto said, certain that the attacks actually started at 9:32 pm local time, not 9:42 pm as previously reported. “At midnight, they told us they were still working on getting us that Spectre gunship. Not that it was not available, but that they were still working on it.”And there were more forces immediately available for a rescue effort, in particular, the European Command (EUCOM) Commander’s In-Extremis Force, which was then on a counter-terrorism training mission in Croatia, a three-hour flight from Benghazi.Paronto knew people in that unit, and remembers calling them after he and his security team got back to the CIA Annex from the diplomatic compound, where they had just rescued the surviving U.S. personnel. “They were loading their gear into their aircraft and ready to go,” he recalled. Later, his friends in the unit told him they had been shut down sometime after midnight.
Author and former Navy Seal Matt Bracken first made the point here at PJ Media in November of 2012. All forces needed to enter Libya was a "cross-border Authority" from the commander in chief. Unfortunately for Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty,Obama had probably gone to bed early so he could get his beauty sleep for the big fundraiser the next day.
If the White House doesn't like that unflattering perception, maybe it should -- at long last -- pony up that tick-tock.
Monday, January 4, 2016
Hillary Nailed Again on Benghazi Lie
Hillary Nailed Again on Benghazi Lie in New Hampshire
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton sat down with the editorial board of New Hampshire's Conway Daily Sun on Tuesday -- and thanks to conservative columnist Tom McLaughlin, it did not go as smoothly as she would have liked. A question Clinton struggled to answer when it was put to her by George Stephanopoulos on December 6 came back to haunt her on Tuesday when McLaughlin asked her about private statements she had made blaming the Benghazi terrorist attack on "an al-Qaeda-like group" while publicly blaming a YouTube video.
She tried to swat away the issue by blaming the "fog of war" and likened the situation to a "40-alarm fire." She also insinuated that the Central Intelligence Agency was behind the video narrative, even though Mike Morell, the CIA deputy director at the time, claims his analysts never said the video was a factor.
Sun Columnist Tom McLaughlin said she told an Egyptian diplomat the Benghazi attack was planned and not a protest but that she told family members of the deceased that the attack was the result of a demonstration. He said she then told George Stephanopoulos that she didn't tell the families the attack was a demonstration about a film.
"Somebody is lying," said McLaughlin."Who is it?
Clinton replied, "Not me, that's all I can tell you."
At the time, Clinton said, everyone was emotionally distraught. She said some families didn't know their sons were working for the CIA or were in Benghazi. Clinton said the information she had about the attack was from the intelligence community.
"What happened is people were doing the best they could with information that was changing," said Clinton. "The CIA wrote and approved the talking points that were used. It was also true that from Egypt to Tunisia to Pakistan, the video was the primary spark that was sending people into protesting against our facilities. All of this was happening simultaneously."
Continuing to press, McLaughlin said three family members of the victims said that Clinton told him that the attack was the result of the video and or that the filmmaker should be arrested.
Clinton replied that other family members believe differently and stressed she had sympathy for all involved. "I can't recite for you everything that was in a conversation where people were sobbing, where people were distraught, the president and the vice president, we were all making the rounds talking to people, listening to people," said Clinton. "I was in a very difficult position because we have not yet said two of the four dead were CIA ... This was a part of the fog of war."
It would have been nice if Clinton had been asked which "other family members believe differently" -- because at least four family members say that when she met with them, she aggressively pushed the false YouTube video narrative.
Four different relatives of three separate victims who met with Clinton at Andrews Air Force Base on Sept 14, 2012, have publicly stated that she spoke with them about the video: Patricia Smith (Sean Smith’s mother), Michael Ingmire (Sean Smith’s uncle), Kate Quigley (Glen Doherty’s sister), and Charles Woods (Tyrone Woods’ father). The latter kept written notes from the meeting.
Thanks to a recently released email, we now know that on that same day, a State Department official at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli in Libya warned colleagues in Washington, D.C., to “not conflate” the video with “this well-planned attack by militant extremists.”
Yet that is what Hillary Clinton did -- at least publicly.
Clinton implied that she got her talking points from the CIA, but they knew better according to Morell. In his May 2015 book, The Great War of Our Time, Morell wrotethat CIA intelligence analysts "never said the video was a factor in the Benghazi attacks.” (p. 205-206) According to Morell, “the analysts thought Benghazi was terrorism from the beginning” (p. 219).
Morell also says in his book that CIA analysts “complet[ed] their first full report on what happened” and provided it to “senior policy-makers and to Congress on the morning of September 13.”
It was “the first piece to go beyond a simple factual update” and “there was no mention in the piece of the YouTube video defaming the Prophet Muhammad.”
Clearly, Clinton did not get her YouTube video talking points from the CIA.
As Glen Doherty’s sister Kate Quigley noted on the Boston Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” show on December 9, “She knows that she knew what happened that day and she wasn’t truthful.… ”
Indeed. She continues to be untruthful because she's entangled in a web of lies she spun herself.
Hillary Clinton should be hounded about her "most repugnant lie" -- as the New York Post calls it -- every single day until the 2016 presidential election. She won't be -- but we should savor those rare moments when she is.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton sat down with the editorial board of New Hampshire's Conway Daily Sun on Tuesday -- and thanks to conservative columnist Tom McLaughlin, it did not go as smoothly as she would have liked. A question Clinton struggled to answer when it was put to her by George Stephanopoulos on December 6 came back to haunt her on Tuesday when McLaughlin asked her about private statements she had made blaming the Benghazi terrorist attack on "an al-Qaeda-like group" while publicly blaming a YouTube video.
She tried to swat away the issue by blaming the "fog of war" and likened the situation to a "40-alarm fire." She also insinuated that the Central Intelligence Agency was behind the video narrative, even though Mike Morell, the CIA deputy director at the time, claims his analysts never said the video was a factor.
Sun Columnist Tom McLaughlin said she told an Egyptian diplomat the Benghazi attack was planned and not a protest but that she told family members of the deceased that the attack was the result of a demonstration. He said she then told George Stephanopoulos that she didn't tell the families the attack was a demonstration about a film."Somebody is lying," said McLaughlin."Who is it?Clinton replied, "Not me, that's all I can tell you."At the time, Clinton said, everyone was emotionally distraught. She said some families didn't know their sons were working for the CIA or were in Benghazi. Clinton said the information she had about the attack was from the intelligence community."What happened is people were doing the best they could with information that was changing," said Clinton. "The CIA wrote and approved the talking points that were used. It was also true that from Egypt to Tunisia to Pakistan, the video was the primary spark that was sending people into protesting against our facilities. All of this was happening simultaneously."Continuing to press, McLaughlin said three family members of the victims said that Clinton told him that the attack was the result of the video and or that the filmmaker should be arrested.Clinton replied that other family members believe differently and stressed she had sympathy for all involved. "I can't recite for you everything that was in a conversation where people were sobbing, where people were distraught, the president and the vice president, we were all making the rounds talking to people, listening to people," said Clinton. "I was in a very difficult position because we have not yet said two of the four dead were CIA ... This was a part of the fog of war."
It would have been nice if Clinton had been asked which "other family members believe differently" -- because at least four family members say that when she met with them, she aggressively pushed the false YouTube video narrative.
Four different relatives of three separate victims who met with Clinton at Andrews Air Force Base on Sept 14, 2012, have publicly stated that she spoke with them about the video: Patricia Smith (Sean Smith’s mother), Michael Ingmire (Sean Smith’s uncle), Kate Quigley (Glen Doherty’s sister), and Charles Woods (Tyrone Woods’ father). The latter kept written notes from the meeting.
Thanks to a recently released email, we now know that on that same day, a State Department official at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli in Libya warned colleagues in Washington, D.C., to “not conflate” the video with “this well-planned attack by militant extremists.”
Yet that is what Hillary Clinton did -- at least publicly.
Clinton implied that she got her talking points from the CIA, but they knew better according to Morell. In his May 2015 book, The Great War of Our Time, Morell wrotethat CIA intelligence analysts "never said the video was a factor in the Benghazi attacks.” (p. 205-206) According to Morell, “the analysts thought Benghazi was terrorism from the beginning” (p. 219).
Morell also says in his book that CIA analysts “complet[ed] their first full report on what happened” and provided it to “senior policy-makers and to Congress on the morning of September 13.”
It was “the first piece to go beyond a simple factual update” and “there was no mention in the piece of the YouTube video defaming the Prophet Muhammad.”
Clearly, Clinton did not get her YouTube video talking points from the CIA.
As Glen Doherty’s sister Kate Quigley noted on the Boston Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” show on December 9, “She knows that she knew what happened that day and she wasn’t truthful.… ”
Indeed. She continues to be untruthful because she's entangled in a web of lies she spun herself.
Hillary Clinton should be hounded about her "most repugnant lie" -- as the New York Post calls it -- every single day until the 2016 presidential election. She won't be -- but we should savor those rare moments when she is.
______________________________
CIA Head: 'Analysts Never Said the Video was a Factor in the Benghazi Attacks'
October 31, 2015
Blog Post
As the Select Committee’s investigation continues, it has become necessary to clarify the facts and refute the misinformation being spread by those who seek to dismiss and discredit the new evidence revealed in last week’s hearing.
In the course of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s testimony regarding the September 11, 2012, attacks in Benghazi, the American people learned that she:
- Told the Libyan President at 6:49 PM ET on the night of the attacks that “Ansar as-Sharia [sic] is claiming responsibility.” She did not reference a video. (Note: Ansar al-Sharia’s senior leader in Benghazi, Ahmed Abu Khatallah, is the only person who has been arrested for the attacks.)
- Told a member of her family at 11:12 PM ET on the night of the attacks that “an Al Queda-like group” was responsible. She did not reference a video.
- Told the Egyptian Prime Minister at 3:04 PM ET the day after the attacks that they “had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack – not a protest. … Based on the information we saw today we believe the group that claimed responsibility for this was affiliated with al Qaeda.”
These private statements are obviously quite different from what Secretary Clinton was saying in public at the same time, and what she was not saying – namely, that a terrorist group was involved and the attack had nothing to do with a video:
- The night of the attacks, at 10:08 PM ET: “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet.”
- The day after the attacks, at 9:57 AM ET: “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior, along with the protest that took place at our Embassy in Cairo yesterday, as a response to inflammatory material posted on the internet.”
To explain the glaring difference between what Secretary Clinton was saying in private and what she was saying in public, some have argued that she was simply going by assessments provided by the CIA that changed over time. But this makes no sense. Consider:
- In the hours after the attacks, Secretary Clinton’s private statements never changed, and neither did her public statements. In private, she said terrorists were responsible and the film had nothing to do with the attack. In public, she made no mention of terrorists and repeatedly referred to an internet video.
- Michael Morell, former deputy director and acting director of the CIA, wrote in his May 2015 book The Great War of Our Time that while the CIA knew “the demonstration and violence in Cairo were sparked by people upset over a YouTube video,” intelligence “analysts never said the video was a factor in the Benghazi attacks.” (p. 205-206)
- Morell also writes in his book that CIA analysts “complet[ed] their first full report on what happened” and provided it to “senior policy-makers and to Congress on the morning of September 13.” He continues (bolded text for emphasis):
“The September 13 piece – the first piece to go beyond a simple factual update – said four things. First, that the assault on the TMF [Temporary Mission Facility in Benghazi] had been a spontaneous event that evolved from a protest outside the TMF. Second, that the protest and subsequent attack had been motivated by what had happened in Cairo earlier in the day (there was no mention in the piece of the YouTube video defaming the Prophet Muhammad). Third, that there was evidence of extremist involvement in the attack, and by 'extremists' the analysts absolutely meant terrorist involvement, because extremist and terrorist are synonyms to terrorism analysts. Indeed, the piece reported, thatpeople with ties to al Qa'ida had been involved in the attack. The bottom line here is important: the analysts thought Benghazi was terrorism from the beginning. And whether or not the assault evolved from a protest, it was still very much a terrorist attack.” (p. 218-219)
All of this raises several important questions:
- First, if the CIA and intelligence analysts never even mentioned the YouTube video, why did Secretary Clinton?
- Second, if the first full intelligence assessment of what happened was not available until September 13, how can it be claimed that this assessment influenced Secretary Clinton’s statements on September 11 and 12? She couldn’t have read it before it was written.
- Third, if intelligence analysts and Secretary Clinton believed from the beginning that Benghazi was a terrorist attack, why did Secretary Clinton not say so publicly until September 21?
- Fourth, Secretary Clinton told the Egyptian Prime Minister on September 12 that “It was a planned attack – not a protest,” but when a reporter asked her on September 18 about the Libyan President saying it was a planned attack, she dodged the question, saying, “the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has said we had no actionable intelligence that an attack on our post in Benghazi was planned or imminent.” Why the dodge?
Secretary Clinton continued to associate the video with what happened in Benghazi in public remarks two and three days after the attacks, including at a transfer of remains ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base with family members of the victims present. Butthat same day, a State Department official at Embassy Tripoli in Libya wrote an email to colleagues in Washington, D.C., stating that “it is becoming increasingly clear that the series of events in Benghazi was much more terrorist attack than a protest which escalated into violence,” and urging them to “be cautious in our local messaging with regard to the inflammatory film trailer” because “the films [sic] not as explosive of an issue here as it appears to be in other countries …. Relatively few [Libyans] have even mentioned the inflammatory video.”
Here is the email in full, which was referenced in the hearing last week and is now being released publicly for the first time, with appropriate redactions:
From: [redacted]
To: [redacted]
Subject: messaging on the attacks in Libya
Date: Friday, September 14, 2012 6:43:39 AM
Colleagues, I mentioned to [redacted] this morning, and want to share with all of you, our view at Embassy Tripoli that we must be cautious in our local messaging with regard to the inflammatory film trailer, adapting it to Libyan conditions. Our monitoring of the Libyan media and conversations with Libyans suggest that the films not as explosive of an issue here as it appears to be in other countries in the region. The overwhelming majority of the FB comments and tweets we’ve received from Libyans since the Ambassador’s death have expressed deep sympathy, sorrow, and regret. They have expressed anger at the attackers, and emphasized that this attack does not represent Libyans or Islam. Relatively few have even mentioned the inflammatory video. So if we post messaging about the video specifically, we may draw unwanted attention to it. And it is becoming increasingly clear that the series of events in Benghazi was much more terrorist attack than a protest which escalated into violence. It is our opinion that in our messaging, we want to distinguish, not conflate, the events in other countries with this well-planned attack by militant extremists. I have discussed this with [redacted] and he shares PAS’s view.
114th Congress
Friday, October 30, 2015
Clinton on Benghazi - Lier & Loser
Clinton on Benghazi - Lier & Loser
All told, Clinton’s behavior represents some of the worst qualities of modern politicians.
Her grandiose calls for regime change in Libya were not properly backed up with thorough work on the unglamorous details such as security for diplomats. She allowed cronyism to rear its ugly head, in the State Department of all places. And when called to account for this, she served up lawyerly statements designed to obfuscate rather than clarify.
It is little wonder that, when so many Americans look at Clinton, they see what is wrong with our government.
Americans of all political persuasions should ponder a simple question:
Does Clinton’s behavior on Libya and her emails comport with our expectations for the next commander in chief? Anyone who paid close attention to the substance of the Benghazi hearing is bound to answer with a resounding no.
Jay Cost is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard and the author of A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption.
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Trey Gowdy Response to Latest Cummings Letter
Gowdy Response to Latest Cummings Letter
October 18, 2015
Press Release
Washington, DC—Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy today released the following letter in response to yet another Democrat missive that seeks to distort the majority’s investigative effort. He also released the redacted email in question so the American people could decide for themselves regarding concerns about sources and methods. The committee will continue to protect sensitive information related to this email.
See below for text of letter:
October 18, 2015
The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings
Ranking Member
The Select Committee on the Events Surrounding
the 2012 Terrorist Attacks in Benghazi
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Mr. Cummings:
Thank you for your early Sunday morning letter. I appreciate the opportunity to respond.
As you know our Committee is not investigating Secretary Clinton or allegations surrounding the handling of classified or otherwise protected information. Other entities may be investigating matters related thereto, but we are not. This is best evidenced by the fact our Committee has not issued a single subpoena related to her email arrangement or server or any aspect surrounding allegations of mishandling classified or otherwise protected information. Moreover, as you know out of the 54 interviews conducted by the Committee precisely one (1) has been related to her server and that interview - as you recall - was very short because the witness invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. In fact, after the media - not our Committee, but the media - broke the news of her exclusive use of private email and her use of a personal server in early March of 2015, the next 21 witness interviews in a row had nothing to do with Clinton or her email. This hardly evidences your baseless allegations of a "pivot" toward the Secretary or her email. What broke that string of 21 interviews in a row unrelated to any aspect of her email was the June 16, 2015 deposition of Sidney Blumenthal, which is discussed below.
What is relevant to our Committee's jurisdiction is the Secretary's reliance on Sidney Blumenthal for advice and counsel on matters, inter alia, related to Libya/Benghazi. The Committee is reviewing Mr. Blumenthal’s email with respect to these and other matters outlined in my October 7 letter in that regard. As such the nature of the information provided to the Secretary in this regard is highly relevant to better understand decisions made before and after the attacks (there is no evidence Sidney Blumenthal provided any counsel during the pendency of the attacks). As such our Committee is the first Committee to gain access to Secretary Clinton's emails, Sidney Blumenthal's emails and now Ambassador Stevens' emails. Accessing this information is indispensable if we are to do what the House of Representatives asked us to do which is write the final, definitive accounting of what happened before, during, and after the attacks in Benghazi.
Contrary to your assertion, the CIA did not inform the Committee that anything about the facts stated in the October 7 letter “[was] wrong.” As usual, I would ask you to completely and accurately relate the facts rather than attempt to create an impression that is misleading based on an incomplete and selective recitation of the facts. In fact, my understanding is the CIA advised the Committee in a very brief email late Saturday night that it had reviewed the material in question and asked for no material to be redacted. In fact, the name of the alleged source was redacted from the material cleared for public release by someone in the Executive Branch – the fact that the CIA says it didn’t do it does not mean the material was not sensitive or classified. And in fact, additional information remains in the document that ordinarily would be considered highly sensitive. This appears to mean either Mr. Blumenthal conveyed false and unreliable information to Secretary Clinton about Libya and misrepresented it, or the review process is faulty or has been politicized. I also note the fact you did not quote the material in question in your letter, suggesting you yourself have reason to believe that it should not be publicly disclosed for some proper reason. These are important issues. I’m glad to know you also consider them important and worthy of detailed additional review by the Committee.
Our Committee has access to career civil servants, former federal prosecutors, former intelligence experts as well as military experts who are uniquely well suited to gauge intelligence information and how it should be handled. Although the Executive Branch is ultimately responsible for classification, we remain concerned with the naming of sources and methods and will continue to protect that information now and going forward where it is readily apparent to us.
As such, we will continue to redact certain information to protect sensitive information regardless of how others treat that information. Whether Secretary Clinton received protected information from Sidney Blumenthal or simply recklessly wrong information from Sidney Blumenthal is relevant at some level. What is most important is to protect information that can endanger others. As you will recall we had this same conversation when we received a letter from you we found troubling as it relates to the naming of certain assets. We did the responsible thing which was come to you, alert you to the issue, and allow for that information to be withdrawn and or otherwise not made public.
So, our position is consistent. Sources and methods of intelligence are among the most closely guarded information our government has. We will continue to redact that information and treat it with the highest level of confidentiality and sensitivity, and we would advise you to do the same.
Sincerely,
Trey Gowdy
Chairman
PS: I am envious of your staff's ability to get information from this administration in less than 45 minutes on a weekend. This is something the majority Members struggle to do on weekdays. Perhaps you would be willing to help us gain access to the information the Committee has been seeking from the administration for over half a year now.
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