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Benghazi whistle-blower: assets to protect the embassy were available

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Here’s a report from one of the whistle-blowers who is shedding light on the Benghazi cover-up.

Excerpt:

A military special ops member who watched as the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi unfolded last September told Fox News the U.S. had highly trained forces just a few hours away, and said he and others feel the government betrayed the four men who died in the attack.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, and appearing in a Fox News Channel interview with his face and voice disguised, the special operator contradicted claims by the Obama administration and a State Department review that said there wasn’t enough time for U.S. military forces to have intervened in the Sept. 11 attack in which U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, an embassy employee and two former Navy SEALs working as private security contractors were killed.

“I know for a fact that C-110, the EUCOM CIF, was doing a training exercise in … not in the region of North Africa, but in Europe,” the operator told Fox News’ Adam Housley. “And they had the ability to act and to respond.”

The C-110 is a 40-man Special Ops force capable of rapid response and deployment specifically trained for incidents like last year’s attack in Benghazi. During the night of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Libya, in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in Libya, the C-110 were training in Croatia, just 3 ½ hours away.

“We had the ability to load out, get on birds and fly there, at a minimum stage,” the operator told Fox News. “C-110 had the ability to be there, in my opinion, in a matter of about four hours…four to six hours.”

Being so close, C-110s would have been able to respond had there been a second attack, the source added.

Will this testimony come to light at a hearing, or will it be covered up by the Obama administration?

Fox News reports that the Obama administration is threatening whistle-blowers.

Excerpt:

At least four career officials at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have retained lawyers or are in the process of doing so, as they prepare to provide sensitive information about the Benghazi attacks to Congress, Fox News has learned.

Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official and Republican counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, is now representing one of the State Department employees. She told Fox News her client and some of the others, who consider themselves whistle-blowers, have been threatened by unnamed Obama administration officials.

“I’m not talking generally, I’m talking specifically about Benghazi – that people have been threatened,” Toensing said in an interview Monday. “And not just the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA.”

Toensing declined to name her client. She also refused to say whether the individual was on the ground in Benghazi on the night of Sept. 11, 2012, when terrorist attacks on two U.S. installations in the Libyan city killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens.

However, Toensing disclosed that her client has pertinent information on all three time periods investigators consider relevant to the attacks: the months that led up to the attack, when pleas by the ambassador and his staff for enhanced security in Benghazi were mostly rejected by senior officers at the State Department; the eight-hour time frame in which the attacks unfolded, and the eight-day period that followed the attacks, when Obama administration officials incorrectly described them as the result of a spontaneous protest over a video.

“It’s frightening, and they’re doing some very despicable threats to people,” she said. “Not ‘we’re going to kill you,’ or not ‘we’re going to prosecute you tomorrow,’ but they’re taking career people and making them well aware that their careers will be over [if they cooperate with congressional investigators].”

In general, Democrats are not strong on foreign policy, because they blame America for everything and praise our enemies when they attack us. You won’t get much security from that attitude. When things go wrong, they will try to cover it up. They will even resort to outright lies in order to avoid the blame they deserve for opening us up to terrorist attacks.

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Hysterical Hillary Clinton shrieks out her victimhood over Benghazi cover-up

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It’s all a vast right-wing conspiracy:

Who cares about whose fault it is that four Americans are dead? Not her. Stop asking her questions, she has a headache!

Here’s the UK Telegraph assessment of Hillary’s performance at the hearings.

Excerpt:

It was not exactly a bravura performance today from the Secretary of State, who testified this morning before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Hillary Clinton came across as defiant, evasive, blasé,and at times hugely unconvincing when answering questions from Republican Senators about the death of four Americans at the hand of Islamist terrorists in Benghazi last September, including the assassination of the US Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. After listening to several hours of Mrs. Clinton defending her administration’s handling of the Benghazi debacle, including UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s preposterous suggestion on Sunday morning talk shows that this might not have been a terrorist attack, the American public will only be left with the impression that this is a presidency that doesn’t take any responsibility for its actions, is highly incompetent, and remains firmly in denial over the scale of the al-Qaeda threat.

[…]With an eye on a possible 2016 presidential bid, Hillary Clinton did herself no favours with today’s testimony, just a few days before she steps down from high office. It underscores the fact that Clinton has been a less than impressive Secretary of State, whose leadership on an array of foreign policy matters, from Syria to Egypt and Iran, has been underwhelming. Some of her initiatives have been disastrous, including the much-hyped and weak-kneed Russian “reset,” which now appears to have sunk without a trace after Moscow decided not to cooperate. And who can forget Mrs. Clinton’s decision to stand alongside Cristina Kirchner in Buenos Aires, and support the Argentine president’s call for UN-brokered negotiations over the sovereignty of the Falklands? Or her department’s extraordinary attempts to intervene in the internal British debate over membership of the European Union.

The last four years have been a period of marked U.S. decline, coupled with a sneering disregard for America’s key allies such as Britain and Israel. The Secretary of State floundered today before the Senate, struggling to defend a feeble foreign policy that has undercut American leadership and projected weakness in the face of America’s adversaries. The Obama administration’s blundering response to Benghazi is symbolic of its wider failure in the Middle East and beyond, one that does not bode well for the next four years.

Remember, Hillary’s focus as Secretary of State is not what you would expect.

She has other priorities:

 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton  said last week that she has stood up for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and and Transgender rights all around the world.

“Memories are short, and we can’t afford to rest on the laurels of the past,” Clinton said Thursday at an event co-hosted by the State Department and Foreign Policy Magazine. “So it’s our job to reintroduce a post-Iraq generation of young people around the world to principled American leadership.”

“That is part of why I’ve logged so many miles over the last four years going to something on the order of 112 countries, holding town hall meetings with young people from Tunis to Tokyo, shining a spotlight on the concerns of religious and ethnic minorities from the Copts in Egypt to the Rohingya in Burma, putting down a clear marker on internet freedom, going to the UN Human Rights Council to stand up for the rights and lives of the LGBT people around the world, advancing a new approach to development that puts human dignity and self-sufficiency at the heart of our efforts, and pushing women’s rights and opportunities to the top of the diplomatic agenda,” Clinton continued.

National security? What’s that? The State Department’s job is to promote abortion and gay rights.

Rand Paul sums up my response to our affirmative action Secretary of State:

The question that this shrill shrieking suggests to me is this: is the feminist “blame men for the glass ceiling” attitude compatible with competence and accountability? Should you put a feminist in charge of something and then expect her to take responsibility for mistakes and be transparent?

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Petraeus: Al Qaeda involvement was taken out of CIA account of Benghazi

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Fox News reports.

Excerpt:

Former CIA Director David Petraeus testified in a closed-door hearing Friday morning that his agency determined immediately after the Sept. 11 Libya attack that “Al Qaeda involvement” was suspected — but the line was taken out in the final version circulated to administration officials, according to a top lawmaker who was briefed.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who spoke to reporters after Petraeus testified before the House Intelligence Committee, indicated he and other lawmakers still have plenty of questions about the aftermath of the attack.

“No one knows yet exactly who came up with the final version of the talking points,” he said.

[…]Petraeus’ testimony both challenges the Obama administration’s repeated claims that the attack was a “spontaneous” protest over an anti-Islam video, and according to King conflicts with his own briefing to lawmakers on Sept. 14. Sources have said Petraeus, in that briefing, also described the attack as a protest that spun out of control. 

[…]“The original talking points were much more specific about Al Qaeda involvement. And yet the final ones just said indications of extremists,” King said, adding that the final version was the product of a vague “inter-agency process.” 

Further, King said a CIA analyst specifically told lawmakers that the Al Qaeda affiliates line “was taken out.” 

[…]The suggestion that the intelligence was altered raised questions about who altered it, with King asking if “the White House changed the talking points.” 

One source told Fox News that Petraeus “has no idea what was provided” to Rice or who was the author of the talking points she used. 

“He had no idea she was going on talk shows” until the White House announced it one or two days before, the source said. 

[…]The pressure was on Petraeus to set the record straight, after other top intelligence officials struggled a day earlier to explain why their initial talking points after the Libya attack minimized the role of militant groups.

Lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees heard testimony Thursday in private meetings with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Acting CIA Director Mike Morell. But Fox News was told there were heated exchanges on the House side, particularly over the talking points that administration officials relied on in the days after the Sept. 11 strike.

Fox News was told that neither Clapper nor Morell knew for sure who finalized that information. And they could not explain why they minimized the role of a regional Al Qaeda branch as well as the militant Ansar al-Sharia despite evidence of their involvement.

Here’s what I think happened.

I think that the FBI found out about the affair months ago and the White House used that information to blackmail Petraeus into saying that Benghazi was not a terrorist attack. I think that they told him that if he lied for them, he could keep his job. I think that after the election, he was fired to prevent him from testifying and to discredit anything he said about Benghazi. I think that Ambassador Rice was sent out by the White House to deliberately lie to the American people in order to save Obama’s re-election chances. And I think that she did it in order to get selected as the new Secretary of State. It will be interesting to see whether my speculations are proved right as the inquiry proceeds.

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