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Why did Hillary Clinton blame the Benghazi terrorist attack on an “Internet video”?

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What difference does national security make?
What difference does national security make?

Who should I link to to prepare us to understand and discuss the showdown between the Benghazi Select Committee and Hillary Clinton? How about Stephen Hayes from the Weekly Standard – you can’t do better than that.

He says:

Critics of Clinton on Benghazi are most angry about the exchange she had with surviving family members at the solemn ceremony held to receive the bodies of the victims. Pat Smith, the mother of information specialist Sean Smith, who was killed in the attacks, says Clinton told her that the Obama administration would bring to justice the man who made the anti-Islam video that the administration initially blamed for the attacks. “She blamed the video just like all the rest of them did and she also told me she was going to get back to me.”

Charles Woods, father of Tyrone Woods, a NAVY Seal killed in the attacks, says Clinton told him the same thing. “She said we’re going to have the person responsible for that video arrested. I knew she was lying. Her body language, the look in her eyes…I could tell she wasn’t telling the truth.”

But contemporaneous documents and testimony from US officials who were in Libya during the attacks make no mention of the video that would become the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s public narrative about the attacks. Indeed, in messages as the attacks unfolded and in the hours and days that followed, show security and intelligence officials immediately placing blame on al Qaeda and affiliated fighters and pushing back on suggestions from Washington that the video had played a role. Senior State Department officials, including Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, were copied on emails indicating Ansar al Sharia had claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Michael Morell, deputy CIA director at the time of the attacks, and a loyal water-carrier for the administration on Benghazi, testified that the video was simply not part of the intelligence picture during and after the attacks. “There was no mention of the video defaming the Prophet Muhammad as a motivation for the attacks in Benghazi. In fact, there was no mention of the video at all.”

Why did Clinton promise to pursue the filmmaker after the US government understood that the attacks were not a result of an out-of-control protest over the video?

Recall that Hillary Clinton blamed the Benghazi attack on “an Internet video”:

However, we now know that the top Democrats knew from the beginning that this was a terrorist attack:

Judicial Watch announced today that on February 11, 2015, it uncovered documents from the U.S. Department of State revealing that top aides for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, including her then-chief of staff Cheryl Mills, knew from the outset that the Benghazi mission compound was under attack by armed assailants tied to a terrorist group.  The documents were produced as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State ((No. 1:14-cv-01511).  The documents make no reference to a spontaneous demonstration or Internet video, except in an official statement issued by Hillary Clinton.

The Benghazi Select Committee was finally able to get 1300 e-mails sent by Ambassador Stevens (after two years of asking for them). Many of those e-mails requested additional security right before the attack, and they were ignored:

Two months before the fatal 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, then-Ambassador Chris Stevens requested 13 security personnel to help him safely travel around Libya… but he was turned down.

In the July 9, 2012 cable, Stevens reported that, “Overall security conditions continue to be unpredictable, with large numbers of armed groups and individuals not under control of the central government, and frequent clashes in Tripoli and other major population centers.” The cable said 13 security personnel would be the “minimum” needed for “transportation security and incident response capability.”

But a congressional source said Patrick Kennedy, a deputy to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, turned down the request. 

The cable sent under Stevens’ electronic signature shows that he was advocating for additional security and warning that the set-up did not meet State Department standards, as conditions deteriorated in the run-up to the attack that killed Stevens and three other Americans.

This hearing is about finding out why four people were left to die, even after repeatedly requesting additional security from the State Department. The same State Department that Hillary Clinton was in charge of. I hope we can find out why Hillary had so much time to read e-mails from Sidney Blumenthal, and apparently no time to read e-mails from Ambassador Stevens.

UPDATE: The Weekly Standard has posted a new podcast episode with Stephen Hayes on this topic.

UPDATE: Trey Gowdy’s opening statement:

Why did we need this investigation? Because previous “investigations” failed to find Ambassador Stevens’ e-mails, failed to find Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, and failed to interview people on the ground who had direct knowledge of the Benghazi security situation.

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Former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli: Hillary broke the law

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Hillary Clinton tweets support for jailing Christians
Hillary Clinton tweets support for jailing Christians who refuse to obey the law

Well, there were some more revelations on the weekend about Hillary’s use of a private, unsecure e-mail server. She used the private e-mail server to bypass the security regulations of her employer, so that she could communicate secretly without having her e-mails be the subject of inquiries.

Here’s the latest from leftist Reuters: (H/T JoeCoder)

The U.S. Defense Department has found an email chain that Hillary Clinton did not give to the State Department, the State Department said on Friday, despite her saying she had provided all work emails from her time as secretary of state.

The correspondence with General David Petraeus, who was commander of U.S. Central Command at the time, started shortly before she entered office and continued during her first days as the top U.S. diplomat in January and February of 2009.

You might remember that David Petraeus was critical of the administrations foreign policy decisions – at least until news of his affair with his biographer came to light, silencing him.

More:

News of the previously undisclosed email thread only adds to a steady stream of revelations about the emails in the past six months, which have forced Clinton to revise her account of the setup which she first gave in March.

[…]The email arrangement has drawn criticism from political opponents who accused the Democratic presidential front-runner of sidestepping transparency and record-keeping laws and of potentially exposing classified information to hackers.

Forget “potentially”. As I pointed out before, every single e-mail on her server is in the hands of foreign governments who don’t like us very much. That’s not my opinion, that’s the opinion of a former Deputy Director of the CIA.

Anyway, more from the original article:

[…]As recently as Sunday, she told CBS when asked about her emails that she provided “all of them.”

[…]The emails with Petraeus also appear to contradict the claim by Clinton’s campaign that she used a private BlackBerry email account for her first two months at the department before setting up her clintonemail.com account in March 2009. This was the reason her campaign gave for not handing over any emails from those two months to the State Department.

The Petraeus exchange shows she started using the clintonemail.com account by January 2009, according to the State Department.

Clinton’s spokesmen, who did not respond to questions, have acknowledged that other work emails from later in her tenure were also missing from the record Clinton handed over. They have declined to say why.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now examining Clinton’s server as it looks into the possible mishandling of classified information between Clinton and her staff.

Now, let’s get a legal assessment of all of this from former attorney general of Virginia, Ken Kuccinelli.

He writes:

Clinton originally denied that any of her emails contained classified information, but soon abandoned that claim. So far, 150 emails containing classified information have been identified on her server, including two that included information determined to be Top Secret.

She then fell back on the claim that none of the emails in question was “marked classified” at the time she was dealing with them. The marking is not what makes the material classified; it’s the nature of the information itself. As secretary of state, Clinton knew this, and in fact she would have been re-briefed annually on this point as a condition of maintaining her clearance to access classified information.

Then there’s location. Clinton knowingly set up her email system to route 100 percent of her emails to and through her unsecured server (including keeping copies stored on the server). She knowingly removed such documents and materials from authorized locations (her authorized devices and secure government networks) to an unauthorized location (her server).

Two examples demonstrate this point.

When Clinton would draft an email based on classified information, she was drafting that email on an authorized Blackberry, iPad or computer. But when she hit “send,” that email was knowingly routed to her unsecured server — an unauthorized location — for both storage and transfer.

Additionally, when Clinton moved the server to Platte River Networks (a private company) in June 2013, and then again when she transferred the contents of the server to her private lawyers in 2014, the classified materials were in each instance again removed to another unsecured location.

Next we have the lack of proper authority to move or hold classified information somewhere, i.e., the “unauthorized location.”

While it’s possible for a private residence to be an “authorized” location, and it’s also possible for non-government servers and networks to be “authorized” to house and transfer classified materials, there are specific and stringent requirements to achieve such status. Simply being secretary of state didn’t allow Clinton to authorize herself to deviate from the requirements of retaining and transmitting classified documents, materials and information.

There is no known evidence that her arrangement to use the private email server in her home was undertaken with proper authority.

Finally, there’s the intent to “retain” the classified documents or materials at an unauthorized location.

The very purpose of Clinton’s server was to intentionally retain documents and materials — all emails and attachments — on the server in her house, including classified materials.

The intent required is only to undertake the action, i.e., to retain the classified documents and materials in the unauthorized fashion addressed in this statute. That’s it.

It borders on inconceivable that Clinton didn’t know that the emails she received, and more obviously, the emails that she created, stored and sent with the server, would contain classified information.

I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton would sell out the interests of her country in a heartbeat, if it meant improving her own political situation. We have to judge candidates by their past actions. That’s what she’s done, and that’s what she’d do. I have friends in the military and in law enforcement who are impacted by politicians with loose lips. I don’t want a traitor as commander-in-chief.

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Obama learned nothing from Fort Hood: four marines killed in gun free zone

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Another shooting in another gun-free zone
Another multiple-victim shooting in another gun-free zone

Breitbart News has the story.

Excerpt:

After gunman Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, a Muslim immigrant from Kuwait, allegedly shot and killed four Marines in Chattanooga, Tennessee, former NYPD detective Harry Houck said the military’s “gun-free zone” mindset has to change.

Speaking to CNN Newsroom, Houck said, “I’m a Marine. And this really is hitting me a little harder here than normal that [these Marines] weren’t able to protect themselves at the time this occurred.”

“We need people that are armed,” he added. He also said that even if that means getting armed guards, then so be it; something has to change.

[…]Ironically, one of the earliest post-attack photos of the recruiting center shows shattered glass and bullet holes by the very sign that designated the office a gun free zone.

You can see the photo above, with the gun-free zone sticker.

So, let me make two points about this.

First, the shooter was not some poor person who just needed to be given a job, as the State Department spokeswomen, e.g. Marie Harf, are always trying to tell us.

The Tennessean explains:

Authorities identified the gunman as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez of Hixson, Tenn., though the spelling of his first name was in dispute, with federal officials and records giving at least four variations.

[…]The shooting suspect’s family lived there about 15 years and did not bring attention to themselves, according to neighbor Dean McDaniel.

[…]It was unclear whether Abdulazeez was a U.S. or Kuwaiti citizen.

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga officials confirmed that Abdulazeez graduated in 2012 with a degree in electrical engineering. He also interned at the Tennessee Valley Authority, the agency confirmed. 

Second, this was not an episode of “senseless violence” or “workplace violence”, as politically correct leftists might like to say. This guy was a Muslim and he was “very religious”.

Ryan Smith told the Times Free Press that he wrestled with Abdulazeez at Red Bank High School.

Smith said that Abdulazeez was very religious and that he would argue “back and forth” with the boys’ high school wrestling coach during fasting rituals.

This was not a random attack.

Recall the Fort Hood attack, another gun-free zone. That time, it was Major Nidal Hasan, a devout Muslim, and Obama called that attack “workplace violence”. Not terrorism! It’s “workplace violence”.

The problem with not taking domestic terrorism seriously is that instead of fixing the gun-free zones that enable these attacks, we keep going as before, and invite more attacks. Obama learned nothing from Fort Hood, and now four more U.S. Marines are dead because of his difficulty at accepting reality.