Saturday, September 29, 2012

The plot sickens: Benghazi Worse than Watergate

Watergate caught numerous public officials lying, including the president of the United States, but Benghazigate has all that and more. - Roger L. Simon/PJM

It involves the terrorist murder (not an electorally irrelevant burglary) of government officials, their reckless endangerment, the undermining of the Bill of Rights and free speech by our own administration in response to Islamist threats, and, ultimately, the complicity of that same administration, consciously or unconsciously, in the downfall of Western civilization.

US consulate attack in Benghazi 'disrupted major intelligence operation’ - Richard Spencer, Benghazi/The Telegraph

...As the attack on the consulate was under way, around 30 Americans were driven at high speed to an accommodation block – sometimes referred to as a “safe house” though it was no better protected than the consulate itself – but came under renewed attack there.

They were then taken to the airport and flown directly to Tripoli and out of the country. According to the New York Times, they included at least 12 CIA agents who are now “scattered across Europe and the United States” – something which is hindering the FBI investigation into the killing of the ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three other staff.

The paper said the CIA team had been playing a “crucial role in conducting surveillance and collecting information on an array of armed militant groups”. It quoted an official as saying its enforced withdrawal was a “catastrophic intelligence loss”.

Similar reports in the Wall Street Journal said that the Libyan government had only been informed of the extent of the intelligence operation after the attack....

Discussion at Lucianne

The plot sickens. This important article was published last Monday and apparently completely ignored.



The Benghazi Timeline: Special Report details an up-to-date extensive time line of events (MUST WATCH VIDEO) - The Right Scoop

DEVASTATING REPORT SHOWS OBAMA ADMIN'S CHANGING LIBYA NARRATIVE - Breitbart TV (same report, but better copy of video at Right Scoop)

BENGHAZI-GATE: A TIMELINE OF GOVERNMENT DECEIT, DECEPTION, AND OUTRIGHT LIES - John Nolte/Breitbart MUST READ

The statement comes from Shawn Turner, director of public affairs for National Intelligence -- the office that speaks for the intelligence community as a whole:
As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists. It remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attack, and if extremist group leaders directed their members to participate.
This is not news. In the last few days, the White House and State Department have both made statements saying exactly that.

This, however, is news and should be read carefully:
In the immediate aftermath, there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo. We provided that initial assessment to Executive Branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available. Throughout our investigation we continued to emphasize that information gathered was preliminary and evolving.
There's no question that what we have here is the DNI (Obama appointee James Clapper) attempting to fall on his sword and to put an end to the drumbeat of scandal coming mostly from Republicans and right-of-center media. What's been exposed, just weeks before a presidential election, is the fact that in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack, the White House and State Department knowingly misled and lied to the American people about what they knew and when they knew it.

But what the DNI statement is really meant to do is muddy the waters.

The statement deliberately omits any information as to exactly when the determination was made that Benghazi was indeed a terrorist attack. Most importantly, nothing in the statement contradicts numerous news reports that U.S. officials were certain within 24 hours that they were dealing with a terrorist attack and not a spontaneous protest gone bad.

In other words, the DNI statement is so intentionally vague that it could read as confirmation that our government knew within 24 hours that Benghazi was a terrorist attack and still lied about it for days afterward.

And this, my friends, is how a cover up works.

And so, the only response to this cynical muddying of the waters is a 30,000 foot approach that might help connect some dots.

Standing on the shoulders of those who have done the admirable work of digging into and investigating this story (most notably, Brett Baier of Fox News, Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, Jake Tapper of ABC News, and the Daily Beast's Eli Lake), what I want to do is lay out a timeline of known facts that answer a very simple question:
What did our government know and what were we told when they knew it?

What you'll see below was inspired by the vitally important video-report Brett Baier closed "Special Report" with last night, but this will hopefully go into even greater detail. We'll also look into three specific areas: 1) Security failures. 2) The lies. 3) The attempted cover up of numbers one and two.... READ THE REST AT THE LINK

The Obama administration’s Libya lies - W. James Antle III/Daily Caller