Friday, May 10, 2013

The Benghazi Cover-up Unravels (even as it continues)


Every once in a while, the noos media commits actual journalism.  And ABC has done just that on the Benghazi cover-up no less.  The result is darn close to a smoking gun (Emphasis mine):

When it became clear last fall that the CIA’s now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story.

ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.

White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department.  The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.

That would appear to directly contradict what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about the talking points in November.

“Those talking points originated from the intelligence community.  They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened,” Carney told reporters at the White House press briefing on November 28, 2012.  “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”

So the e-mails acquired by ABC show the State Department (with White House support no doubt) covered up that they knew Benghazi was a terrorist attack and that they had been warned of terrorist attacks.  And the White House and State Department have been covering up the cover-up ever since.

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BREAKING:
Speaking of smoking guns, I came across this as I was preparing to post:

Here's the kicker: "In an email to officials at the White House and the intelligence agencies, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland took issue with including that information because it "could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either? Concerned . . ."

I bet they were concerned . . . about saving their own butts.  Where was the concern when our people in Libya were begging for more protection and when there were numerous warnings about the danger?
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Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard backs up in painstaking detail that State knew it was a terrorist attack even as it was occurring then strove to obscure that afterward:

If the House report provides an accurate and complete depiction of the emails, it is clear that senior administration officials engaged in a wholesale rewriting of intelligence assessments about Benghazi in order to mislead the public. The Weekly Standard sought comment from officials at the White House, the State Department, and the CIA, but received none by press time. Within hours of the initial attack on the U.S. facility, the State Department Operations Center sent out two alerts. The first, at 4:05 p.m. (all times are Eastern Daylight Time), indicated that the compound was under attack; the second, at 6:08 p.m., indicated that Ansar al Sharia, an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group operating in Libya, had claimed credit for the attack. According to the House report, these alerts were circulated widely inside the government, including at the highest levels. The fighting in Benghazi continued for another several hours, so top Obama administration officials were told even as the fighting was taking place that U.S. diplomats and intelligence operatives were likely being attacked by al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists. A cable sent the following day, September 12, by the CIA station chief in Libya, reported that eyewitnesses confirmed the participation of Islamic militants and made clear that U.S. facilities in Benghazi had come under terrorist attack. It was this fact, along with several others, that top Obama officials would work so hard to obscure.

And, as I mentioned, Hayes goes into detail, including talking points drafts.  So do feel free to dig into his article.  Hayes has also just revealed that then CIA head David Petraeus was not happy about the revised talking points.

And you can bet there is more unraveling of the cover-up to come.  Sen. Tom Coburn no less has pretty much telegraphed that.

But the unraveling of the cover-up is not stopping the Obama Administration from continuing to cover up.  No, not at all.  The Chairman of the House Arm Services Committee, as is his oversight duty, is investigating the (*Anglican Understatement alert*) inadequate protection of our Benghazi consulate, and has asked for relevant documents.  The Pentagon has denied his request.

And the noos media?  With a very few praiseworthy exceptions, they are spinning away as their cover-up is further exposed as just that.

Again, I think only the noos media can save Obama and Hillary now.  What a contrast with Watergate.

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