During the second portion of a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing about Benghazi Thursday on Capitol Hill, the majority of Democrats on the Committee left the room and refused to listen to the testimony of Patricia Smith and Charles Woods. Ms. Smith is the mother of Sean Smith, an information management officer killed in the 9/11 Benghazi attack. Charles Woods is the father of Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, who was also killed. Continue reading
Employee forced to hire legal counsel
by Adam Kredo
A CIA employee who refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement barring him from discussing the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, has been suspended as a result and forced to hire legal counsel, according to a top House lawmaker.
Rep. Frank Wolf (R., Va.) revealed at an event on Monday that his office was anonymously informed about the CIA employee, who is purportedly facing an internal backlash after refusing to sign a legal document barring him from publicly or privately discussing events surrounding the Benghazi attack. Continue reading
What we know about the attack in Benghazi one year after the fact is that it is an example of the Obama administration’s incompetence and mendacity. More worrisome still is what we don’t know.
We do not know how or why the State Department would send Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team to work at a facility with almost comically insufficient security, in a city that was growing more dangerous by the week — in Libya, dangerous territory for Americans at the best of times.
Shortly after the attack, Hillary Clinton called for an internal Accountability Review Board to examine the decisions surrounding security in Benghazi. The ARB report faulted four midlevel officials, conspicuously absolving of all responsibility the secretary herself and her closest advisers. Whether Secretary Clinton’s thinking on the events was unclear or mistaken at the time, we do not know, since the so-called accountability panel unaccountably did not even bother to interview her. Continue reading
Nearly one year after the Benghazi terror attack, questions remain unanswered and the investigation incomplete, says Virginia Republican Rep. Frank Wolf.
Even with six different committees looking into aspects of the attack and the response by the Obama State Department, “The Congress, as of this moment, has failed to carry out its oversight responsibility,” Wolf told The Daily Caller.
The solution, he said, is a single “select committee” with the authority and resources to get to the bottom of the U.S. government’s inept response.
The public still has not learned why help was not sent to the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, to rescue Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Ty Woods, Sean Smith and Glen Doherty.
See video below.
by Joel B. Pollak
President Barack Obama rarely makes himself available to the mainstream media. They adore him anyway. At rare press conferences, such as the one scheduled for this past Friday at the White House, they lob softball questions or accept his evasive, meandering answers, rarely pressing him for clarity, much less truth. But there are many questions that the president ought to answer, yet which he is unlikely to face at all.
Here is a list of 13 questions, he should answer candidly: Continue reading
Scandals: On both IRS and Benghazi, investigative bashfulness must end. We need select committees that are able to subpoena key figures, with counsels who know how to ask questions that get answers.
Finding money in the federal budget to save Central America from Soviet/Cuban-backed communism, as Col. Oliver North did over a quarter-century ago, nowhere approaches the offense of leaving a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans at the mercy of Libya’s jihadist wolves, or of the Internal Revenue Service harassing a sitting president’s political foes during an election year.
Yet when Ronald Reagan’s Iran-Contra “scandal” came to light in November 1986, the month wasn’t over before media pressure and congressional Democrats’ chest-beating forced the White House to appoint the independent Tower Commission, waiving executive privilege on White House documents.
That, of course, wasn’t enough for Democrats picking up the scent of blood in the water. So a few months later, they formed a select committee to drag North and others before a national TV audience. Continue reading
CNN won’t challenge the White House with tough questions
by Ken Allard
CNN spent an hour of prime time Tuesday night to air a special anchored by Erin Burnett, “The Truth about Benghazi.” They claimed to have learned two vital lessons from their supposedly extensive investigation of that tragedy: It must never happen again, and politics trumped patriotism.
Really? That’s it? Are you kidding? The smiling, earnest naivete of Ms. Burnett suggested a graduate student who worked, you know, like really hard at the library all weekend — but apparently didn’t get within spitting distance of a reasonable conclusion.
First of all, Ms. Burnett may have noticed that her program aired just as American embassies in the Mideast were shuttered against a resurgent terrorist threat that Susan E. (Second Time’s the Charm) Rice is crisis-managing in her debut as national security adviser. Or that Vice President Joe Biden’s election-year litany — al Qaeda is dead and General Motors is alive — has been updated. Now it seems that al Qaeda is alive, and Detroit has gone belly-up. Continue reading
by Jonathan S. Tobin
President Obama has been a broken record lately claiming over and over again that Republicans are promoting “phony scandals,” the chief of which is the effort to keep asking questions about the Benghazi terror attack that left four Americans dead last September. The White House has continued to insist that the notion that there was anything sinister about the administration’s conduct during or after attack is simply a political red herring not based in fact. Though many are still troubled by the failure to provide adequate protection for Americans in Benghazi, the decision not to send help as the attack unfolded as well as by the clearly false “talking points” that led current National Security Advisor Susan Rice to put out a false story about the incident being a case of film criticism run amok, for the most part the mainstream media has agreed with the White House’s conclusions and dropped the issue entirely. Continue reading
by Michael Graham
“With an endless parade of distractions, political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball.” — President Obama, Wednesday
Question: How many Americans have to be murdered in an al-Qaeda attack on a U.S. consulate before it stops being a “phony” scandal?
Answer: If Barack Obama is president, more than four.
Writers across the spectrum — from the liberal New York Times to the conservative Wall Street Journal — have beaten up on President Obama’s latest “dreadful, cliche-ridden” (James Taranto, wsj.com) speech on economic policy, the second-longest speech of his presidency. Continue reading
This week, President Barack Obama changed his tune on the numerous scandals besetting his administration. Speaking in Illinois, Obama said, “With an endless parade of distractions, political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball.”
But when each of the current scandals broke, Obama acted concerned, said that his administration get find out what happened, and that he would make sure they were not repeated. Now suddenly these same scandals are phony? What happened? Continue reading
Administration and Mainstream Media caught dissembling again 
by George Landrith
At the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, the president revealed a sad truth – the mainstream media actively works to advance his political career. He quipped that his campaign manager “David Axelrod now works for MSNBC, which is a nice change of pace since MSNBC used to work for David Axelrod.”
In deed, the mainstream media has been diligently advancing Obama’s political career since at least 2008. And the media’s active participation in the Benghazi cover-up is proof positive of the media’s deep and profound dishonesty. Continue reading
“‘What difference does it make?’ This question is the timeless unspoken question in all political discussion and debate. Or should be.”
by Scott L. Vanatter
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s now infamous response at a Senate hearing on Benghazi:
“With all respect, the fact is we have four dead Americans, was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans. What difference at this point does it make?”
It matters because she only posits two alternatives as to what happened in Benghazi: Continue reading
In the month and a half since our consulate in Benghazi was sacked and our ambassador and three other staffers killed the Obama regime is no closer to presenting a coherent, truthful narrative of what happened before, during, and after the incident than it was when it uttered its first deliberate lies and misdirections on September 12.
Right now we are being treated to the vision of the highest level of the ongoing criminal enterprise that governs us playing the equivalent of a game of musical chairs.
About a week ago, the political branches of the regime decided to finger the intelligence services as the culprits. We’ve been told over and over how there just wasn’t sufficient intelligence provided to either anticipate the attack or to determine the identities of the attackers. Of course, we now know that both those stories are unmitigated falsehoods. Continue reading
by George Landrith
The most recently revealed State Department e-mails regarding the attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi show that President Barack Obama has not been shooting straight with America. Whatever national security errors were made in the months and weeks leading up to the Benghazi attack, engaging in a cover up always makes things worse.
We now know that an e-mail was sent from American embassy personnel in Libya to hundreds of officials in the Obama Administration only minutes after the attack began. This e-mail’s subject line was “US Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” and stated that “approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four [embassy] personnel are in the compound safe haven.” Continue reading