The Benghazi Cover-up and the CBS-Obama-Hillary Love Triangle UPDATED

First a quick summary of what has transpired this week on Benghazi.  Just released e-mails are pretty much a smoking gun that the White House was behind the false talking points narrative that Benghazi was about a sorry youtube video, not a failure to protect against organized (and predictable) terrorist attack.  The White House had long denied being behind the talking points.  The most incriminating e-mail was written by Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Lying Communication.  Yes, that’s in the White House.  Ben Rhodes - remember that name.

Then yesterday, Obama’s Press Secretary Jay Carney dug in deeper by lying about the e-mails, saying they really were not about Benghazi (SNORT!).  That was too much even for some of the snooze media.  There were sharp and skeptical questions for a change.

Yet CBS ignored Benghazi on last night’s Evening News.  Hmmm. 

A careful reading of Ace’s post yesterday evening might explain why.  It takes an excellent article by ex-CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson and runs with it.  I will not duplicate their excellent work.  But I will mention that one Mike Morell, then Deputy Director of the C.I.A., was also knee deep in editing the false talking points.

Now who just happens to be Ben Rhodes’ brother?  David Rhodes, President of CBS News.  And where does Mike Morell just happen to be now?  Attkisson reveals:

Morell has since gone to work as counsel for Beacon Global Strategies, a strategic relations PR firm dominated by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton officials and Obama administration officials. (Disclosure: In January, Morell was hired as an analyst for CBS News where I was previously employed.)

And the CBS Evening News ignored Benghazi last night.

When news media is that in bed with a regime, you do not get news sources worthy of trust.  You get participants in government cover-ups. You get Pravda . . . and CBS News.

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UPDATE:

Sharyl Attkisson today revealed that she suggested CBS News disclose that CBS President David Rhodes is the brother of Ben Rhodes during Benghazi stories.  The answer to her suggestion was no; that said information was unnecessary and irrelevant.

Yeah, I’m sure that relation has nothing to do with CBS’s participation in the Benghazi cover-up.

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.

Benghazi Whistleblower Hearing Round-up

I was on the road yesterday to visit a sick friend, so I was able to listen to much of the Benghazi hearing on the radio.  And, to be honest, more came out than I think I can get my arms around.   But, unlike many, I cannot ignore the hearing.  So I will post some helpful links.

Bryan Preston has the best summary of the day I’ve come across.  I heartily agree with him that the Republicans tried to cram too much in one day.  Several days should have been devoted to this if possible.  I also agree that a special prosecutor is called for.  As for his main points, I find the intimidation and punishment of the whistleblowers the most damning part of yesterday’s hearing:

4. Whistleblowers were intimidated into silence. Hicks testified to a pattern of behavior that leads to the reasonable conclusion that many officials within the State Department wanted him to remain silent after the Benghazi attack. He said that on the night of the attack he was personally commended both by Secretary Clinton and President Barack Obama. But he later questioned why Ambassador Rice blamed the YouTube movie, and from that point on his superior, Acting Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Beth Jones, questioned his “management style” and told him directly that no one in State should want him on their team in the field again. He was eventually demoted to a desk job after having been deputy to Ambassador Stevens, and remains in that post. Hick also testified that the Accountability Review Board, convened by Clinton last fall allegedly to determine the facts of the attack, never had stenographers in the room during his tw0-hour interview. Nordstrom concurred. Thompson was not even allowed to testify to the ARB despite having direct knowledge of the attacks due to his position on the U.S. Foreign Emergency Support Team. Thompson testified that the FEST was designed to go from zero to wheels up very quickly but was not deployed at all. He wanted to tell his story to the ARB, but was not allowed to. Hicks also testified that for the first time in his career, the State Department assigned a lawyer/minder to attend witness interviews with the ARB. He also testified that Jones told him not to be personally interviewed by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the Republican House member who was investigating the attack on behalf of the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee. It all adds up to a pattern of witness control and intimidation.

And this from Glenn Reynolds:

We did learn at least two new, relevant facts from yesterday’s testimony. One is that Beth Jones, an official in the State Department, sent an email on September 12 bluntly acknowledging terrorists participated in the attacks (“The group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al-Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic terrorists.”) The other is that Hicks said his “jaw dropped” when he heard Rice make her claims about spontaneous protests. Hicks testified that he later confronted her about the comments, and shortly thereafter he was demoted.

It was not a good day for Hillary Clinton.  For one thing, it came out she talked to Hicks very early on, yet went out and pushed the YouTube video untruth.  For another, her right-hand woman Cheryl Mills was fingered as very much involved in the cover-up.  Expect to hear more of that name.  And, of course, the Benghazi consulate was grossly underdefended and that after pleas for more protection.

As for the noos media, it was another shameful day.  When they weren’t downplaying the significance of the hearings, they focused on lesser things, namely the Jodi Arias verdict.  (By the way, if you paid more attention to the Jodi Arias trial than to Benghazi, you are part of the problem. Just sayin’.)  It’s not for nothing that Greg Gutfield commented, “I have to say that the media is really President Obama’s scandal condom.”

I wouldn’t put it quite that way, but . . . yes.

If Obama and Hillary politically survive Benghazi, the noos media will be the reason why.

Benghazi: The Jailing of YouTube Video Maker Should Be Investigated

My post last week about Benghazi is looking downright prophetic already, and not in a Lefty “social justice” sort of way.  Over the weekend came word that whistleblowers will give damning testimony, including that on the night of the Benghazi attack Hillary cut the State Department’s counter-terrorism unit out of the loop for some reason.

And even some in the noos media are paying attention now.

But I want to focus on something I read this morning that is a blinding flash of the obvious, but which even I have overlooked.  Now that it is that much more clear that the Obama regime knew very well that the attack was planned and prepared by terrorists and had nothing to do with a dumb YouTube video, the full outrage of the jailing of the maker of said video is that much more evident.

Corrupted law agencies allowing themselves to become brownshirts jailed the man as a scapegoat.  To what extent did the Obama regime direct and/or encourage this?  This is the sort of thing regimes do (and is among the reasons I address the Obama regime as just that).

And, as Glenn Reynolds points out, it cries out for investigation:

But here are some further lines of investigation. Some Obama-defenders will note that Nakoula was jailed for probation violations, of which he may have even been guilty. But, as I note in my Due Process When Everything Is A Crime piece — to be published next month, in substantially revised and updated form, by the Columbia Law Review — prosecutors can always find a reason to put someone away if they really want to. The question is, why, exactly, were they so eager to put Nakoula away?

The fast-tracking of Nakoula’s jailing was highly irregular. Among other things, I’d like to see the Congressional investigators get Nakoula’s prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Dugdale — and perhaps his boss, U.S. Attorney André Birotte Jr. — under oath about communications from the White House or the Justice Department regarding this case.

Because what it’s looking like is that Nakoula was targeted and jailed so as to provide a scapegoat/villain in a politically motivated cover story that the White House knew was false. If that’s the case, it’s extremely serious indeed, and in some ways more significant than whatever lapses and screwups took place in Benghazi. I’d also be interested in hearing from Nakoula’s attorney, Steven Seiden, about any threats made by the government to secure a plea deal.

If there’s an impeachable offense anywhere in the Benghazi affair — and at this point, I’m not saying there is — it’s more likely in what happened with Nakoula than in the problems abroad, which by all appearances are simple incompetence, rather than something culpable. Railroading someone in to jail to support a political story, on the other hand, is an abuse of power and a breach of trust.

And, to his credit, Reynolds was on this early.

It’s past time Congress or a Special Prosecutor get on this.

Downfall VII: Benghazi? UPDATED

So far, with the help of the snooze media, Obama has not been hurt much politically by Benghazi.  But that might be about to change.

Last night, Fox News made Benghazi more difficult to ignore.  It spent about the first 12 minutes of its 6pm broadcast on the subject, focusing on allegations that the Obama regime is threatening whistleblowers and on an interview with a Special Ops man who insisted we could have sent in help in time.

The allegations that whistleblowers have been threatened may be the more problematic politically for Obama.  Benghazi, like Watergate, took a long while to become a story.  But in the end, it was the cover-up that brought down Nixon.

Later in the broadcast, Charles Krauthammer went yard on Benghazi and the Obama-media cover-up with more emotion than I can recall seeing from the man.  He gave an excellent summary of why Benghazi should be a big deal.  I normally do not insist that my readers listen to a video, but I will now.

And there is more to come that may make it difficult for Obama and the sycophant noos media to keep sweeping this under the rug.

“There are more Benghazi hearings coming; I think they’re going to be explosive,” Mr. Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican who is a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told Fox’s Uma Pemmaraju.

Mr. Gowdy wasn’t able to give out too many details, but he hinted that the public for the first time might hear from witnesses to the terror attack that left four Americans dead. …

Mr. Gowdy added that in a trial, “direct evidence, direct testimony by eyewitnesses is always the most compelling.”

“Trust me when I tell you you will want to follow the hearings that are coming up,” he reiterated.

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Downfall is an ongoing series anticipating and tracking what I expect will be the self-destruction of Obama.

The first post may be found here.  The series may be found here.

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UPDATE: The first question in this morning’s press conference mentions Benghazi whistleblowers.  Progress! 

Obama replied he was “not familiar” with testifiers being blocked.  *SNORT*

Wow, second question mentioned Benghazi, too.  Like I said, progress!