Monthly Archives: October 2013

10/31/13

“60 Minutes” Reveals Little New in Benghazi Exposé

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

While there was little news in last Sunday’s Benghazi story on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” it did make some key points that have rarely been heard from mainstream media outlets. The report proves, once again, just how culpable President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are for ignoring the deteriorating security situation in Libya last year, even though their names were never mentioned in the segment.

The segment, which can be viewed online, interviews one “Morgan Jones,” a self-identified Blue Mountain security chief who was at an apartment 15 minutes away when the attack started at the Benghazi Special Mission Compound in Benghazi on September 11, 2012.

Jones raced to the compound, scaled the 12-foot wall, and attempted to enter the compound to assist those inside, but they had already been rescued by a CIA rapid-response team that included the now-deceased Tyrone Woods.

“[The attackers] said, ‘We’re here to kill Americans, not Libyans,’” recounts Jones in an emotional moment. “So they’d give them a good beating, pistol whip them, beat them with their rifle, and let them go.”

Other than Fox News, it appears that the major networks are largely ignoring the “60 Minutes” piece. Fox’s Adam Housley noted on air that he was in contact with Jones as late as last December, until Jones began asking for money to continue talking. Jones apparently was training the unarmed guards inside the compound, and he told Housley, “…the men were supposed to go away when this attack started because they didn’t have any guns or any weapons. They were there basically to keep the riffraff out.”

The “60 Minutes” story highlighted Morgan’s new book on his experience in Benghazi, The Embassy House: The Explosive Eyewitness Account of the Libyan Embassy Siege by the Soldier Who Was There, but they failed to acknowledge that the book was published by Simon & Schuster, which is a division of the CBS Corporation. Was that CBS’s way of compensating Morgan?

“This colors in some of the story, but it doesn’t advance the scandal,” comments Dave Weigel for Slate Magazine about Morgan’s account of the events that evening (emphasis in original). Why doesn’t the “60 Minutes” piece advance the scandal, you might ask? “But the report tells us more about what we’ve known for a year, and known in detail since the spring of 2013,” writes Weigel. He might have missed the part where Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wood, who headed a Special Forces Site Security Team (SST) in Libya, told CBS’s Lara Logan that al Qaeda had posted online three threats: that they would attack the Red Cross, the British, and then the Americans in Benghazi. “They made good on two out of the three promises. It was a matter of time until they captured the third one,” said Wood. The Red Cross pulled out, as did the British after their ambassador survived an assassination attempt. Why didn’t the Americans pull out? Logan asks whether Washington was notified of these threats. “They [Washington] knew we monitored it. We included that in our reports to both State Department and DoD,” said Wood.

These reports were likely not just lost in the ether. Consider, for example, the State Department classified cable that said the Special Mission Compound could not defend against a “coordinated attack.” When asked about this cable, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey testified that although he didn’t read the cable himself, he heard about it and it “bothered” him a “great deal.” Did Wood’s report likewise go up the chain of command? If not, why not?

Wood tells Logan in the interview that before he left Libya he told Ambassador Christopher Stevens in a meeting that he felt al Qaeda was in its final planning stages of an attack.

However, the “60 Minutes” report does not mention Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama once—failing to hold them culpable for the poor security, poor planning, and an unwillingness to recognize the deteriorating situation in Benghazi and pull their people out. “We had to make sure we weren’t used by anyone on the Left or the Right who had a political agenda,” said Logan for CBS. “So, we left about 98 percent of what we learned on the floor—didn’t even report it—because unless we could substantiate it with primary sources that we truly trusted and whose motivations we trusted, then we didn’t even go there.”

Speaking of leaving most of what they learned on the floor, astonishingly, CBS has recently again found new documents on the floor in the compound in Benghazi, that appear to have been classified material.

However, the “60 Minutes” segment does note that the White House was still arguing that the attack was prompted by the Innocence of Muslims film long after the evidence indicated a coordinated attack by al Qaeda. “Conservatives are apoplectic about Clinton’s public statements after the attack, which continued to mention the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ video, and did not lead with how terrorists had actually planned and executed an attack,” asserts Weigel.

The report also notes that that the CIA quick reaction force “ignored orders to wait” and went to assist the security guards at the Special Mission compound, and states that “the lingering question is why no larger military response ever crossed the border into Libya.”

It now turns out, according to a report in The Washington Times, that there were at least eight special operators on the ground in Tripoli, two of whom volunteered and flew the 400 miles from Tripoli to Benghazi to help rescue the people under attack at the CIA annex in Benghazi.

“The two special operations forces [Army Delta forces] arrived in time to engage in the final, ferocious firefight between the terrorists and Americans holed up in the CIA annex near the ill-fated diplomatic mission in Benghazi,” wrote Rowan Scarborough for the Times. Scarborough said his story shows that the military could have done more if they wanted to, since they arrived in Benghazi by plane.

Where are the questions about who knew what, at what time? The lack of a military response may be a “lingering question,” but CBS does not educate the viewer as to what forces were or were not available, glossing over this vital question. CBS calls this good journalism, for a report that was a year in the making. “CBS News, it should be noted, has been far more aggressive in pursuing the Benghazi story than its competitors…” writes John Hayward for Human Events.

As a result of the report, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) “tweeted Monday that he will block every one of President Obama’s nominees on the Senate floor until the administration discloses information about the survivors of last year’s attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya,” reported The Washington Post.

We hear that “60 Minutes” is planning additional stories on the Benghazi scandal in the near future. Hopefully, they will advance the story further, and attempt to hold senior people accountable.

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Roger Aronoff.

10/31/13

Media Whitewash Obama-backed Marxist Candidate

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio said about Christopher Columbus: “There are some troubling things in his history.” Pamela Geller of the American Freedom Defense Initiative commented, “Funny. There are some troubling things” about de Blasio’s history. He’s had three different names, a “honeymoon” in Cuba, and still supports the communist Sandinistas. Plus, he has a belief in the power of “progressive” Islam.

But instead of acting like an adversary press and demanding answers, he is being asked to comment on riding a bicycle to work and his favorite pizza joint.

Republican candidate Joe Lhota’s ties to the Tea Party—even the Republican Party—are regarded as sinister and subversive. But Bill de Blasio’s foreign connections and promise to close down the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) surveillance of potential terrorists is non-controversial. He also wants to can tough Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

On September 23 of this year, The New York Times published a lengthy article on Bill de Blasio and his communist and Muslim sympathies. De Blasio was considered just a run-of-the-mill liberal until the paper ran that profile, disclosing in a matter-of-fact manner his travels to Cuba and Nicaragua, involvement in a communist “solidarity” movement, and embrace of Islam as an emerging political force.

Incredibly, De Blasio says he still supports the Sandinistas and remains influenced by liberation theology, which was manufactured by the old KGB to dupe Christians into supporting Marxism.

In a way, the Sandinistas have changed. Then, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega was holding hands with Yasser Arafat and Muammar Gaddafi. Last year, he was holding hands with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The story line, though, is still the same: destroy the imperialists. Or, as Weather Underground terrorist bomber Bill Ayers put it to The New Yorker—de Blasio stood up to the “imperial monster” of the United States. And this security risk is on the verge of becoming New York City mayor? How has this happened?

One explanation is that Democrats went for the Marxist over the pervert, Anthony Weiner, who got most of the attention in the Democratic primary.

We had a researcher examine the archives of the Nicaragua Solidarity Network at Tamiment Library at NYU. Somebody knowledgeable about those records must have tipped off The New York Times.

De Blasio’s Nicaragua Solidarity Network was the Sandinista version of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Its most famous member was Lee Harvey Oswald. The communists—in this case the Soviet front U.S. Peace Council—set up “solidarity committees” for all the communist causes—Nicaragua, El Salvador, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

I have the original source documents in an 84-page dossier on de Blasio and his wife, who constitute the “Marxist power couple” looking to live in Gracie Mansion after November 5. His wife was a member of the Combahee River Collective, a Marxist outfit that railed against capitalism and freedom.

De Blasio’s Sandinista comrades were sponsored by the Cuban communists.

De Blasio never gave up on Cuba, even going there in 1994 on a “honeymoon” with his new wife, who had given up her lesbian lifestyle and had left that “collective.” It was an illegal trip, probably monitored by the FBI and the CIA. Where are the documents on that visit to the communist workers’ island paradise? How did he get in without Castro’s okay? Who did he meet with?

But there’s more to this story than Marxism, which most people think is a dead ideology that has no relevance today. The issue is safety and security for the people in New York City and our nation.

On 9/11 in 2012, at a freedom of speech conference sponsored by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer in New York City, I warned the audience about the media’s war on the NYPD. The New York Times had been relentlessly attacking the NYPD and Commissioner Ray Kelly.

The Associated Press was also probing and condemning secret intelligence operations set up by the New York Police Department following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Horrors! The police used informants to keep the city safe. Mosques and Muslim student groups were investigated and infiltrated.

For attacking the NYPD, the AP won a Pulitzer Prize. Then two members of that AP team wrote a book, Enemies Within, mocking the NYPD for watching and arresting America’s enemies. The AP reporters speak glowingly in their book of the Marxist lawyers from the National Lawyers Guild who dismantled the “Red Squads” of the 1970s and 80s, and have now filed suit to stop the NYPD’s surveillance of potential Muslim terrorists.

Marxist National Lawyers Guild attorneys, plus people like the ACLU’s Aryeh Neier, who went to work for George Soros, dismantled those Red Squads, which were charged with monitoring subversive and communist groups. It was during a time when the Cuban-backed Weather Underground, the Puerto Rican FALN, and the Black Liberation Army were killing both cops and civilians. Today, the Soros-funded Brennan Center is helping to lead the charge against the NYPD over surveillance of Muslim terrorists, demanding oversight, auditors, and special monitors of the police department. All of this is designed to make it harder for the police to do their jobs.

De Blasio has made it clear, in going for Muslim votes, that he intends to dismantle the counter-terrorism programs of the New York City Police Department. He is pandering to Marxist and other Soros-funded lawyers who have sued the NYPD. He has signaled that he intends to isolate and hobble the police in the face of Muslim terror plots.

On October 1, just about three weeks ago, these lawyers were in court again demanding new restrictions on the NYPD.

The National Lawyers Guild has now filed suit to close down police surveillance of radical Muslims. Meanwhile, their lawyers are also defending the Pakistani immigrant sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2007 for plotting to bomb the Herald Square subway station in New York City. He was “set up,” his lawyer claims. “Entrapment,” they cry. This, too, is part of the effort to close down the NYPD’s tactics of sending informants and undercover detectives into mosques to catch terrorists.

Weather Underground terrorist bomber Bernardine Dohrn, married to Bill Ayers, started out her career with the National Lawyers Guild.

Another group, Muslim Advocates, with the assistance of the Soros-funded Center for Constitutional Rights, is also suing the NYPD, this time on grounds that the surveillance is discriminatory.

So what happens to all of these suits if de Blasio wins? Most likely, he settles the cases and cripples the NYPD. He dismantles the New York Police Department’s Intelligence Division & Counter-Terrorism Bureau. He prohibits the use of undercover operators and informants.

After reviewing his promises to the radical Muslim groups and radical Islamists such as Linda Sarsour, that is the inevitable conclusion.

In a recent filing with the federal court that is already monitoring the police, we have learned terror threats against New York City in the post 9/11 area have included targets such as:

  • The Brooklyn Bridge
  • Times Square
  • The Federal Reserve Bank
  • The New York City Subway system
  • New York Stock Exchange
  • Jet fuel storage tanks
  • Synagogues

In total, there have been 25 post-9/11 terror plots linked to New York City. The NYPD intelligence division has played a role in foiling at least 10 of them. Other national intelligence agencies like the NSA, CIA, and FBI have also played roles in uncovering and stopping these plots.

The communists started using radical Muslims to carry out their terrorist activities decades ago. Carlos the Jackal, the Cuban- and KGB-trained Marxist terrorist, converted to Islam and was also a KGB agent. Arafat was KGB, and so is Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is now running al Qaeda. All of this was brought out in reports and speeches at a “Lenin and Sharia” conference that featured a former officer of the Soviet KGB.

But none of this gets reported by the media. Yet, de Blasio is right in the middle of this network of foreign and subversive connections.

Consider that Marxist National Lawyers Guild attorney Lynne Stewart was prosecuted and sentenced to 10 years in prison for violating the law against supporting terrorism. She provided illegal support to her client, the “Blind Sheik” Omar Abdel-Rahman, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Stewart told Monthly Review that Islamic terrorists were “basically forces of national liberation.”

De Blasio’s answer is to handcuff the police and dismantle the so-called “secret spying” apparatus.

Soros, who is backing de Blasio, gave $20,000 to the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee.

Even though de Blasio is supposed to be against the rich, you can’t get much richer than hedge fund operator George Soros. He’s a convicted inside trader to boot. Yet de Blasio advertises his endorsement from Soros on his own campaign website.

George Soros finances de Blasio’s friends, including those like the Brennan Center, the group Muslim Advocates, and the Center for Constitutional Rights, all of them waging war on the NYPD.

The people have a right to know. The media have to start doing their jobs. Time is running out on New York City. The election is November 5th.

Pamela Geller says that under de Blasio, the response to terror plots will be to cross your fingers and hope the bombs don’t go off.

Analyst Trevor Loudon says a “perfect storm is brewing” for New York City and that “People will die” if the wrong person is elected mayor.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.

10/31/13

Not Remotely Acceptable

Arlene from Israel

It’s infuriating when agents outside of Israel act against Israel. But there is something uniquely distressing about damage we do to ourselves. This is what I’m seeing now — and feel compelled to write about. The current situation is not only unacceptable, it’s intolerable.

First, there is the prisoner release that took place this week. Ostensibly, because we “promised” at the beginning of the negotiations. It was the lure to bring the PA to the table.

No one in Israeli officialdom, it seems, ever confronts the question of why the PA would need an enticement to come negotiate in order to secure the state they keep claiming they want. They should be running to talk.

~~~~~~~~~~

When the time for releasing the prisoners approached, and there was much protest on the right, the left — and most specifically Tzipi Livni — made an accusation: Well, you could have agreed to freeze settlements instead (about which more following). But since you refused to stop building, we had to promise the prisoner release.

Excuse me? We had to? It was incumbent upon us to make some sort of commitment that is not in Israel’s best interests?

What is more, Naftali Bennett, head of Habayit Hayehudi, who has been opposed to the release of prisoners, directly contradicted the Livni charge: “This is a lie and a total fabrication. [That he agreed to a release of prisoners to protect construction.] I was never presented with those two possibilities. Netanyahu told me [about the prisoner release] after it was a fait accompli.”

http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Bennett-tells-iPosti-I-didnt-make-a-deal-with-PM-to-continue-settlement-construction-330033

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There is no question but that the PA has been pumping for release of prisoners and referring to it as a key priority. This said, however, the promise — the commitment to release prisoners — is not really to the PA but to Obama. That there was great pressure from the White House is certainly the case. In his eagerness to be able to boast a diplomatic achievement in this part of the world, Obama bent over backwards to find ways in which Israel might entice Abbas.

But there is a time to say NO.

~~~~~~~~~~

A demonstration at Ofer Prison, where the terrorists about to be released were held; protests registered by members of the coalition; the emotional pleas of families of the victims of these terrorists — none of it made a difference to Netanyahu, who insisted that a promise had been made and it was necessary to follow through.

“The decision to free prisoners is one of the difficult I have made as prime minister,” he declared. “This decision was necessary in our current reality. We have to navigate through a complex international area full of challenges.”

I believe that Netanyahu is severely deluded — that within his distorted view of matters he continues to believe, in the face of much evidence to the contrary, that there are rewards from the international community for Israeli sacrifices.

Yesterday, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon echoed his boss, saying that the prisoner release was necessary because of “long-term security considerations.”

http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Israel-goes-ahead-with-second-round-of-Palestinian-prisoner-release-330116

Time was, when this refrain was fed to the Israeli public, I would wonder if maybe, just maybe, there was a quid pro quo coming down the road for what was being done — something we were not aware of. I stopped wondering about that a long time ago. It’s nonsense.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Twenty-six prisoners were released. Five to Gaza, and 21 to Palestinian Arab areas of Judea and Samaria. Those 21 were let go in the small hours of the morning on Wednesday — the intent being to damp down media attention and celebration by the PA. It didn’t work. The PA celebration was larger than it had been with the first release this summer (104 are slated for release in four intervals).

Credit: scmp

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Murderers, welcomed home like victors. Every single one has Jewish blood on his hands.

“Terrorists who kidnapped, lynched and murdered IDF soldiers and reservists; ambushed and slaughtered unarmed hikers; killed a defenseless couple sitting in their care in a secluded forest at night…”

http://www.jpost.com/National-News/List-of-Palestinian-prisoners-to-be-released-includes-terrorists-convicted-of-brutal-crimes-330020

What sort of nation releases such terrorists from its prisons?

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And what sort of people celebrate and adulate their terrorists? Abbas hugged and kissed them all, calling them “heroes.”

Yesterday he declared that there would be no agreement with Israel as long as even one Palestinian Arab remained in Israeli prisons.

~~~~~~~~~~

Also yesterday, the Israeli government announced plans for additional building over the pre-1967 line — with final permits having been given for 1,500 apartments in Jerusalem (Ramat Shlomo, pictured) and hundreds more in communities in the large blocs in Judea and Samaria, such as Ma’aleh Adumim, Betar Illit, and Ariel.

Credit: JPost

Additionally, preliminary plans were announced for another 2,000 units beyond the security barrier and outside the large blocs, in communities such as Ofra, Beit El and Shilo. The prime minister also gave the final go-ahead to a national park east of Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus Campus and for a tourism and archeological center opposite the entrance to the City of David.

All this building is great. But the timing of this announcement is hardly a coincidence, and the intent here on Netanyahu’s part to mollify the right wing of his coalition after the prisoner release is obvious and publicly acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~

As could have been predicted, there was a furor over this, with Palestinian officials saying that this was “destroying the peace process.”

My favorite headline on this issue came from Israel National News yesterday: “Ban: Releasing Murderers is Good, Building is Bad.”

That about sums up the international attitude in many quarters. No criticism that Abbas kisses terrorists. That’s not counterproductive to “peace.” Hey, so what if it incites Palestinian Arabs to be like those celebrated terrorists?

But building past the pre-1967 line, that’s a whole other story. The UN Secretary-General says it’s “contrary to international law.”

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/173422

He’s walking proof of our need to solidly promote the Levy Report.

~~~~~~~~~~

Interestingly, the JPost today cites an Israeli official who said that the US and the PA both knew that our release of prisoners would be accompanied by an announcement of construction plans.

http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/US-knew-of-settlement-construction-plans-330223

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Now, having mentioned Ban, let me segue into a related issue at the UN — this regarding the UN Human Rights Council.

About 18 months ago, Israel walked away from participation in the Council because of a continued and egregious bias against the Jewish state.

Anne Bayefsky of Human Rights Voices explains:

“The Council…adopted a short permanent agenda that governs every regular session. It contains one item for censuring Israel alone [Agenda Item 7], and one general item for all other 192 UN countries combined. Thirty-five per cent of all the resolutions the Council has passed that are critical of specific states have been directed at Israel – compared to nothing on states like Russia, China, or Saudi Arabia.”

The Europeans and the US, warned Bayefsky, were “strong-arming” Israel into rejoining the Council. She provided a painful picture of the way in which the Council operates.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Europe-US-pressuring-Israel-to-endure-discrimination-at-UN-Human-Rights-Council-329832

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Unfortunately, on Tuesday, Israel caved to that massive pressure and came forward for additional biased treatment, assurances to the contrary not withstanding.

Not a good move.

As the JPost editorial today, explains:

“Admitting that the council has a ‘strong bias against Israel,’ the US delegation to the UNHRC nevertheless argued that by staying away, Israel was forgoing the opportunity to ‘present its own narrative.’ The trouble, though, is that nobody at the council is listening.

“…Now Israel has switched tack and two days ago defended its record in a hearing that descended into a kangaroo court, where some of the most repressive regimes pass judgment on a sterling democracy and where the damning verdict [in a “Periodic Review”] had been composed long before the proceedings began.”

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Israel-and-the-Rights-Council-330194

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But wait, we’re not done yet. This is what the Israeli representative to the UNHRC, Eviatar Manor, told the council on Tuesday:

“All of them [the released prisoners] have blood on their hands; all of them have murdered Israelis. Their release, I believe, illustrates Israel’s determination to reach an agreement with our Palestinian neighbors…”

http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/WATCH-LIVE-Israel-undergoes-its-Universal-Periodic-Review-at-the-UN-Human-Rights-Council-330063

How pathetic can it get? We need a huge dose of national pride.

~~~~~~~~~~

Let me note here that, while Washington thinks nothing of strong-arming Israel, yesterday, Kerry observed that the US would “not succumb” to fear tactics by those opposing the diplomatic engagement with Iran.

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But let me end on an upbeat note.

For a very brief interval of time recently, Abbas, speaking for the PA, reportedly said that he would consider an interim agreement with Israel — something that, according to rumors, Netanyahu is seeking, since he knows that a final agreement will not happen.

But very quickly thereafter, Abbas claimed he never said anything of the sort. Either he was misquoted in the first place, or he backtracked in the face of enormous anger from his own people. Now Abbas has returned to demanding everything: Israel’s return behind the pre-1967 line, half of Jerusalem as a Palestinian Arab capital, etc. etc.

In any event, the assessing is that whether Netanyahu may have been shooting for this — as Deputy Minister of Defense Danny Danon has charged — or not, the current composition of the government would make such a deal impossible.

From an impeccable source, I have it that Saudi Arabia is so furious at the US for Obama’s stand on Iran and on Syria, that Saudi officials are advising the PA not to cooperate with Obama. What is more, some Fatah officials are saying that they won’t consider any compromise in negotiations because they don’t trust Obama.