09/15/16

Goober Dana Milbank Hides Stupidity With a Beard

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

One of my favorite Andy Griffith episodes shows Goober growing a beard to try to look smart. Picking up an apple, he declares, “One time you was a seed.” Unfortunately, the extreme makeover didn’t work for Dana Milbank of The Washington Post during an appearance on the Clinton News Network (CNN). His new beard didn’t disguise the loony opinions that have become his hallmark.

The occasion was an appearance with CNN’s Brooke Baldwin to confirm that Hillary was right in saying that half of Donald J. Trump’s supporters were deplorables. “Come back any time,” Baldwin concluded. The appearance wouldn’t be worth commenting on, except for the fact that Milbank tried to look and sound like an intellectual. It was really funny.

At a time when Mrs. Clinton has attacked half of all Trump supporters as “deplorable,” Milbank was brought on to somehow confirm this. He had no problem with the rise of black hate groups like Black Lives Matter or President Obama’s racially divisive rhetoric. Instead, he saw white people (of which he is one) as the problem.

“There’s been a huge jump in the amount of racial stereotypes expressed by white people in America, people who will say that black Americans are less intelligent or lazier than white Americans,” he declared. “And it’s really quite shocking, something like 62 percent of white voters have these sorts of sentiments, and by better than 2-1 they vote Republican.”

He added that since 2008, “there’s been sort of a 20 percentage point jump in the number of white Americans expressing these racist stereotypes and a lot of that has to do with backlash against the first African-American president.”

Assuming that there is rising racial tension in this country, is it not reasonable to conclude that spectacles like overpaid black athletes protesting the National Anthem have played a role? What about the role played by the media in promoting Black Lives Matter, a group that honors a black cop-killer named Assata Shakur, who killed a white New Jersey State Trooper?

Neither Baldwin nor Milbank mentioned that the nation’s first black president has endorsed not only the ugly protests in the NFL (which included socks depicting policemen as pigs), but the anti-white racism of Black Lives Matter.

Obama has also highlighted the killings of black people in a campaign carried forward by his own Department of Justice against local police forces. Yet, Heather McDonald of the Manhattan Institute notes that, as of July 9 of this year, whites were 54 percent of the 440 police shooting victims, compared to 28 percent of them black. Last year whites made up 50 percent of the 987 fatal police shootings, and blacks, 26 percent. And, she adds, “Blacks commit homicide at nearly eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined.”

According to Milbank, rising racial hostility is absolutely not Obama’s fault. White people are to blame. He is a modern-day Goober.

Looking at the violence in places like Chicago, it may be the case that many white people are no longer willing to accept that they are to blame for black people killing themselves and others. Perhaps their opinions of black people have become more critical. They wonder why Obama doesn’t seem to care for his own people. They wonder why black politicians in the Democratic Party are so slow to condemn this violence and do something about it.

Consider the video of a 71-year-old man in Chicago who was recently shot while watering his lawn by a young black thug who wanted his money. Chicago Tribune columnist John Kassreports, “The shooters, these feral young men, aren’t an accident. They are the direct product of the Democratic welfare state that helped destroy families. The government became the father, the fathers became irrelevant or were driven off, and black families that had withstood decades of Jim Crow segregation began to collapse.”

Kass is white, but can anybody seriously doubt the truth of his observation? Where are the black “leaders” sounding the alarm?

CNN posted the video, with the description, “A 71-year-old man was shot and robbed by two men while watering his lawn in a southwest Chicago neighborhood.” The “two men” were black.

Yet talking and bearded heads like Milbank are worried about theoretical white racism, as reflected in surveys about stereotypes.

Milbank is a dishonest but familiar face, with or without a beard, to conservative media figures holding news conferences to announce the results of their investigative reporting about Obama and Hillary that Milbank and his colleagues refuse to do. He has showed up at various events to see what conservatives may have to say about various left-wing scandals. I have personally seen him at AIM conferences on Benghazi and my own conferences on Obama’s ties to the black racist communist Frank Marshall Davis. Usually, Milbank writes his stories during the events, when he thinks he has discovered something he can twist or distort, in order to try to make the conservatives look crazy or foolish.

In the Andy Griffith episode, Goober finally shaves off the beard, after people start fleeing from his pseudo-intellectual rhetoric. He realizes that he has been acting stupid when he has been trying to sound smart.

The Brooke Baldwin-Dana Milbank show is a modern version of that timeless classic. These people don’t realize how stupid they look and sound. They are modern-day Goobers who can only succeed in driving people away from CNN to alternative media.

Yes, we appreciate it, Mr. Milbank. Now, go shave off the beard.

Cliff Kincaid

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.

09/2/15

Media Nervous Over Hillary Sting Videos

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

You know an event is potentially damaging to Hillary Clinton or other top Democrats when Dana Milbank of The Washington Post shows up. Hence, Milbank’s attendance at Tuesday’s James O’Keefe news conference on Clinton campaign violations of federal election law was an indication that the Democrats are concerned. This time, despite video evidence of top staffers for Hillary accepting cash from a known foreign national, most of the media reaction was vintage Milbank. “Is this a joke?” the media wanted to know.

In fairness, Milbank’s questions seemed mild, when compared to some of the other media reactions.

The joke question came from Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast, with other liberals joining in and wondering what the press conference was all about. The law says that foreigners are strictly prohibited from contributing to U.S. political campaigns, and O’Keefe had dramatic evidence of the campaign law violation. Thevideo was played on a television screen for all to see.

Looking for some reason not to pay attention to the facts, some in the media seized upon the small amount of money that was used to pay for the Hillary campaign merchandise in question.

This was not the only media reaction, but it seemed to be one of the most popular. “James O’Keefe Targets Clinton Campaign For Legally Selling A T-Shirt,” was the dishonest headline over an article attacking O’Keefe published by Media Matters, the pro-Hillary and George Soros-funded group. This article set the tone for the pro-Hillary contingent in the press.

However, the great number of journalists who showed up was an indication that, when it comes to Hillary, nobody really knows how serious the law-breaking will get. O’Keefe suggested that more evidence against the campaign is yet to come.

Milbank may be in a quandary about what to do with Hillary, who is dropping in the polls against the socialist career politician Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and leaving the Democratic presidential field open to other candidates, most notably Vice President Joe Biden, a notorious plagiarist. (In Biden’s case, Media Matters had also defended him, insisting the plagiarism wasn’t as serious as some knew to be the case).

Milbank’s modus operandi in the past has been to ridicule conservatives who provide evidence of corruption by top Democrats such as Hillary and Barack Obama. For example, he attacked those who investigated Obama’s relationship with communist Frank Marshall Davis. He showed up at an AIM conference to write an article distorting the findings of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, which investigated Hillary’s role in covering up the terrorist attack that killed four Americans.

Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist has written that Milbank “serially exaggerates or distorts what he writes about. It’s just what he does.”

But those distortions won’t suffice when the video evidence itself can be seen by millions, telling the real story that some in the media try to conceal. As Project Veritas emphasized, the video shows Molly Barker, the Director of Marketing for Hillary Clinton’s national campaign, knowingly breaking campaign finance law by accepting a straw donation from a foreign national.

O’Keefe, who almost single-handedly took down the Alinskyite ACORN organization, has also investigated Planned Parenthood and National Public Radio. He wrote the book, Breakthrough: Our Guerilla War to Expose Fraud and Save Democracy, and has targeted Republican politicians in the past as well.

His reputation meant that O’Keefe’s Project Veritas Action news conference at the National Press Club was packed, with at least seven television cameras there to record the proceedings.

Washington Post reporter David Weigel conveyed the message from the Clinton campaign that the event was much ado about nothing. But at least he did an advance story about the video and got the Clinton campaign response.

Los Angeles Times reporter Evan Halper played the story to the advantage of the Hillary campaign, insisting that the video somehow missed its target. It was “Hardly the stuff of a Pulitzer Prize,” he insisted. He found it newsworthy, and somehow relevant to the issue of federal law violations, that the journalist from The Daily Beast had treated the video as a joke.

The “joke” response said more about the lack of seriousness from The Daily Beast than it did about O’Keefe’s video. Making matters worse, Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast seemed proud of the fact that she didn’t grasp the seriousness of the election law violations, highlighting her “Is this a joke?” responses on her Twitter account.

O’Keefe may have the last laugh, as he repeatedly emphasized that more videos are coming, and that other Hillary officials may be in them and forced to resign. Reporters in attendance, anxious to dismiss these charges, seemed nervous about this prospect. They repeatedly pressed O’Keefe to spill more details about other undercover operatives he may have in the Clinton and other campaigns. He told the media they would just have to wait.

It was nervous laughter from the press, as they couldn’t figure out what other damaging evidence O’Keefe’s crew may have against the Democratic presidential candidate.

In a message to his supporters, O’Keefe noted, “Since at least 1996, Hillary and her husband Bill have been accused of accepting foreign contributions to further their political ambition. Back then, it was China accused of funneling massive amounts of money into the Clinton campaign and the DNC [Democratic National Committee]. The State Department investigated the matter. Three Americans were convicted of crimes, one of whom, Johnny Chung, admitted that $35,000 of his contributions came from the Chinese military. But Bill and Hillary got off clean.”

Not all media were prepared to laugh this all away. In his story about the O’Keefe news conference, Alan Rappeport of The New York Times seemed to admit that O’Keefe had struck gold, noting, “Foreign donations are a sensitive subject for the Clintons, as their family foundation has been under scrutiny for accepting money from overseas while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state, and recent State Department emails showed that former President Bill Clinton tried to get permission to give paid speeches in North Korea and the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

One question is whether the illegal transactions captured in the Project Veritas video are part of a pattern of illegal conduct. The media will just have to wait. Maybe their laughter will die down in the wake of more videos being released.

Asked why the major media don’t do these kinds of undercover investigations and the job falls on him and his staff, O’Keefe dismissed the significance of liberal media bias and said that he thinks journalists are more motivated by a desire to protect their access to candidates like Hillary. In other words, reporters have to flatter the candidates with fawning coverage.

But it’s increasingly difficult to portray Hillary in a favorable light. At the campaign event where the video of the illegal contribution was recorded, Hillary had told the crowd that she would “stop the endless flow of secret, unaccountable money that is distorting our elections, corrupting our political process, and drowning out the voices of our people.”

A reporter seeking to maintain access to a candidate like this, caught in scandal after scandal, is something that is destined to truly become a joke.

09/2/15

Huffington Post Attack on Admiral Lyons is Based on Willful Ignorance

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

Too often members of the mainstream media are content to marginalize those with whom they disagree, and mock experts as dark conspiracy theorists rather than rebutting their points. When the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi (CCB) held its first conference exposing the Benghazi scandal, The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank followed this derogatory playbook to the letter.

Now, it seems, The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein is also content to emulate Milbank’s distortions, and to simply mock that which he knows little about. His August 18 column, “AIPAC Chose A Peculiar Admiral For Its Memo Against The Iran Deal,” calls esteemed CCB member Admiral James “Ace” Lyons a figure who “hasn’t operated at the heights of political power,” and casts it as “peculiar” that Admiral Lyons’ name would be listed among other national heavyweights.

Lyons is a retired four-star admiral who was Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, which at that time was the largest single military command in the world. “As the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations from 1983 to 1985, he was principal advisor on all Joint Chiefs of Staff matters.” He also served as the senior military representative to the United Nations, and is far from a babe in the woods when it comes to navigating the politics of power. Following the Marine Barracks bombing in Lebanon in 1983, the first military person that then-CIA Director William Casey sent for was Ace Lyons. Admiral Lyons was clearly a major player at the highest levels of government.

But facts don’t matter to Stein—he has a phony narrative to sell. “Instead, he [Admiral Lyons] has spent his time peddling dark conspiracy theories that probably explain why he doesn’t support the deal with Iran,” writes Stein.

“In particular, Lyons is of the firm belief that the Obama administration has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood,” he argues. “Elsewhere, he said the Muslim Brotherhood has ‘carte blanche entry into the White House’ and in effect has ‘become an effective cabinet member.’”

The Investigative Project on Terrorism has provided a detailed analysis of several members of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) who are official advisors to the White House or various agencies within the Executive branch. The question for Stein, and for the public in general, is whether or not we should care about the influence of the MB on this and other administrations.

Stein must not be aware that earlier this year President Barack Obama invited a number of radical Muslim leaders to the White House to discuss “‘anti-Muslim bigotry’ and banning Muslim terrorist profiling by federal law enforcement,”according to Investor’s Business Daily. The IBD editorial board wrote about several of those visitors:

“Imam Mohamed Magid, who preaches at a fundamentalist Northern Virginia mosque that has listed a number of trustees and major donors whose offices and homes were raided after 9/11 by federal agents on suspicion of funding terrorists.”
“Azhar Azeez, president of the Islamic Society of North America, a known radical Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas front group that remains on the Justice Department’s list of unindicted terrorist co-conspirators.”
“Hoda Hawa, national policy adviser of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which was founded by known members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide jihadist movement.”

MPAC’s “leadership praised Hezbollah and Islamist leaders like [Hassan] al-Banna in the 1990s, opposed the designations of Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist groups in 2003, and promoted the [Muslim] Brotherhood as a moderate force and potential U.S. ally in 2010,” wrote Ryan Mauro for The Clarion Project in 2013.

“It remains unclear why President Obama remains a stalwart believer that the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates should be treated as legitimate political entities, when history reveals the organization as one with radical goals,” reportedBreitbart last February. “Both Former Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and ISIS ‘caliph’ Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi were members of the Brotherhood. Its current spiritual leader, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, has a knack for bashing Jews and praising Nazis. The Muslim Brotherhood’s motto remains: ‘Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.’”

President Obama has been unduly influenced by this radical group during both terms in office. “And I remind you that as [President Obama] was giving that [2009 Cairo] speech, two very important things that people forget about it,” saidjournalist Ken Timmerman at our Benghazi conference last year. “First of all, he was in Cairo, Cairo University, and there was an important person who was not even invited—not just not there, but wasn’t even invited.”

That person was then-Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak. “And sitting behind the President of the United States as he’s giving this speech, so they’re pictured in all of the news footage of it, are top members of the Muslim Brotherhood—at that point still an outlawed group, although tolerated by the Mubarak regime,” continued Timmerman.

As the CCB Interim Report exposed, “The U.S. facilitated the delivery of weapons and military support to al Qa’eda-linked rebels in Libya.”

“With allegiances like these, Lyons seems to think, it’s no wonder Obama struck such a bad deal [with Iran]—indeed, it’s a shock he pursued any concessions at all,” writes Stein.

As we have reported, it was President Obama—not Iran—who made concession after concession as part of the flawed Iran deal. This disastrous arrangement will guarantee that Iran acquires nuclear weapons.

It is Admiral Lyons’ historical memory that shines a light on the danger of President Obama’s decision to give in to this totalitarian regime’s demands.

Lyons explained at last year’s conference how the U.S. had plans to take out the Islamic Amal, the “forerunner to Hezbollah,” immediately after the 1983 Beirut Barracks bombing.

“We had the photographs. We were going to make it look like a plowed cornfield in Kansas. We had the planes loaded,” said Admiral Lyons, then Deputy Chief for Naval Operations.

“And, at the meeting they go around the table, they brief [Ronald] Reagan, and it gets to [Caspar] Weinberger and he says, ‘I think there are Lebanese army troops in those barracks,’” said Admiral Lyons. “And okay, lo and behold, come back, and no, there are no Lebanese army troops in those barracks. But this time, and I get this direct from Bud McFarlane, who is the National Security Advisor, Weinberger starts waving his arms and so forth: ‘We’re going to lose all our Arab friends if we go ahead with this strike.’”

“We never got the orders to strike,” said Admiral Lyons. “And of course, what was the message? The message became Osama bin Laden’s rallying cry: ‘The Americans can’t suffer casualties. They will cut and run.’”

President Obama recently excused the concession to let Iran enrich uranium during an August 9 appearance on Fareed Zakaria’s CNN show. “And we did not have the support of that position among our global allies who have been so critical in maintaining sanctions and applying the pressure that was necessary to get Iran to the table,” Obama said. Apparently that was the same reason for all of the other concessions as well. Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute notedthat “Obama and Kerry crossed off every one of their own red lines” in pursuit of this deal..

Like Weinberger, Obama is clearly more concerned about his international legitimacy, and legacy, than standing up to Iran. His continuing support for the Muslim Brotherhood agenda also undermines our national security.

This could serve as a “teachable moment.” Should the Muslim Brotherhood be viewed as some benign, moderate organization? Or instead as the organization that spawned Al Qaeda and other significant terrorist organizations?

Each and every candidate from both parties should be asked whether he or she believes the United States government should receive counsel from the Muslim Brotherhood or entertain their influence. And that is especially true for Hillary Clinton, whose top aide and confidant, the controversial Huma Abedin, has strong family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

02/23/15

The Mysterious “Frank” Returns

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Yesterday’s news became big news on the Fox News Channel on Thursday when former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani brought up the name of President Barack Obama’s childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis. It was almost seven years to the day when we published our seminal piece about Davis, “Obama’s Communist Mentor.”

Davis was a member of the Communist Party and a suspected Soviet espionage agent. He was included in the FBI’s security index, meaning that Davis could be arrested or detained in the event of a national emergency. The FBI file on Davis documents his anti-white and pro-Soviet views, infiltration of the Hawaii Democratic Party, and other activities.

Davis also wrote an autobiographical and pornographic sex novel, Sex Rebel, disclosing that he had sex with a young girl and engaged in shocking and bizarre sexual activities.

Giuliani’s public identification of Davis and discussion of his role in grooming a young Barack Obama marks the first time, in my memory, that a top Republican has ever mentioned the Davis-Obama relationship. It was done in the context of Fox News’ Megyn Kelly of questioning how Giuliani could dare ask whether Obama loves America.

If the Republicans had brought this up during the 2008 campaign, Obama might have been defeated and the country could have been spared the last six years of “progressive” hope and change. The Davis-Obama relationship is something so damaging and corrupt that its public airing would have raised questions about the Democratic Party’s vetting of Obama and the direction of the Democratic Party itself.

However, Republican operative Karl Rove was warning Republicans not to accuse Obama of being a socialist. He said such a charge would generate a negative backlash. The result in 2012 was another Obama victory.

Now that it has become apparent to more and more people that Obama is not a traditional liberal Democrat and is, in fact, a Marxist with Muslim sympathies, a figure such as Giuliani feels compelled to speak out. So let’s take a look at what Giuliani said.

“I don’t feel it. I don’t feel this love of America,” Giuliani said, talking about Obama. “I’m talking about a man who grew up under the influence of Frank Marshall Davis who was a member of the Communist Party, who he refers to over and over in his book, who was a tremendous critic of the United States.”

Kelly countered that Obama “was raised in part by his grandparents. His grandfather served in World War II, his grandmother worked in a munitions plant to help the nation during World War II. I mean, to suggest he was raised by people who don’t love America or didn’t help him learn to love America.”

Giuliani argued that “his grandfather introduced him to Frank Marshall Davis, who was a communist.” He added, “You can fight in World War II, and then you introduce someone to a Communist and the young boy gets…”

After Kelly interjected that “it’s a political world view. It’s not a hatred for the country,” Giuliani responded, “Communism wasn’t hatred for America?”

Giuliani is correct about the Davis influence over Obama and the role that the grandfather played in picking Davis as a mentor.

But when Giuliani notes that Obama refers to Davis “over and over in his book,” Dreams from My Father, it’s important to point out that Davis was not identified as Frank Marshall Davis in that book. Instead, Obama identified him merely as “Frank.” The rest of the story was put together by anti-communist researcher Trevor Loudon, and we confirmed the identification with another source in Hawaii who was a close friend of Davis.

Even more of the story was put together by Paul Kengor in his authoritative book on Davis, The Communist. It appears that Davis was an influence over Obama for about nine full years, until Obama was 18 and went off to college. Obama went off to college and, by his own admission, would attend socialist conferences and pick Marxist professors as his friends.

This relationship alone would have disqualified Obama from getting low-level federal employment. The loophole in our system is that background checks are not required for federal elected officials. Our founders counted on a free press to review the fitness of those running for office.

When former Obama adviser David Axelrod talks about Obama being free from major scandals, he is ignoring the biggest scandal of all—how Obama concealed his Marxist upbringing and relationship with Davis. Axelrod of course was part of the cover-up. When “Frank” was identified as Davis, the Obama campaign insisted he was just a civil rights activist.

As we reported at the time, news organizations such as the Associated Press, The Washington Post, Newsweek and even Fox News ignored or downplayed Davis’s communist sympathies.

As Giuliani indicated, there are other influences on Obama that help explain his anti-Americanism. These include the “community organizing” philosophy of Saul Alinsky, his pastor Jeremiah Wright and the communist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

Giuliani clearly feels, at this stage in Obama’s presidency, that some things have to be said openly for the sake of the country. A former crime-busting U.S. Attorney who was mayor of New York City at the time of 9/11, Giuliani fears for the future of our country. But it’s not just the fate of America that is at stake. It is clear that Obama has no love for America’s traditional allies, such as Israel. Hence, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is coming to America to plead his case personally. He is afraid that Obama wants to make a deal that will allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

Now that Giuliani has publicly raised some inconvenient truths about Obama, the “progressives” and their media allies will naturally scream and cry “McCarthyism.” Strangely taking this tack, Fox News’ Kelly wondered if Giuliani’s comments about Obama had damaged “the Republican brand.” The Republican brand will only be damaged by an inability to face facts and confront and expose anti-Americanism at the highest levels of the United States government. It is shocking that it has taken this long for the evidence to emerge publicly on a national basis on Fox News and other channels.

This controversy will help determine what direction the Republicans will take. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, who has made it his job to protect Obama from the fallout from major scandals, was quick to label Giuliani’s remarks about Obama as “stupid.” He also attacked Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker as “spineless” for saying Giuliani “can speak for himself,” and not directly challenging what the former mayor had said

“What Scott Walker did ought to disqualify him as a serious presidential contender,” wrote Milbank.

This is a signal from one of Obama’s best friends in the media that the information unearthed by Giuliani is of the blockbuster variety. Giuliani went for the jugular and hit a gusher.

The first thing Republicans can do is simply challenge the media to report on the Davis FBI file. They have been avoiding it for over six years.

Congress could also investigate Obama’s communist connections, which stretch from Hawaii to Chicago, and question the FBI about what they knew, if anything, about the Obama-Davis relationship. The reestablishment of House and Senate internal security committees, including a loyalty program for U.S. officials to eliminate security risks, should be considered.

Republicans could remind people that it was anti-communist Democratic President Harry Truman who started the first loyalty program. He issued executive order 9835 establishing the program in 1947.

The executive order said that “each employee of the Government of the United States is endowed with a measure of trusteeship over the democratic processes which are at the heart and sinew of the United States,” and declared that “the presence within the Government service of any disloyal or subversive person constitutes a threat to our democratic processes…”

It is time for a background check on the President of the United States. Does he pass the loyalty test?

02/3/15

Benghazi Hearings Provide a Glimmer of Hope

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

Last week, the Democrat Members of the Select Committee on Benghazi virtually declared war on the majority members, criticizing their pace, rules, and committee scope.

Representative Linda Sanchez (D-CA) claimed that the Select Committee was on a wild goose chase for a nonexistent “unicorn” and “nefarious conspiracy,” and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) falsely called the stand down order a “myth.”

But in what may be a turning point for the Select Committee, Republican Chairman Trey Gowdy emphasized at the January 27th hearing that “we’re gonna pick up the pace…. I have no interest in prolonging” the investigation into Benghazi.

“Letters haven’t worked. Southern politeness hasn’t worked. We’re going to ratchet it up,” he said at what members of the mainstream media, such as U.S. News and World Report, characterized as a “partisan grudge match.”

The next day Chairman Gowdy issued a statement that defied Democrats outright, arguing he “will continue to move the investigation forward in a fair and impartial manner, but…will not allow the minority’s political games and unreasonable demands to interfere with the investigation.” Rep. Gowdy said he will continue operating under the scope originally set by the House of Representatives.

This, the media preferred to coin as political failure or “out of control” politics. “The House Select Committee on Benghazi, which began with dignity last year, spun out of control Tuesday as Democrats complained that Republicans were abusing their authority and Republicans threatened to spray the Obama administration with subpoenas,” wrote Dana Milbank for The Washington Post. Milbank specializes in snarky columns criticizing and marginalizing conservatives, and even took aim at the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi for a conference held on Benghazi in 2013.

Regarding the hearing last week, the Associated Press in turn, remarked, “The partisan tone marked a sharp turnaround for a panel that had won praise for a bipartisan approach through its first two public hearings.”

The subject of the first two slow-rolling hearings was the current state of embassy security, a topic suggested by the committee’s Democratic members which had little to do with the administration’s response to the attack—and which conveniently glosses over the security failures of 2012 to emphasize present solutions instead of accountability.

MSNBC focused largely on political angles instead of substance. For Alex Seitz-Wald, it was all about Hillary Clinton. “Gowdy and Republicans had been hoping to preserve and grow the credibility of their inquiry, which is part of the reason for their assiduous avoidance of taking pot shots at Clinton Tuesday,” wrote Seitz-Wald. “But Democrats are seeking to undermine the credibility of the panel, in the hopes that it will be viewed as a partisan witch hunt if it ever demands testimony from Clinton.”

New bombshell reporting by The Washington Times shows that Clinton was the strong voice pushing to intervene in Libya in 2011 in the first place, which set the stage for the attacks. Ultimately, however, President Obama was the “Decider-in-Chief” and bears at least equal culpability.

Chairman Gowdy told Megyn Kelly of Fox News last May that he plans to subpoena Mrs. Clinton, and repeated that in December. We now learn that the Select Committee has requested Clinton and other top State Department officials’ emails, and that Rep. Gowdy is willing to bring Clinton before the Committee just 30 days after receiving “all the [State Department] documents,” according to CNN.

Select Committee Members would also like to interview 22 persons with firsthand knowledge of Benghazi whom Congress has never spoken to before. The Associated Press reported on January 28, the day after the hearing, that State Department officials said they were ready to “commit” to interview dates for these persons.

But the press doesn’t seem interested in holding the administration accountable for the fact that the State Department waited from the December 4 request until January 28 to issue such a guarantee.

The State Department representative, Joel Rubin, said at the January hearing that a part of the committee’s relationship with the department is indicating priorities for requests—as if more resources could not be allocated to provide such information to the committee more swiftly.

Rubin, formerly of the Ploughshares Fund, also said at the hearing that he was a friend of Ambassador Chris Stevens, who died in 2012 at the U.S. Special Mission Compound in Benghazi. Rubin wrote the following for ThinkProgress that year:

“Instead of getting that support, their deaths are being used as a partisan attack on President Obama, part of a false narrative that the president failed them. What has failed them is our political system. Rather than supporting a serious, nonpartisan investigation into what took place and what went wrong, waiting to get all the facts out, conservatives are trying to affix blame for their deaths for political advantage. This is how some conservatives use terrorist attacks against America.”

Now Rubin helps guard the gates for that same President who would like this simply dismissed as a phony scandal.

Although the media, along with the Democrats, may accuse Chairman Gowdy of partisan politics as he attempts to more aggressively investigate the Benghazi attacks and the resulting cover-up, I am cautiously optimistic about his new tone.

“The letter exchanges between Gowdy and Cummings [prior to the hearing], as well as Tuesday’s hearings, should put to rest forever the fiction that this type of investigation can be conducted in some Nirvana-zone of bipartisan comity,” Kenneth Timmerman astutely wrote for Front Page Magazine.

With this new focus on government stonewalling the Committee brought the possibility of embarrassing the administration to the fore, and the backlash was palpable.

Accuracy in Media and the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi have long been critical of the Mike Rogers’ House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report, which contains a number of factual errors and glosses over the intelligence failures leading up to the attacks. Apparently the Select Committee asked to examine the HPSCI’s research in October—and had been asking the Central Intelligence Agency for these files ever since. These files were only produced by the agency after learning that a hearing on them was scheduled.

Similarly, the State Department has produced 40,000 pages related to Benghazi, but Rubin wouldn’t answer as to whether the information provided to the Accountability Review Board was provided fully within those documents.

He also refused to say whether he thought the Select Committee was frivolous.

“If Gowdy is proceeding as a good prosecutor should, he is lining up all his ducks before he goes public with anything,” CCB member, and former CIA officer, Clare Lopez told WorldNetDaily’s Jerome Corsi last week as part of a series of articles about the CCB’s own investigations. “I think it’s premature to jump to a condemnation of the process or the committee leadership when the truth is that we don’t know,” she said.

“Delays by Gowdy are unnecessary at this time,” CCB Member and Retired General Paul Valley told Corsi after the Times’ bombshell dropped. “Gowdy can press forward now as he does have sufficient intelligence and documents to call all witnesses and issue subpoenas as necessary.”

“Additional delays will only give the obstructionists in the Obama White House, the State Department and the Democrats in Congress time to thwart the efforts of the select committee,” Vallely said.

While the administration continues to stonewall the Select Committee whenever possible, and Democrats continue to complain that the investigation isn’t bipartisan enough, the CCB will continue to search for the truth in its own citizen-led investigation.

We have already dug up some disturbing facts in our 2014 interim report, such as:

the administration decision to dismiss the possibility of truce talks with Moammar Qaddafi;
helping arm al-Qaeda-linked rebels in Libya; and
the inadequate military response that night.

“I don’t know if the decision came from the White House or from Hillary Clinton at the State Department,” Retired Rear Admiral Chuck Kubic told Corsi about those failed truce talks. However, Admiral Kubic said, “…the advice for me from AFRICOM was to basically just leave everything alone, to simply stand down.” Who, exactly, at the White House decided it was unnecessary to pursue truce talks with Qaddafi?

The CCB and Accuracy in Media are continuing the search for the truth with our own Freedom of Information Act initiative. Currently, the Department of Defense is withholding 12 pages of maps from us regarding the position of military forces during the attacks.

As we await our day in court, we will not stop digging for the truth through whatever means are available to us. I am encouraged by the possibility that the Select Committee might likewise now use all the powers at its disposal to force the administration to reveal what happened that night and in the aftermath, not only to its Congressional investigators, but to the public as well. America deserves answers, not more stonewalling.

12/23/14

The Obama-Pope Axis of Marxism

By: Cliff Kincaid

The Washington Post is a die-hard Democratic Party newspaper that occasionally recognizes Obama’s drift into Marxism. The December 19th editorial on Cuba is a case in point. Not only does the Post understand the nature of Obama’s betrayal of a free Cuba, it is beginning to wake up to the failures of bipartisan policies that have built communist Chinese economic power in the name of capitalism and reform.

The paper says that Obama “should have learned and applied some of the hard lessons of normalization with China and Vietnam—most notably that engagement doesn’t automatically promote freedom. When the United States debated extending ‘most-favored-nation’ trading status to China, we shared in what was then the conventional wisdom: Economic engagement would inevitably lead, over time, to political reform inside that Communist dictatorship.”

The paper goes on to admit it was duped. But Obama should know better, shouldn’t he?

The Post notes that the Chinese regime has been strengthened, not weakened, by policies of “engagement.” The Chinese communists “were determined to reap the fruits of foreign investment and trade—for themselves and their families, first, but also for their country—without ceding power. So far, confounding expectations, they have succeeded,” the paper commented.

In the case of Cuba, the Post said, Obama could have proposed normalization only after certain freedoms were given to the Cuban people. Instead, Obama “spurned” the “brave freedom fighters” on the island in the form of ordinary citizens risking their lives to protest against the Castro regime and to demand basic rights. Obama simply ignored their struggle.

So what are we to conclude? The Post is the paper which sent a reporter by the name of Dana Milbank to our news conferences over the years to ridicule our warnings of Obama’s Marxism. It looks like the editorial board, at least, is coming around to the realization that Obama is deliberately pursuing a Marxist policy in the case of Cuba. This is a breakthrough.

In a separate editorial, the paper called Obama’s change in Cuba policy a “bailout” of the regime. It said, “Mr. Obama may claim that he has dismantled a 50-year-old failed policy; what he has really done is give a 50-year-old failed regime a new lease on life.”

The editorial fails to take note of the role of Pope Francis in the betrayal. However, a separate article in the paper indirectly took note of the development, highlighting that while Pope John Paul II was “extremely public in his fight against communism,” Francis seems dedicated to being known as a “master builder of bridges” between the communist and free worlds. This is to the advantage of the communists.

The article notes that Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)—who is Catholic—was critical of the pope, saying he should “take up the cause of freedom” rather than facilitate Obama’s deal with the Castro brothers. But we have heard enough from the pope, in terms of his attacks on capitalism, to know where he stands.

Rubio told ABC News, “The pope is a spiritual leader and he always, naturally, is going to want to bring people closer together. And I respect that as a spiritual leader. But I think it’s also important to say that people deserve the right to be free…our nation was founded on that principle.”

The awareness is growing among Catholics that this pope is radically different than Pope John Paul II. Associated Press quotes Efrain Rivas, a 53-year-old maintenance man in Miami who was a political prisoner in Cuba for 16 years as saying, “I’m still Catholic till the day I die. But I am a Catholic without a pope.”

Miguel Saavedra, described as a 57-year-old Miami mechanic who leads an anti-Castro group and wears a Christian cross, told AP, “The church is contaminated.” He was probably referring to contamination by elements of Marxist-oriented liberation theology.

Catholic writer Vic Biorseth concludes, “I’m afraid it is true—Pope Francis is a Marxist. George Soros is probably celebrating. So is Bill Ayers, Frances Fox Piven, and especially, Comrade President Obama, peace be upon him. We will get through this, and we will be stronger for it.”

This may sound harsh, but the evidence is all around for everyone to see. Perhaps the Post will eventually wake up to that reality as well. But how long will it take?