CCB Press Conference on Benghazi Largely Ignored by Mainstream Media
By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media
On June 29, the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi (CCB) held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington to discuss the release of its new report on the events surrounding the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the Special Mission Compound and CIA Annex, resulting in the deaths of four Americans. As usual, the liberal media largely stayed away. Apparently, if The New York Times, CNN, the Associated Press and NBC don’t cover a story, no matter how important, it isn’t really news. So instead, the only representative from the mainstream media was The Washington Post’s designated hit man, Dana Milbank, who regularly trolls conservative gatherings to heap scorn, sarcasm and peddle misinformation to his waiting readers. That is the sad state of journalism in this country today.
Mr. Milbank’s penchant for playing fast and loose with the details has gotten him in trouble before, when he claimed that conservative speakers had “taunted” a young Muslim girl. These speakers had, in fact, thanked her for her presence. In the latest case, Milbank wrote an opinion piece, not a news story, with the online headline, “Benghazi Conspiracy Theorists Turn on Trey Gowdy.” The headline in the print edition of the paper was “Appeasing the far right? You’ll always end up wrong.”
During the course of Milbank’s article, he called the members of the CCB “a coalition of far-right foreign-policy types,” “conspiracy theorists,” and “agitators.” This is all part of the attempt to discredit the messenger, because Milbank can’t really dispute the message—although he has certainly tried. But at least he was there, and spelled the names correctly, though he was wrong about the number of members on the commission (it’s 14, plus two advisory, not 11). Apparently the Post’s Fact-Checker was busy on other stories that day. Maybe they should hire more.
Milbank found our report to be what he called “full of inventive accusations.”
“They found ‘troubling evidence that Obama and Clinton were deeply and knowingly involved in running guns to al-Qaeda in Libya,’” writes Milbank, “as well as ‘a clear case of official U.S. government submission to the Islamic Law on slander.’”
“They determined that the Obama administration ‘switched sides in what was then called the Global War on Terror’ and ‘benefited this country’s worst enemies,’” he continues. “They wrote that Clinton herself blocked U.S. military forces from attempting a rescue mission, and they attributed the decision to oust Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi in part to financial interests of the Clinton Foundation.”
When Milbank quotes from the CCB’s findings, the obvious inference is that he finds these points to be baseless—and believes they could only originate from the minds of right-wing conspiracy theorists. The findings in the CCB’s latest report are, indeed, very damning accusations. But we back them up in every case, and encourage people to read the report and judge for themselves. Our military and intelligence experts—former admirals, generals, colonels, congressmen and CIA officers—are people with vast service to this country and outstanding reputations.
In particular, we have repeatedly demonstrated that the Obama administration decided to send arms to the Libyan rebels, who themselves were affiliated with al Qaeda and other jihadists. This ultimately contributed to the death of our Ambassador at the hands of Islamic jihadists, and Libya’s transformation into a terror safe haven.
It is Milbank who is being played for the fool by not looking at the evidence.
Apparently he doesn’t believe that Hillary Clinton, or anyone else, for that matter, “blocked U.S. military forces from attempting a rescue mission.” Yet American military assets were not sent to aid those in Benghazi. The Americans in Benghazi were left to withstand multiple terror attacks on their own, lasting approximately 13 hours from start to finish .
That is why the testimony from Gen. Tom McInerney is so compelling. He led the air attacks into Libya in 1986. Admiral Ace Lyons, another member of the CCB, commanded more than 250,000 troops at one time as commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet of the U.S. Navy—while Dana Milbank was giving secret handshakes and who knows what else at Skull and Bones meetings at Yale.
If Milbank had wanted to actually read our report and challenge it on a factual basis, I could respect that. But all he wanted to do is make disrespectful, cutting comments that cast a slur on others while having no basis in fact. When it comes to knowing whether military assets could have been brought to Benghazi that night to attempt to save lives, whom are you going to trust—Milbank or McInerney? Does anyone really believe they couldn’t have gotten there if ordered to do so? And why, with multiple warnings of a terrorist attack in Benghazi in the weeks leading up to September 11, 2012, weren’t military assets on high alert, prepared for such an attack?
Jerome Corsi at WorldNetDaily did read the report, and he wrote a different sort of articleilluminating the dereliction of duty by the Obama administration.
“[Clare] Lopez charged Clinton’s role in the Benghazi debacle was ‘pivotal,’” writes Corsi. “She said that under Clinton’s leadership, the State Department ‘changed sides’ in the war on terrorism in Libya.”
Far from a baseless accusation, Clinton’s pivotal role can be seen in her aide, Jake Sullivan’s email that Clinton had “leadership/ownership/stewardship of this country’s Libya policy from start to finish.” Yet somehow we are supposed to believe that Mrs. Clinton ignored Libya after Qaddafi’s death, and missed 600 requests for additional security. That’s what she told the House Select Committee on Benghazi when she testified last October.
The military dereliction of duty in Benghazi is shocking, as well. “So we had no pre-planning of the possibility of a terrorist attack in the region on that day and while the attack was underway no U.S. military assets were moved into action,” said McInerney. “At least a fly-by over Benghazi could have been arranged, with F-16s using full after-burners that could have dispersed the terrorists and ended the attack.”
Corsi recounts how Charles Woods, the father of Ty Woods, spoke at the June 29 press conference, and asked to know who is “responsible” for his son’s death. Ty was a former Navy SEAL who was part of the CIA Annex Security Team. In fact, I hope every American will get the chance to watch the movie “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.” It is available on demand on most cable TV services. I attended the premiere last January in Dallas.
Jennifer Harper of The Washington Times also highlighted the new report from the CCB.
Regrettably, without even attending the event, MSNBC repeated some of the lies perpetuated by Milbank. “This is what it’s come to: Benghazi conspiracy theorists are so creative, and so unmoved by evidence or reason, that they can convince themselves that congressional Republicans are in on the conspiracy,” writes Steve Benen for MSNBC (emphasis in original).
As my colleagues and I explained at the press conference, Select Committee on Benghazi Chair Trey Gowdy (R-SC) had an unparalleled opportunity to explain the attacks, connect the dots and hold people accountable. Instead, he and the remainder of the GOP members largely acted as stenographers rather than investigators. Representatives Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mike Pompeo (R-KS) provided a supplemental report more willing to place blame, and at the press conference on June 28 when their report was released, Pompeo called Mrs. Clinton’s actions “morally reprehensible.” But when it came to passing judgment, Gowdy took a pass.
This has allowed the mainstream media to claim that despite an exhaustive investigation, no new revelations have been found that implicate Hillary Clinton. For Benen, his headline reads that Clinton has been “exonerated.” But no new revelations were necessary to demonstrate the ongoing Benghazi cover-up.
You can read our new report or watch our entire June 29 press conference here:
Military experts: Iran already has nuclear weapons
By: JEROME R. CORSI
WND
NEW YORK – Amid debate over President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, two retired military officers contend their accumulation of evidence from open and intelligence sources shows Tehran already has a nuclear-weapons capability.
Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely and U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Dennis B. Haney assert that since 1979, a cabal of nations has aided and abetted Iran in its efforts to develop a robust nuclear program under the guise of generating a nuclear-energy system.
And they believe the White House is fully aware.
In an interview, Vallely told WND that President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and chief White House adviser Valerie Jarrett “are treading on treason under the U.S. Constitution for aiding and abetting Iran, a known enemy of the United States, while throwing Israel, a longtime U.S. ally, to the wolves.”
They charge the cabal is mainly comprised of Russia, China and North Korea, which have worked behind the scenes in collaboration with Iran to put all the parts in place.
The assistance includes providing the material needed to make a bomb. Vallely and Haney believe Iran can make a bomb now, and a “breakout” nuclear test detonation is imminent.
‘Treading on treason’
Vallely told WND that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “knows that Israel has little option but to launch a pre-emptive military strike on Iran, and I suspect Saudi Arabia will assist Israel militarily when the attack occurs.”
“Signing a nuclear agreement legitimizes Iran’s nuclear weapons future, while removing sanctions that gives Iran access to billions of dollars that can be diverted to advancing Iran’s terrorist goals against the United States and Israel,” Vallely said.
Haney agreed.
“President Obama has given the green light to the potential destruction of Israel by signing this agreement while Iran swears ‘death to Israel,’” Haney told WND.
“President Obama knows Iran has the bomb, and he knows Iran plans a nuclear attack on Israel. Obama has never liked Israel; he does not see Israel in the future of the Middle East that he sees dominated by radical Islam.”
Haney said Obama “is simply covering his tracks with this nuclear agreement with Iran.”
“The point is that Obama already knows Iran has the bomb and the entire negotiation has been nothing more than a charade, a smoke screen to cover up that Iran already has the bomb,” he said.
“The White House and Secretary of State Kerry know that Iran already has nuclear weapons capability and, to protect Obama’s legacy, the White House does not want it known Iran was allowed to develop nuclear weapons on Obama’s watch,” he explained.
“This way, a pathway for Iran to get the bomb has been created and put in place, so when Iran finally announces it has a nuclear weapon, Obama can argue that Iran simply got the bomb quicker than anybody anticipated, but not in violation of the agreement.”
He declared: “Iran is a nuclear weapons power now!”
In a joint statement, Vallely and Haney say an accumulation of available evidence shows a coalition of Russia, China and North Korea have assisted Iran since 1979 in achieving a nuclear weapon, despite sanctions, under the guise of a domestic nuclear energy program.
Vallely explained to WND that he and Haney have taken a systematic approach to evaluating each component needed to deliver a nuclear weapon, from the development and testing of a ballistic missile system, to the design of a nuclear weapons warhead, to the development of the weapons-grade uranium needed to produce a bomb.
“To come to our conclusion that Iran is a nuclear weapons power right now, we supplemented publicly available research, plus information from intelligence sources, including Iranian resistance groups such as the National Council of Resistance of IRAN, NCRI,” Vallely explained. “With the assistance of Russia, China and North Korea, Iran has developed and tested every component needed to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon against Israel.”
WND reported in February that the NCRI, in a Washington, D.C., press conference, added to a series of disclosures it made regarding Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program more than a decade ago. NCRI has claimed Tehran is operating a secret uranium-enrichment site northeast of the capital city that was not disclosed during the recent negotiations to the United States or to the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA.
Vallely and Haney made clear in their statement their conclusion that Iran will soon detonate its first nuclear device.
“Iranian government observers, research scientists and senior military officials have been on-site in North Korea for all their tests of nuclear component systems,” they said. “In essence, Iran has had the benefit of North Korea doing their development and testing for them.”
They said Russia, China and North Korea “always had the latitude and time to develop and test warhead design, fissionable material and detonation testing.”
“Iran participated in most all of the scheduled testing onsite.”
Vallely and Haney said the “release of up to $150 billion in Iranian assets, as a part of the sanctions against Iran, guarantees Iran further funding their nuclear weapons program and their terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas and others to include Assad of Syria.”
‘Ties to Iran’
Vallely and Haney combine their analysis of Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities with an argument that Obama, Kerry and Jarrett have close ties to Iran that influence their political judgment.
All three allowed the United States to sign a nuclear weapons agreement with Iran knowing Tehran could develop a nuclear weapon today and realizing that an atomic Iran would be an existential threat to Israel, the retired officers said.
“Barack Hussein Obama, raised and schooled in Islam, mentored by American Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis, with his primary adviser being Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett, has crafted a plan that guarantees Iran will have a nuclear weapon,” they said.
“The copy of the agreement handed out in English for the American delegation did not replicate the copy handed out in Farsi for the Iranians. The American delegation did not bring this up,” Vallely and Haney said.
“The Iranian delegation read both the English and Farsi-worded agreements, and declared that while they agreed with the one in Farsi, the one in English was not the same and was in no way acceptable to them.
“Prime negotiator John Forbes Kerry, himself a communist sympathizer during the Vietnam War, came out this past May with the admission that he has a daughter who married an Iranian-American who has extensive family ties to Iran,” they noted.
In 2009, Kerry’s daughter, Vanessa Bradford Kerry, married a Los Angeles-based Iranian-American physician, Dr. Brian (Behrooz) ValaNahad, who was born in New York, educated at UCLA, attended medical school at Yale and completed his internship and neurosurgery residence at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
The Nemazee connection
WND has reported the ties between American–Iranian Hassan Nemazee and John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.
Nemazee, prominent in Democratic Party fundraising since Bill Clinton’s second term in the White House, is an American-Iranian now serving time in federal prison for criminal bank fraud. Nemazee’s family fortune in Iran traces back to the Iranian opium shipping trade with China that began in the mid-1800s.
Nemazee’s credentials in raising money for Democratic Party presidential hopefuls is impressive. In 2004, he served as Kerry’s presidential campaign fundraising chairman in New York, and in 2008, he served prominently as one of Hillary Clinton’s most successful national presidential campaign fundraising chairmen.
Coincidentally, Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Fars Province, Iran, in Nemazee Hospital, named after Hassan Nemazee’s father, who had the distinction of transitioning the Nemazee family opium trade with the Far East into the 20th century.
‘Let’s provide Iran nuclear fuel’
WND reported that during his first presidential debate with President George W. Bush in 2004, Kerry, then the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, argued that the U.S. should provide nuclear fuel to Iran. Kerry said the U.S. should trust Tehran, as had President Clinton with North Korea, that the Iranians would not use the fuel to make a bomb.
In the early 1970s, Pyongyang had begun to acquire nuclear fuel and plutonium processing technology from the Soviet Union to expand North Korea’s IRT-2000 research reactor that was gradually diverted to nuclear weapons development.
Then, in October 1994, former President Jimmy Carter announced from Pyongyang that Kim Il-sung had accepted the broad deal later formalized as the “Agreed Framework.” Within less than a decade, North Korea withdrew from the Nonproliferation Treaty and prohibited IAEA inspectors to actively monitor Pyongyang for nuclear weapons activities.
Vallely and Haney, both members of the independent Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, made clear they are speaking for themselves regarding Iran and not on behalf of the commission.
New Report Confirms Findings of Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi
By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media
Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi (CCB) member Clare Lopez believes that in 2011 Hillary Clinton’s State Department was orchestrating its own gun running operation to the Libyan rebels—and that arms dealer Marc Turi has been set up to take the fall for these “illicit arms deals.”
“The Justice Department has charged Turi with lying on an export-license application, alleging he hid his intent to ship weapons and ammunition to Libya in direct violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 170,” reports Jerome Corsi for WorldNetDaily.
“Marc Turi was set up and framed for something he didn’t do, while others, who actually did collaborate with Qatar and the UAE to deliver the weapons under U.S. and NATO protection and supervision, are not only not prosecuted like Marc Turi, they’re not even mentioned,” Lopez told Corsi.
“Lopez made it clear she was speaking for herself and not for the commission,” he reports.
Corsi has written several previous articles about the work of the CCB, which was established by Accuracy in Media back in 2013. “The commission has been working behind the scenes for the past two years to ensure Congress uncovers what really happened in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans,” writes Corsi.
“Lopez [said the] ‘key point is that Marc Turi, despite receiving written approval from the U.S. government to broker weapons to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, never actually went through [with] any weapons purchases or shipments to Qatar, to the UAE or to Libya,” he writes.
Lopez referred to the Citizens’ Commission’s April 2014 interim report, which stated: “Even more disturbingly, the U.S. was fully aware of and facilitating the delivery of weapons to the al-Qa’eda-dominated rebel militias throughout the 2011 rebellion. The jihadist agenda of AQIM, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), and other Islamic terror groups represented among the rebel forces was well known to U.S. officials responsible for Libya policy.”
In fact, “The rebels made no secret of their al-Qa’eda affiliation, openly flying and speaking in front of the black flag of Islamic jihad…” states the report.
When Hillary Clinton’s Libya-related emails were released, they exposed how Mrs. Clinton was interested in arming the rebels before they were “formally recognized by the U.S. or United Nations,” according to Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne.
Fox News previously reported that Turi had said the “weapons supplied to Libya were in the hands of the U.S. government and the State Department’s Bureau of Political and Military Affairs, headed by key Hillary Clinton aide Andrew Shapiro,” reports Corsi. “Shapiro was responsible to oversee the export control process at the State Department.”
Mrs. Clinton exchanged emails with the Director of Policy Planning for the Department of State, Anne-Marie Slaughter, in the spring of 2011. On March 30, 2011, Slaughter counseled Hillary Clinton that she was “VERY dubious about arming the Libyan rebels.” When Hillary Clinton asked why, Slaughter argued that “sending more arms into a society generally… will result in more violence—against each other” and “adding even more weapons does not make sense.”
Yet Mrs. Clinton emailed her aide, Jake Sullivan, on April 8, 2011, that “FYI. The idea of using private security experts to arm the opposition should be considered.”
Years after the intervention, Libya remains a broken state marred by ongoing violence.
It’s already been established that Mrs. Clinton failed to turn over all of her work related emails, allowed sensitive and classified material on her private email server, and lied about both. Yet we are asked to believe that the more than 30,000 emails that she had deleted and wiped from her server were all personal emails. It’s clear that even her allies in the media are getting nervous about where all of this is headed, since she is the presumed Democratic Party standard bearer. The question is, will she ever be held accountable, and judged by the same standards as others who have “mishandled” classified information? And what about her role in the Libyan and Benghazi scandals? It is looking more and more like the only accountability may come from the American voters.
America—You be the Judge
By: Retired Adm. James A. Lyons
Accuracy in Media
President Obama’s adamant refusal to link the barbaric atrocities committed by the Islamic State and affiliated al-Qaeda militias to Islam is an insult to the intelligence of all thinking Americans. His insistence that these atrocities are the result of “violent extremism,” not associated with Islam, lessens his already diminished credibility. The Quran and Islamic Law (Shariah) prove him wrong since there are 109 verses in the Quran that can be considered to sanction violence. Furthermore, chapter 2, verse 106 (on abrogation) makes it clear that the later violent verses take precedence over the earlier, less violent ones.
In February, President Obama hosted a White House Summit on countering “violent extremism.” As it turned out, it was essentially a public relations media event that had nothing substantive to offer in terms of countering the Islamic State’s barbaric acts of terrorism. Instead, it was more of a leftist, progressive agenda sympathetic to “Islamic sensibilities and grievances.” It cited lack of education and job opportunities as part of the root cause that enables IS to attract young Muslims. Mind boggling, particularly when Christians, women, and children are having their heads chopped off and are being buried alive.
If it were to have been a serious summit, you would have expected the Director of the FBI and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be full participants. However, they were not invited. Instead, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and its front organizations were full participants, including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), both unindicted co-conspirators for funding terrorism from the 2008 Dallas, Texas Holy Land Foundation Trial. Another MB front organization, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), was also represented.
The question must be asked: how can the Obama administration continue to embrace the Muslim Brotherhood when its declared creed, verified by the FBI, is to destroy the United States from within by our own “miserable hands,” and replace our Constitution with Islamic “Seventh Century” Shariah Law?
The MB today, with its deep penetration of all our national security and intelligence agencies, has now been institutionalized. With its carte blanche entry into the White House, it has, in effect, become a defacto cabinet member. All Americans should understand that there is no difference between the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Their objectives are all the same, it’s only the methods they use to achieve it that may be different. It is a totalitarian ideology bent on world domination (same as Communism), with Islam the dominant religion and Shariah the law.
The policies of the Obama administration in countering the Islamic jihadists of IS are clearly confusing to our allies. To understand President Obama’s strategy, everything this administration does must be viewed through the prism of his stated objective: to “fundamentally transform America.” This strategy is clear. It is anti-US and anti-Western—but pro-Islam, pro-Iran and pro-Muslim Brotherhood. With his Marxist background, it can be assumed that Obama does not view American power and influence as a force for good in the world. Otherwise, why would he want to fundamentally transform America? Therefore, anything that undercuts US military power and influence is viewed as being “objectively progressive.” President Obama’s refusal to provide legitimate defensive weapons to Ukraine falls under this category. The net result is the emasculation of NATO.
The “leading from behind” strategy announced at the start of the Libyan war, and the unilateral disarmament of our military forces, also fall under this category. A defining moment in the Libyan war was when the Obama administration switched sides in the global war on terror and provided weapons and material support to al-Qaeda and MB-controlled militias. Furthermore, as we now know, the Libyan war was unnecessary since Muammar Gadhafi was prepared to abdicate.
The Middle East today is a disaster area with failed states in Libya, Iraq, Syria, and now Yemen. What’s astonishing is that we are now a de facto partner with the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, Iran. By so doing, we are enhancing the expansion of Iran’s hegemony throughout the Middle East at the expense of our long term allies—Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The Obama administration’s precipitous withdrawal from Iraq gave Iran a clear signal that we would not contest their influence over Iraq. It was a foolish, or worse, attempt to obtain a nuclear weapons agreement with the evil Ayatollah Khamenei regime. Today, Iran is already a nuclear threshold state that has sufficient enriched uranium to make 8 to 12 nuclear weapons within a few months. Furthermore, a reliable source has informed me that Iran secretly bought four nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Muslim Republic of Kazakhstan in 1992. They were said to have been transferred to Iran and stored in the Lavizan military site near Tehran.
More recently, it was reported by Jerome Corsi of WorldNetDaily, on 26 February, 2015, that Iran is operating another secret advanced, uranium underground enrichment site northeast of Tehran that was previously unknown to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
With thousands of American lives lost due to Iran’s more than 35 years of aggression against the United States, it is inconceivable that any American administration would agree to enter into such a critical agreement, like the one currently being negotiated with such an evil regime.
When you consider all of the above, as well as the Obama administration’s abuse of power and the many scandals including Benghazi, the IRS, Operation Fast and Furious, Obamacare, and the immigration fiasco, any other administration would be brought up on charges of threatening the security of the United States. America, it’s up to you to influence your representatives to hold President Obama accountable.
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.
A No-go Zone for Truth
By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media
Accurately reporting on no-go zones dominated by Muslims in Europe is now a no-go zone. Our media have made a mess of the whole issue and are now afraid to dig themselves out. What a disgrace and disservice to news consumers.
Jumping on the pile, the left-wing Politico has published a story accusing Louisiana Republican Governor and possible presidential candidate Bobby Jindal of telling a “lie” about the no-go zones by saying they exist. But the story is itself based on a lie. Things are so twisted that Politico is doing the lying by denying that the no-go zones exist. How did we get in such a mess?
Let’s understand that the method in this madness is to accommodate the radical Muslim lobby and demonize politicians who talk about the jihad problem.
First of all, the evidence shows that the zones or areas do exist. We cited evidence for them, and numerous other outlets have done so as well. The confusion stems from a Fox News apology over the matter that should never have been made.
Steve Emerson made a mistake on one Fox show in saying that “in Britain, it’s not just no-go zones, there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in.”
Acknowledging his error, Emerson tells WorldNetDaily that he is nevertheless appalled that the media have now decided that any and all reporting on no-go zones is wrong. “It’s outrageous for media outlets to apologize, saying ‘no-go zones’ don’t exist in Europe, when even the New York Times for years has published articles documenting Muslim ‘no-go zones’ do exist in European countries like France,” he tells WND reporter Jerome Corsi.
Corsi notes that “NBC News, the New York Times, the Associated Press and others were using the term ‘no-go’ zones for Muslim-majority neighborhoods in Paris when Muslim youth gangs were rampaging through the streets and setting cars on fire.”
We made the same point in our treatment of the issue, noting that Fox News suddenly altered its reporting of the Muslim riots in France in 2005, determining them to be “civil riots” instead. We saw then the power of the Islamists to alter Fox’s coverage.
Fox News media reporter Howard Kurtz had a great opportunity on his Sunday show “Media Buzz” to set the record straight. Instead of confronting his own channel over the unnecessary apology, Kurtz praised CNN’s Anderson Cooper for making the same kind of apology. But then he mentioned that other outlets have been reporting on the no-go zones for years. So an apology wasn’t necessary after all! “The subject is complicated,” he said. No it’s not. Just tell the truth.
If all of this is unnecessarily confusing, it’s clearly because of the unnecessary Fox apology. It was a political apology. There is no other explanation. It is this kind of pandering that is becoming a pattern at Fox, which had earlier yanked anchor Bret Baier from a Catholic conference under pressure from the homosexual lobby.
Liberal special interest groups should not have this kind of influence on a news organization, especially one claiming “fair and balanced” coverage that is also supposed to be accurate.
Journalism 101 teaches that corrections or apologies are called for when errors are made. Since no-go areas do in fact exist, according to numerous sources, no apology was necessary. Yet, Fox News offered the view that since the no-go zones are not “specific” or “formal” entities, they really don’t exist. Fox was wrong. This is complete nonsense and a gross distortion of the concept.
Robert Spencer makes the observation, “The Fox apology is all the more curious in light of the fact that others, even on the Left, have noticed the no-go zones in France before some Fox commentators began talking about them in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.”
Citing just one example of many, he notes that David Ignatius had written in The New York Times back in 2002, “Yet Arab gangs regularly vandalize synagogues here, the North African suburbs have become no-go zones at night, and the French continue to shrug their shoulders.”
Spencer notes that Fox’s apology “only plays into the hands of leftists and Islamic supremacists who have a vested interest in rendering people ignorant and complacent about the reality of what is going on in these areas.”
He suggests that Fox “apologize for its apology.” That would perhaps further confuse matters, but it is the right thing to do.
Without an apology for the apology, those who apologize for the Islamization of Europe like Arif Rafiq will continue to claim, as he did in Politico, that Jindal, by even discussing the no-go zones, “has been repeating a lie that even Fox News was forced to apologize for.” The Fox News correction, or apology, though unwarranted, is now being cited as the media standard.
Politico headlined the piece, “Bobby Jindal’s Muslim Problem,” as if the governor has a bias against Muslims. So a Fox News apology has now been transformed into an indictment of a conservative political figure. Soon, Jindal will be denounced as an “Islamophobe,” another smear term used by the radical Islam lobby.
The liberal media won’t believe any of Fox’s normal day-to-day reports. But when the channel claims to have made an error that makes the rest of the media look good by comparison, that suddenly becomes the truth and the channel has to be believed. This is how reality is turned upside down.
The real story is why Fox made this unnecessary correction. The clout of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Council on American-Islamic Relations is the most likely explanation. Fox has undermined its own credibility by apologizing for something that was true. It is bizarre and was absolutely unnecessary.
Pamela Geller is correct that the major media are “failing us.” It’s terribly tragic that at a time when we were depending on one channel, Fox, to tell the truth, it has failed us, too.
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