12/1/15

Fresh Perspectives on Benghazi Keep the Scandals Alive

While much of the focus of attention on the Benghazi scandal has been about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s actions, and inaction, which may have led to the deaths of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans, there are other aspects of the story that have gotten far less attention, but are, in fact, more revealing and more damning about the foreign policy of the Obama administration.

The failure of the State Department to respond to more than 600 requests for increased security in Libya, and specifically Benghazi, and Mrs. Clinton’s claim that she was unaware of those requests, as she stated at the October 22nd hearing of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, were damning enough.

When Accuracy in Media decided two-and-a-half years ago to form the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi (CCB), it was because it had become clear that Congress was doing an inadequate job of getting to the truth, and that the media were doing their best to pretend that this was a phony scandal that didn’t reflect badly on either President Obama or then-Secretary of State Clinton.

Among the key findings of the Commission was the fact that the war in Libya, initially described as a an effort to prevent a humanitarian crisis, but which later became a mission to take out the Libyan dictator, Muammar Qaddafi, could very possibly have been avoided through negotiations—an offer the Obama administration turned down. Then there was the dereliction of duty, namely the failure to bring available military forces to bear in an effort to save at least some of the Americans under attack during the night of September 11 and into the early morning of September 12, 2012.

There were the lies about the cause of the attack. We learned with greater specificity at the October hearing that Mrs. Clinton knew the first night, and the following day, that this was a planned, organized terrorist attack by an al-Qaeda related group. She said so in no uncertain terms to her daughter, to the president of Libya and to the Egyptian prime minister. Yet the story she conspired to tell the world, and the family members of the victims of the attack, was that the attack was the result of a YouTube video that was viewed as an insult to Islam.

But with all that, which is well documented and laid out in the CCB’s interim report released in April of 2014, the bigger story remains, “How America Switched Sides in the War on Terror.” This was the result of the fact that the Obama administration “facilitated the delivery of weapons and military support to al Qa’eda-linked rebels in Libya,” as we stated in the report.

Much more information has come out proving that to be the case. Breitbart News’ national security correspondent Edwin Mora has taken a detailed look at this part of the story, interviewing a couple of members of the CCB, and has done an excellent job of laying out the facts. It couldn’t be more timely, as the world is coming to grips with how to deal with the cancer of ISIS—one of the chief beneficiaries of this disastrous U.S. policy—and other jihadist groups that are causing so much death and destruction throughout the world today. But have no fear. According to President Obama, the gathering of more than 150 nations in Paris to posture about global warming serves as “a powerful rebuke to the terrorists.” He has said more than 20 times that climate change is a greater threat to future generations than terrorism, and during his first day in Paris for the conference he said that holding the conference there at this time is “an act of defiance that proves nothing will deter us.”

In Mora’s article for Breitbart, “Benghazi Commission: Obama Admin Gun-Running Scheme Armed Islamic State,” he cites Clare Lopez of the CCB, saying, “The Obama administration pursued a policy in Libya back in 2011 that ultimately allowed guns to walk into the hands of jihadists linked to the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) and al-Qaeda (AQ) in Syria.”

Lopez, the primary author of the CCB report, said, “The ripple effects of the illegal policy to arm America’s enemies continue to be felt as the U.S. military is currently leading a war against ISIS and AQ terrorists in Iraq and Syria.”

“‘The Obama administration effectively switched sides in what used to be called the Global War on Terror [GWOT] when it decided to overthrow the sovereign government of our Libyan ally, Muammar Qaddafi, who’d been helping in the fight against al-Qaeda, by actually teaming up with and facilitating gun-running to Libyan al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood [MB] elements there in 2011,’ explained Lopez. ‘This U.S. gun-running policy in 2011 during the Libyan revolution was directed by [then] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and [the late Libya Ambassador] Christopher Stevens, who was her official envoy to the Libyan AQ rebels.’”

“‘To avoid having the funds tracked back to the Obama administration, the arms flow to Libya was financed through the United Arab Emirates, while Qatar served as the logistical and shipping hub,’ she noted.”

I urge you to read the entire Breitbart article, and also this Washington Times article, “Clinton State Department approved U.S. weapons shipment to Libya despite ban,” based on documents recovered from the compound in Benghazi. The article gives names and details of how the weapons were transferred, and confirmation that Hillary Clinton’s State Department knew all about it.

There is also a movie coming out in January entitled “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi,” that we’re hoping is as powerful as the book and the story from the men who wrote it. In the trailer, it shows the authors of the book, members of the CIA Annex Security Team, being told to “stand down.” That phrase is highly charged, because it is something that the Obama administration has claimed never happened. But it did, according to these heroes, who risked their lives to travel the one mile from the CIA Annex to the Special Mission Compound where Ambassador Stevens and Information Officer Sean Smith were killed. They were already dead by the time the men arrived. The movie, from the very successful action-adventure director Michael Bay (“Transformers,” “Pearl Harbor,” “Armageddon”), promises to put Benghazi back in the headlines, at least for a little while.

07/9/15

AIM Editor Talks About Latest Clinton Email Dump

Accuracy in Media

AIM Editor Roger Aronoff appeared on July 7 on the Philadelphia, PA Conservative Commandos radio show with Rick Trader and Anna C. Little to talk about Aronoff’s recent column “Email Dumps Continue to Undermine Clinton Candidacy.”

Hillary Clinton’s excuses regarding her private email server were immediately exposed as lies when Sidney Blumenthal provided additional emails to the Select Committee on Benghazi, ones that she herself had not provided to the State Department.

Blumenthal “was faced with a dilemma when he went to the Committee,” said Aronoff on the show. He added that if Blumenthal had withheld the emails that made clear that Mrs. Clinton hadn’t turned over all of her work-related emails to the Committee, he would have been risking being held in contempt by the Committee.

“So what we know is that she provided edited material, she didn’t provide all the material—and so she’s caught in these lies,” said Aronoff. He also noted that some of her messages are now classified.

“Yet you don’t hear the media talking about it at all,” he continued. “It’s basically, ‘What did [Donald] Trump say?’ and ‘Ask Chris Christie what Trump said,’ and ask everybody what Trump said, and let’s spend three hours talking about that.”

“But none of this with the apparent nominee for the Democrats,” said Aronoff. “There’s no—very little interest [from] the media in digging into this and talking about this.”

This scandal has a twin counterpart in the conflicts of interest posed by the Clinton Foundation, another story the mainstream media have either not pursued or attacked. “So what they ended up doing was through the Clinton Foundation…that when Hillary was Secretary of State they would take millions of dollars from countries who were doing business with the U.S. government,” he said. “And, again, everyone just wants to act like she’s just above all that, that there’s no way she would do anything. But yet she gets caught in lie, after lie, after lie…”

Aronoff argued that since there is no controlling legal authority willing to hold Clinton accountable at this time, the consequences for her may be more political than legal, especially if Vice President Joe Biden were to jump into the Democratic presidential primary. “I think the Clintons believe it’s their time and their entitlement to have that position,” he said, “and if they see the Obama administration all of a sudden line up behind Biden, whether openly and overtly or kind of behind the scenes, I think it’s going to be a real battle in the party.”

While the Select Committee is currently focused on accessing Clinton’s and her staff’s emails, no further information is necessary to expose the ongoing Benghazi cover-up by the Obama administration and Mrs. Clinton. “We put out a report a year ago April, and people can go look at this,” said Aronoff. “It’s at aim.org/Benghazi, and see what the real story is.”

The Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi’s interim report details how the initial intervention in Libya was unnecessary, that Muammar Qaddafi offered truce talks that the U.S. did not pursue, and that the U.S. government was facilitating the provision of arms to al-Qaeda-linked rebels in that nation.

CCB Member and former CIA officer Clare Lopez recently explained to WorldNetDaily that when Ambassador Chris “Stevens was facilitating the delivery of weapons to the al-Qaida-affiliated militia in Libya, he was living in the facility in Benghazi that was later designated the Special Mission Compound.”

You can listen to the complete interview here.

04/24/15

Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi Report, One Year Later

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

April 22nd marked the one-year anniversary of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi’s (CCB) 2014 Interim Report illuminating key details about the ongoing Benghazi scandal.

The CCB’s interim report found last year that:

The war in Libya was not only unnecessary, but the administration quashed possible truce talks between itself and Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi at a crucial juncture.
The United States switched sides in the War on Terror, facilitating the provision of weapons to al Qaeda-linked rebels during the Libyan civil war.

These two actions fostered the climate for the preventable September 11, 2012 terror attacks. Yet many in the media seem uninterested in exploring the reasons why the United States intervened in Libya in the first place, or the role that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now running for president, played in pushing the United States to intervene there.

President Obama’s decision to aid al-Qaeda-linked rebels and switch sides in the War on Terror in Libya also reveals his core foreign policy strategy—that America’s enemies should not be considered adversaries, but as allies or strategic partners, regardless of the foreign leaders’ totalitarian ideology, whether or not these countries oppress their citizens, and whether or not future governments will facilitate Islamic terror.

“The failure to attempt to rescue these Americans amounts to a dereliction of duty,” stated the report. Three Annex Security Team members later confirmed that they were told by the CIA to stand down three times.

The findings of our report ring even more true today as more and more evidence has been found of a government cover-up on Benghazi. As I recently wrote, Obama administration leaders’ early knowledge that these were terror attacks indicates that our government deliberately misled the public during an election season. These leaders, including President Obama and Secretary Clinton, then blamed terror attacks against Americans on an Internet video about the life of Muhammad.

The question is not who is responsible, but rather when will the ringleaders be held accountable?

The CCB had also been calling for a Select Committee on Benghazi, long before our Interim Report was issued last April 22nd. When the Select Committee on Benghazi was finally established on May 8, 2014, with Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) as chairman, it was a move widely applauded by the CCB and others determined to see the truth come out and people held accountable. However, there have only been three public hearings to date. But Gowdy recently told me that they have conducted more than 20 transcribed interviews in private since January, including with key people never before interviewed by any previous congressional investigatory committee. So the investigation continues behind closed doors. The Committee has requested a private interview with Mrs. Clinton by May 1st.

“I expect the negotiations to be ongoing,” said Gowdy, according to The Washington Times. “I think she’ll come twice. …I hope she will.” But according to a letter sent on April 22nd from Mrs. Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, she is willing to address the committee in public, but not in private. Perhaps that has something to do with the rules limiting the amount of time each Member can question her in a public hearing.

As we move deeper into the presidential political season, the stakes and the stagecraft become more complicated. But truth and accountability remain the ultimate purpose of these investigations.

While Newsmax indicates that the Select Committee’s investigative findings will likely be issued in 2016, what America already knows about this scandal makes it clear that the ensuing government cover-up serves as a Rosetta stone for widespread abuse-of-power and dishonesty by the Obama administration.

As it did last year before this issue made the media spotlight, the CCB will continue its fight to uncover the truth about Benghazi. We have filed a number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and sued the administration to obtain access to documents which will aid the push for administration accountability.

The liberal media have and will likely continue to label Benghazi as a “phony scandal,” despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. But the CCB will continue to provide the public with additional revelations, despite the fact that a complicit media and the Obama administration would prefer they never come to light.

01/31/15

Qaddafi was willing to step down peacefully but Hillary prevented it

By: James Simpson
DC Independent Examiner

The Citizens Commission on Benghazi revealed last year that Qaddafi was willing to step down peacefully and was in negotiations with the U.S. Government, but those negotiations ceased. AIM’s Roger Aronoff quotes their findings, “Despite the willingness of both AFRICOM Commander Gen. Carter Ham and Muammar Qaddafi to pursue the possibility of truce talks, permission was not given to Gen. Ham from his chain of command in the Pentagon and the window of opportunity closed.”

The Washington Times has revealed that Hillary Clinton stepped in to quash the discussions. She would have never done this without Obama’s express permission. Now why, I ask you, would two diehard liberals dedicated to “world peace” for their entire lives miss a perfect opportunity to avoid a civil war? Was it a blood lust desire to see Qaddafi murdered by revolutionaries as payback for Pan Am 103? Nothing of the sort. Obama has shown himself more than willing to shed American blood when it serves no useful purpose. If America has something to gain, only then will he back off.

Believe it or not, Qaddafi had become somewhat of an ally in the war on terror. Why would this nothing of a president want to lose that small foreign policy advantage? When the so-called “Arab Spring” began in 2011, I said that “we are witnessing the collapse of the Middle East“. Events since have proven that exactly correct. All this instability set the stage for the ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization that is now part and parcel of the Obama administration. Obama wants to implode the Middle East in order to set the stage for the destruction of Israel, our last remaining ally.

Rep. Gowdy or some other congressman needs to conjure the courage to call Obama out. He is engaged in a deadly betrayal of our country and people. This is high treason and these people are monsters.