Benghazi Whistleblower Shocked ‘My Jaw Hit the Floor’ When Obama Blamed YouTube
If the Benghazi cover-up had occurred during the Bush presidency, every mainstream media outlet would have started demanding impeachment before the dust even settled on the blood-stained consulate compound. Even in the Clinton era, the media only went so far to protect Clinton when his sex scandal exploded. But with Obama, the rules are different. Nothing, absolutely nothing, must be allowed to touch their man. This raises two questions about Benghazi: How far will the media go to bury a story that, like Lazarus, keeps coming back every time they pronounce it dead; and at what point will the story become so huge (as seems to be the case now) that there is nothing the media can do to protect Obama?In the last week, revelations, all of them harmful to the administration, have been popping out all over. We learned about the State Department’s dereliction of duty before the Benghazi terrorist attack, the President’s dereliction of duty during the Benghazi attack, and both State’s and the President’s cover-up after the attack. Congress is also planning on holding hearings with serious witnesses, not just middle level managers anxious for their 15-minutes of fame, and we will finally get to hear from the survivors whom Obama kept hidden.
One of these witnesses is Gregory Hicks, who was deputy chief of mission for the U.S. in Libya and who became the highest ranking U.S. official in Libya once Ambassador Stevens was murdered. The other high-ranking witnesses are Mark I. Thompson, a former Marine and now the deputy coordinator for Operations in the agency’s Counterterrorism Bureau; and Eric Nordstrom, a diplomatic security officer who was the regional security officer in Libya, the top security officer in the country in the months leading up to the attacks.
Face the Nation obtained the transcript of Gregory Hicks’ interview with investigators after the attack, and it makes for compelling reading. If Hicks sticks with his earlier responses, he will testify to Congress that he knew immediately that the attack on the consulate was a terrorist attack – and, moreover, that he was absolutely shocked when the administration blamed a video review gone sour.
Here are just some of the statements that Face the Nation obtained from Hicks’ interview with investigators in the wake of the attack. We can expect to hear reiterations of these statements when he’s under oath before Congress:
Repudiating the administration’s claim that there was no terrorist attack: “I think everybody in the mission thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning.”
Challenging the claim that Ambassador Stevens never reported what was going on: “For there to have been a demonstration on Chris Stevens’s front door and him not to have reported it is unbelievable. I never reported a demonstration; I reported an attack on the consulate. Chris – Chris’s last report, if you want to say his final report – is, ‘Greg, we are under attack.’”
His response to seeing Susan Rice go on the talk shows and blame a YouTube video that no one had even seen as justification for the murder of four Americans, including an ambassador: “I’ve never been as embarrassed in my life, in my career, as on that day. The net impact of what has transpired is, [Rice,] the spokesperson of the most powerful country in the world, has basically said that the president of Libya is either a liar of doesn’t know what he’s talking about. ….My jaw hit the floor as I watched this.”
Hicks is also furious about the disinformation Susan Rice spread when she made the round of the Sunday news shows, relying upon talking points that the administration had deliberately altered to cover-up its malfeasance. To Hicks, the damage was “immeasurable.” Because of the lies that Rice (knowingly or unknowingly) spouted, the investigation came to a stand-still: “The reason it took us so long to get the FBI to Benghazi is because of those Sunday talk shows.” In addition, the new President of Libya, Mohammed al-Magariaf, was humiliated “in front of not only his own people, but the world.” Hicks says that his contacts tell him that Magariaf still hasn’t forgiven Ambassador Rice.
Rep. Darryl Issa (R., Calif.), who will be chairing the hearings, told Face the Nation that the Obama administration, through its lies and cover-ups, committed the “fatal error” of throwing under the bus its relationship with the still-new Libyan government:
You can’t insult a foreign leader in a greater way than happened literally here, just those few days later. Ambassadors know that the one thing you can’t do is contradict your host, especially at a time when you need their cooperation. This was a fatal error to our relationship, at least for a period of time. And we can’t find the purpose. [Secretary of State Hillary Clinton] should have been among – above all else – the person who was on the same sheet of music with the Libyan government, and she wasn’t.Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have a lot to answer for, to those who died, to the survivors (whom we will finally see at the hearings), to the Libyan people, to the American people, and, assuming each has one, to their own consciences. We Americans can do our bit to help get the truth out by making sure that the mainstream media doesn’t bury this story by reporting it in small print on the last page, or by spinning it so that it’s about a Republican Congressman’s haircut or verbal miscues, rather than about something that could conceivably be an impeachable offense. Use your social media or your blogs to make sure that the coming testimony before the House reaches the American people.
No comments:
Post a Comment