Former CIA top officer clearly stated that no questionable intelligence was ever given to Secretary of State Clinton about any “Video” being part of any motivation for the Benghazi attackers on 9/11/12
Evidence clearly points to fact that the Benghazi narrative pushed for weeks by the Obama Administration following the attacks of 9/11/12 was a “Big Lie” motivated by domestic U.S. politics — and Hillary Clinton was completely signed-on to that “Big Lie” from the very beginning
AND NOW — THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION WON’T AUTHORIZE THE RELEASE OF SEC/STATE HILLARY CLINTON’S E-MAILS WITH THE WHITE HOUSE — INCLUDING THOSE RELATED TO BENGHAZI
WHAT THE FORMER [ACTING] HEAD OF THE CIA SAID
According to Kerry Picket writing in the Daily Caller — “Michael Morell, former deputy director and acting director of the CIA, disputes former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s assertion that bad intelligence led her to blame the attack on the diplomatic facilities in Benghazi was a result of a You Tube video that ridiculed Islam.... In Morell’s 2015 book The Great War of Our Time, he writes that while the CIA knew ‘the demonstration and violence in Cairo were sparked by people upset over a YouTube video,’ intelligence ‘analysts never said the video was a factor in the Benghazi attacks.’ (p. 205-206)....” (See “Former CIA Chief: ‘Analysts Never Said The Video Was A Factor In The Benghazi Attacks’ ” by Kerry Pickett, 10/31/15, Daily Caller [http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/31/former-cia-chief-analysts-never-said-the-video-was-a-factor-in-the-benghazi-attacks/]).As those who watched Hillary Clinton testify at the Benghazi Hearing and readers of the Daily Caller article cited above know clearly, Hillary Clinton’s E-mails and other records of her communications show that she was quite aware on the night of the Benghazi attacks and the days immediately following that a You Tube video had nothing to do with causing those attacks.....
CLINTON REPEATEDLY BLAMED THE INTERNET VIDEO — STARTING ON THE NIGHT OF THE BENGHAZI ATTACKS AND THE DAYS IMMEDIATELY THEREAFTER
According to the Kerry Pickett- Daily Caller analysis — Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton, made public statements that were vastly different from her private remarks about the attack.On the very night of the attack, the State Department sent out a statement by Secretary Clinton wherein she blamed the Benghazi attack on “inflammatory material posted on the internet.”
Clinton made a similar public statement the day after the attack, “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior [the deadly attack in Benghazi], along with the protest that took place at our Embassy in Cairo yesterday, as a response to inflammatory material posted on the internet.”
Secretary Clinton then continued to blame the internet video for the attack in Benghazi during her formal public remarks in the following days after the attacks, as well. Some of these remarks statements were reported to have occurred at the formal transfer of remains ceremony for the Benghazi victims at Andrews Air Force Base; and others privately with some of the family members of the victims.
THIS WEEKEND THE HOUSE SELECT BENGHAZI COMMITTEE RELEASED A REDACTED E-MAIL THAT SHOWED THE LIBYAN EMBASSY HAD CAUTIONED THEIR HIGHER-UPS AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT THAT THEY SHOULD NOT CONFLATE THE INTERNET VIDEO NARRATIVE WITH ANY OF THE STATED CAUSES FOR THE ATTACK ON BENGHAZI ON 9/11/12
In part, the E-mail released by the Benghazi Committee said the following: “Date: Friday, September 14, 2012 6:43:39 AM.... Colleagues, I mentioned to [redacted] this morning, and want to share with all of you, our view at Embassy Tripoli that we must be cautious in our local messaging with regard to the inflammatory film trailer, adapting it to Libyan conditions. Our monitoring of the Libyan media and conversations with Libyans suggest that the films not as explosive of an issue here as it appears to be in other countries in the region.... And it is becoming increasingly clear that the series of events in Benghazi was much more terrorist attack than a protest which escalated into violence. It is our opinion that in our messaging, we want to distinguish, not conflate, the events in other countries with this well-planned attack by militant extremists....”NONETHELESS, HILLARY CLINTON TESTIFIED TO THE BENGHAZI COMMITTEE THAT SHE “... NEEDED TO BE TALKING ABOUT THE VIDEO...”
Very importantly, key passages in the Pickett-Daily Caller article made note of the following testimony by former Secretary Hillary Clinton: “When asked at last week’s Benghazi Committee hearing why she blamed the You Tube video when she knew very well it was not the cause of the attack, Clinton proclaimed, she ‘needed to be talking about the video.... ‘None of us can speak to the individual motivations of those terrorists who overran our compound and who attacked our CIA annex. There were probably a number of different motivations,’ she said, adding that the intelligence community ‘took the lead’ in analyzing the information at the time.... ‘We also knew, congressman, because my responsibility was what was happening throughout the region, I needed to be talking about the video, because I needed to put other governments and other people on notice that we were not going to let them get away with attacking us, as they did in Tunis, as they did in Khartoum,’ she said....”ANOTHER CONSERVATIVE OUTLET FOCUSES ON HILLARY CLINTON”S VERY “NUANCED” AND “EVOLVED” TESTIMONY ABOUT THE YOU-TUBE VIDEO AND THE BENGHAZI ATTACKS
“[Hillary Clinton] now takes a more nuanced, twisted-like-a-pretzel position in which maybe some non-terrorist Muslims were suddenly stirred to violence in Libya by the video, but really at the same time it was a terrorist attack, something she testified [at the Benghazi Hearing had] been her position the whole time. She talked about the video publicly not to point fingers but as a warning, she testified, to those who might attack U.S. interests in the region. In other words, like a good defense lawyer, Hillary was trying to confuse the issues and muddy the waters.... [Former Sec/State Hillary Clinton] seems able to function just fine with what must be chronic cognitive dissonance....” (See “HILLARY: I DIDN'T BLAME BENGHAZI ON THE YOUTUBE VIDEO – Four pinocchios for the pantsuit” by Matthew Vadum, 10/23/15, Frontpage Mag [http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260544/hillary-i-didnt-blame-benghazi-youtube-video-matthew-vadum]).It seems that based upon her testimony, Hillary’s current position about the You Tube video’s “CAUSING” the Benghazi attacks is that — she didn’t specifically say that about Benghazi, itself, but she had to say it when talking about Benghazi to stop other events like Benghazi happening in other locations that were similar to Benghazi — and she said during the days shortly after the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, the intelligence wasn’t clear that the video didn’t cause the Benghazi attacks and there was confusion about whether it did — and she believes to this day that some of those involved in the Benghazi attacks might have been motivated by the video to some extent. OR TO PUT IT MORE SIMPLY — SHE BELIEVES SHE NEVER SAID IT, BUT IF SHE DID SAY IT, SHE BELIEVED THAT TO SOME EXTENT IT WAS TRUE AT THE TIME BECAUSE OF ALL THE CONFUSION — AND FOR CERTAIN PURPOSES, SHE STILL BELIEVES IT
WHITE HOUSE BLOCKS RELEASE OF CLINTON-OBAMA AND OTHER CLINTON-WHITE HOUSE E-MAILS
Along with the scheduled release of thousands more pages of HRC’s E-mails this past Friday by the State Department, came an announcement that the State Department won't release any Obama-Clinton E-mails, because the White House won't authorize the release of the handful of emails between President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Citing as its justification for that non-release was longstanding precedent invoked by several past presidents of both parties, which precedents established that internal presidential communications should remain confidential (See “White House Aims to Stop Release of Obama-Clinton Emails” by Maichael D. Shear & Michael S. Schmidt, 10/30/15, NY Times[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/us/politics/white-house-seeks-to-keep-some-clinton-emails-secret.html?_r=0]).
It should be noted that the Times' article cited above made clear that although it was refusing to allow the State Department to "release" the problematic E-mails and other communications, the White House was not specifically invoking the principle and doctrine of "Executive Privilege," which usually involves significant political conflicts with one of the other branches of government.
Former Secretary Clinton has long said that she wants ALL of her E-mails related to Benghazi (And other matters of Public Interest) released — subject to vetting for classification and redaction for security. However, from very early in the process, there had been talk of the probable invocation of Presidential privilege for E-mails to the President and his top White House advisers.
In some ways Hillary might have been playing it all ways to the middle all along — calling for complete openness, while expecting that security considerations and Executive Privilege would be used to shield some very significant material in her E-mails, including critical Benghazi material.
UPDATE: THE “BIGGER STORY ABOUT HILLARY CLINTON AND THE ‘BIG LIE’ ABOUT BENGHAZI” EDITION
ReplyDeleteTAMMY BRUCE ARTICLE POINTS OUT THAT HILLARY’S “MALIGNANT NARCISSISM” WAS FULLY ON DISPLAY AT THE BENGHAZI HEARING — IN HILLARY CLINTON’S VIEW OF THE WORLD HER OWN POLITICAL SURVIVAL IS FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE REAL LIFE SURVIVAL OF AMBASSADOR STEVENS AND/OR THOSE WHO DID TRY TO SAVE HIM AND THEMSELVES
IN HILLARY-WORLD EVERYTHING IS FINE IF HILLARY CAN SHOW THAT INCONVENIENT FACTS DON’T EFFECT THE PERCEPTION OF ALL THE WONDERFUL STUFF THAT SHE DID OR SLOW DOWN HER CAMPAIGN — AND THAT EVEN BEING EXPOSED FOR TELLING THE “BIG LIE” SIMPLY DIDN’T PHASE CLINTON IN THE LEAST
Tammy Bruce, writing in “The Washington Times,” said that, “After the Benghazi hearing, Hillary’s sycophantic mainstream media launched into mission mode declaring her the ‘winner’ and the congressional hearing focusing on what happened the night four Americans were murdered in Benghazi a failed and the old, reliable right-wing conspiracy.... This spin was imperative as something remarkable was confirmed through email evidence: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was exposed as having known the attack on our consulate was not the absurd scenario of a protest against a video, but a terrorist attack launched by a terrorist ‘al Qaeda like group’ in an email to her daughter Chelsea.... Yet, this exposure of a sitting secretary of state deliberately lying to the families of the fallen and to the American people is supposed to mean nothing to us. And it seems to mean nothing at all to Hillary....” (See “Hillary Clinton, a case-study in narcissism” by Tammy Bruce, 11/2/15, The Washington Times [http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/2/tammy-bruce-hillary-clinton-case-study-narcissism/]).
The Bruce-Washington Times article goes on to note that — “.... Hillary wasn’t [at the Benghazi Hearing] to find the truth for her dead friends, her mission was, ironically, to survive an investigation that she knew would expose her for what she truly is.... You see, the survival of Hillary’s and President Obama’s political narrative featuring the lie about a defeated al Qaeda was simply more important than the survival of Americans in danger.... So, voila, the lie about a YouTube video maker was offered to protect the big lie about al Qaeda being ‘on the run.’ The ultimate, and deadly, vicious circle — more lies to cover up the earlier lies. When does it stop, nobody knows....”
Tammy Bruce pulled no punches painting a word picture about the point of her article with this passage: “.... Soon after the hearing and as Hillary began what can only be described as ghoulish celebrations, syndicated cartoonist Glenn McCoy captured Hillary’s world, one which no one else seems willing to face: he draws her dancing on the graves of the Benghazi fallen, Doherty, Woods, Smith and Stevens, with a newspaper clipping about the hearing floating by as a gleeful Hillary shouts ‘I survived !’...”