Northwest Indiana Discussion

The liberal blog Think Progress suddenly reversed its stance on Benghazi whistleblower Gregory Hicks, the State Department’s former deputy chief of mission in Libya, citing unnamed State officials in an attempt to sully Hicks’ testimony before a House committee on Wednesday.

The allegations came less than 48 hours after the website touted Hicks’ testimony as supporting the administration’s position on key aspects of its alleged cover-up following attacks on the Benghazi consulate in September.

Hicks “debunk[ed] right-wing Benghazi conspiracy theories” in his testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote blogger Hayes Brown on Wednesday.

By Friday, Brown was calling into question Hicks’ credibility, sourcing indictments of his management style to anonymous “staffers based in Libya.”

“I’ve effectively been demoted from deputy chief of mission to desk officer,” Hicks told the committee.

CIA director David Petraeus was surprised when he read the freshly rewritten talking points an aide had emailed him in the early afternoon of Saturday, September 15. One day earlier, analysts with the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis had drafted a set of unclassified talking points policymakers could use to discuss the attacks in Benghazi, Libya. But this new version—produced with input from senior Obama administration policymakers—was a shadow of the original.

The original CIA talking points had been blunt: The assault on U.S. facilities in Benghazi was a terrorist attack conducted by a large group of Islamic extremists, including some with ties to al Qaeda.

These were strong claims. The CIA usually qualifies its assessments, providing policymakers a sense of whether the conclusions of its analysis are offered with “high confidence,” “moderate confidence,” or “low confidence.” That first draft signaled confidence, even certainty: “We do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda participated in the attack.”

The version Petraeus received in his inbox Saturday, however, had none. The only remaining allusion to the bad guys noted that “extremists” might have participated in “violent demonstrations.”

In an email at 2:44 p.m. to Chip Walter, head of the CIA’s legislative affairs office, Petraeus expressed frustration at the new, scrubbed talking points, noting that they had been stripped of much of the content his agency had provided. Petraeus noted with evident disappointment that the policymakers had even taken out the line about the CIA’s warning on Cairo. The CIA director, long regarded as a team player, declined to pick a fight with the White House and seemed resigned to the propagation of the administration’s preferred narrative. The final decisions about what to tell the American people rest with the national security staff, he reminded Walter, and not with the CIA.

“People may be starting to use the I-word before too long,” Inhofe said on a radio program.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) suggested that President Obama could be impeached over what he alleged was a White House cover-up after last year’s attack in Benghazi, Libya.

Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview Thursday with the “Rusty Humphries Show” that impeachment would become an issue soon over the “greatest cover-up in American history.”

“People may be starting to use the I-word before too long,” Inhofe said.

“The I-word meaning impeachment?” Humphries asked.

“Yeah,” Inhofe responded.

“Of all the great cover-ups in history — the Pentagon papers, Iran-Contra, Watergate, all the rest of them — this … is going to go down as most egregious cover-up in American history,” Inhofe said.

“These changes don’t resolve all of my issues or those of my building’s leadership.” With that sentence, one in a series of emails and draft “talking points” leaked to Jonathan Karl of ABC News, the Obama administration was caught playing politics with Benghazi.

The White House has long maintained that the talking points were drafted almost exclusively by the CIA, a claim that gave cover to both President Obama and his potential successor, Clinton. “Those talking points originated from the intelligence community,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said in November, adding that the only editing by the White House or the State Department was to change the word “consulate” to “diplomatic facility.” Nuland’s emails prove him wrong. As I wrote yesterday (“Why Benghazi is a Blow to Obama and Clinton”), Obama has earned the trust of most Americans but credibility is a fragile thing.

Throw Hillary under the bus? In a statement to ABC, Carney notably insulates the West Wing and not the State Department by saying “the only edits made by anyone here at the White House were stylistic and nonsubstantive.” And, with no apparent regard to hypocrisy, Carney criticized the GOP for attempting to “politicize the talking points.”

The State Department contributed to heavily editing talking points surrounding the attacks that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Libya, leading to the removal of references to terror groups and CIA warnings about threats in the region, according to emails and documents obtained by ABC News.

The ABC News report says that the White House and State Department were informed by intelligence officials that the CIA was aware of potential threats to the Libyan consulate from terror groups before the attacks. But the report said references to those threats were removed from the final version of the talking points used by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice because of pressure from the State Department.

According to the network, “12 different versions of the talking points” indicate extensive editing was done after they were first drafted by the CIA.

Rice appeared on Sunday news shows following the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks and argued they were a spontaneous reaction to a video deemed offensive to Islam. The administration later admitted Rice’s claim was made with insufficient intelligence, and labeled the event an act of terror.

One of the emails obtained by ABC shows State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland objecting to a paragraph in the talking points that referenced specific terrorist threats in the region because it “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings.”

The CIA had written that “(t)he Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa’ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya.”

“These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.”

According to the ABC News report, that paragraph was deleted entirely after Nuland’s email.

There’s new evidence, obtained by ABC, that the Obama administration did deliberately purge references to “terrorism” from accounts of the attack on the Benghazi diplomatic mission, which killed four people including the US ambassador to Libya.

Conservatives have long maintained that the administration deliberately suppressed the truth about the attacks.

This is the first hard evidence that the state department did ask for changes to the CIA’s original assessment.

Specifically, they wanted references to previous warnings deleted and this sentence removed: “We do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida participated in the attack.”

There’s little doubt in my mind that this will haunt Hillary Clinton if she decides to run for president, unless she executes some pretty fancy footwork.

State department spokesperson Victoria Nuland is directly implicated, and the fingerprints of senior White House aides Ben Rhodes and Jay Carney are there as well.

Family members of the fallen SEAL Team Six members shot down in Afghanistan in 2011 said members of Congress and top military brass have ignored their concerns about the circumstances surrounding their sons’ deaths at a press conference at the National Press Club on Thursday.

The families of Aaron Vaughn, Michael Strange, and Patrick Hamburger claim they were misled during the investigation and believe that flawed U.S. military “rules of engagement” policy contributed to the downing of a Chinook helicopter by the Taliban in Wardak province. All 38 people on board the Chinook, which included 15 SEAL Team Six members and seven Afghan National Army commandos, were killed.

The families also alleged the U.S. military allowed an imam to pray their sons’ “souls into eternal fire” at a ceremony at Bagram Air Base.

Billy Vaughn, father of Aaron Vaughn, said he contacted numerous members of Congress to ask for help with his inquiries about the attack. He said he received no response from House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.).

“Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.), chairman of the [Armed Services Committee] in the Senate, I called him. I called him numerous times. Told him who I was, who my son was, what had happened. They told me to ‘stop harassing the senator,’” said Vaughn. “Thank you, Sen. Levin.”

Levin’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

The attack occurred three months after the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. The families said Vice President Joe Biden’s public disclosure in May 2011 that SEAL Team Six carried out the raid put the entire elite unit at risk of retribution attacks.

“We’re very concerned that the administration disclosed that the Navy SEALs were involved,” said Patrick Hamburger’s father, Doug Hamburger.

A key Benghazi whistle-blower who has allegedly been punished for speaking out against the administration is a registered Democrat who voted for both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

The lawyer of Gregory Hicks, the former U.S. deputy chief of mission in Libya who testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Wednesday, confirmed the information to The Daily Caller on Saturday.

According to the lawyer, Victoria Toensing, Hicks voted for Clinton during the 2008 primary, and for then-Illinois Sen. Obama in the 2008 general election. He again voted for Obama in 2012.

“The fact is he is a registered Democrat in Virginia. The fact is he voted for Hilary in the primary and Obama and then again for Obama,” Toensing said.

A tear runs down the face of U.S. President Barack Obama as he answers questions about the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya while Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron listens during a joint news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, May 13, 2013. (REUTERS/Jim Bourg)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican chairman of a House panel looking into the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, wants to take depositions from the leaders of an earlier review board.

California’s Rep. Darrell Issa, head of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on Sunday said he would like to interview under oath former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and retired Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pickering and Mullen led an investigation that examined the September attacks that killed four Americans, including an ambassador.

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California says Congress’ review seems aimed at discrediting former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her potential 2016 presidential bid.

Darrell Issa Acknowledges He Learned Nothing New From His Benghazi Hearing

By Ben Armbruster on May 9, 2013

House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) tacitly admitted on Wednesday that his hearing on the Benghazi terror attacks the same day didn’t turn up any new information.

“I’m curious, did you learn anything new today?” Fox News host Greta Van Susteren asked Issa in an interview after the hearing. After meandering around for a bit, Issa finally got to the hearing’s grand revelation — Benghazi was a terror attack:


ISSA: I think the American people learned today from these brave witnesses, these whistleblowers, that the facts as we were told before during and after the attack at Benghazi just simply aren’t what they really were. The acting ambassador after Ambassador Stevens was murdered, told us in great detail about what happened that day and what happened in the days to follow and why we should know that he knew and everyone else in the mission knew from the moment it happened, from the get-go, as he said, that this was a terrorist attack.

While indeed, former deputy chief of mission Greg Hicks’ testimony detailing his experiences as the attacks on the Benghazi diplomatic mission unfolded was new and riveting. But it didn’t have much to do with what Issa himself said the mission of the hearing would be: expose more Obama administration failures and perhaps even some kind of cover-up (of what, is unclear exactly). “Our hearing will examine new facts about what happened and significant problems with the administration’s own review of Benghazi failures,” Issa said previewing the hearing last month. “This committee will expose what they did and hold them accountable to the public.”

There’s “no question,” Issa said two days before the hearing, that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s staff or even Clinton herself, was involved in a Benghazi “cover-up” (there was no cover-up of any kind, by anyone).

However, Issa’s hearing didn’t expose anything, except perhaps how fact-free a number of right-wing Benghazi conspiracy theories are, including the idea that Clinton personally signed off on cables denying additional security for the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi.

But as far as labeling Benghazi a terror attack, that issue has been settled long ago. President Obama referred to it as an “act of terror” the day after the attack and directly referred to the incident as “a terrorist attack” two weeks later. Issa probably didn’t need a hours-long hearing to get confirmation on that. http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/ ... -benghazi/

Public Not Viewing Benghazi As A Scandal, Poll Shows

Public Policy Polling is out with the first new poll of public attitudes regarding the political firestorm surrounding the terrorist attack on U.S. diplomats in Benghazi last September and, so far, it doesn’t look like Republicans are winning this battle:
PPP’s newest national poll finds that Republicans aren’t getting much traction with their focus on Benghazi over the last week. Voters trust Hillary Clinton over Congressional Republicans on the issue of Benghazi by a 49/39 margin and Clinton’s +8 net favorability rating at 52/44 is identical to what it was on our last national poll in late March. Meanwhile Congressional Republicans remain very unpopular with a 36/57 favorability rating.
Voters think Congress should be more focused on other major issues right now rather than Benghazi. By a 56/38 margin they say passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill is more important than continuing to focus on Benghazi, and by a 52/43 spread they think passing a bill requiring background checks for all gun sales should be a higher priority.

While voters overall may think Congress’ focus should be elsewhere there’s no doubt about how mad Republicans are about Benghazi. 41% say they consider this to be the biggest political scandal in American history to only 43% who disagree with that sentiment. Only 10% of Democrats and 20% of independents share that feeling. Republicans think by a 74/19 margin than Benghazi is a worse political scandal than Watergate, by a 74/12 margin that it’s worse than Teapot Dome, and by a 70/20 margin that it’s worse than Iran Contra.

That's a shame.

Please proceed.

“The day after it happened, I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism.”

— President Obama, remarks at a news conference, May 13, 2013

Once again, it appears that we must parse a few presidential words. We went through this question at length during the 2012 election, but perhaps a refresher course is in order.

Notably, during a debate with Republican nominee Mitt Romney, President Obama said that he immediately told the American people that the killing of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya “was an act of terror.” But now he says he called it “an act of terrorism.”

Some readers may object to this continuing focus on words, but presidential aides spend a lot of time on words. Words have consequences. Is there a difference between “act of terror” and “act of terrorism”?

During the campaign, the president could just get away with claiming he said “act of terror,” since he did use those words — though not in the way he often claimed. It seemed like a bit of after-the-fact spin, but those were his actual words — to the surprise of Mitt Romney in the debate.

But the president’s claim that he said “act of terrorism” is taking revisionist history too far, given that he repeatedly refused to commit to that phrase when asked directly by reporters in the weeks after the attack. He appears to have gone out of his way to avoid saying it was a terrorist attack, so he has little standing to make that claim now.

Indeed, the initial unedited talking points did not call it an act of terrorism. Instead of pretending the right words were uttered, it would be far better to acknowledge that he was echoing what the intelligence community believed at the time–and that the administration’s phrasing could have been clearer and more forthright from the start.