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House Intel Committee: Benghazi not escalation of peaceful protest

Nov 22, 2014 2:56 pm By Robert Spencer

Libya-Ambassador-Chris-Stevens-540x337The Obama Administration narrative is definitively torpedoed in this report — and yet the mainstream media, even more craven and dishonest than usual, is spinning the report as an exoneration of Obama.

“CIA gathered intelligence on weapons to Syria: Benghazi report,” by Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne, FoxNews.com, November 22, 2014:

A leading Republican wants to expand the House investigation into the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack by adding a Senate probe, as a new House Intelligence Committee report Friday concluded that the initial CIA assessment found no demonstrations prior to the assault and a primary purpose of the CIA operation in eastern Libya was to track the movement of weapons to Syria.

The report described the attack as “complex” with the attackers affiliated with Al Qaeda. It also said the initial CIA assessment concluded there were no demonstrations outside the State Department Consulate in Eastern Libya.

Referring to the House Select committee Chairman, and the Democratic ranking member, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, said the current House investigation should be expanded.

“(Republican) Trey Gowdy and (Democrat) Elijah Cummings have done a good job,” he said. “I can’t imagine the U.S. Senate not wanting to be a part of a joint select committee. We’ll bootstrap to what you’ve done, but we want to be part of discussion,” Graham told Fox News. “What I would suggest to (incoming Senate majority leader) Mitch McConnell is to call up Speaker Boehner and say ‘Listen, we want to be part of this’.”

Graham, along with his two Republican colleagues, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, have been outspoken advocates of a special investigation, because they say then-acting director of the CIA Mike Morell misled them about his role in crafting the so-called media talking points that blamed an opportunistic protest gone awry for the assault.

“Number one, Mike Morrell misled three senators,” Graham said of their November 2012 meeting on Capitol Hill, where Morell accompanied then UN Ambassador Susan Rice to explain her flawed explanation on national television five days after the attack.

“I think it’s important that for future CIA personnel to understand, that if you come to Congress and you’re asked a question and you give a deceptive answer, you tell half the story, not the entire story, you play word games, it will follow you and will be unacceptable,” Graham said.

On Friday, with little fanfare, the House Intelligence Committee released the findings of its two year, bi-partisan investigation into the terrorist attack. The 37 page report found that the first, internal CIA assessment was accurate — that no protests were involved — but then-CIA Director David Petraeus, Morell and the administration latched onto information that supported the flawed demonstration scenario.

Fox News was first to report on September 17, 2012, one day after Rice’s controversial Sunday talk show appearances, that there were no protests when the attack unfolded.

“One day after the assault, on 9/12/12, the first CIA assessment about the attacks, a September 12th Executive update, said ‘the presence of armed assailants from the incident’s outset suggests this was an intentional assault and not the escalation of a peaceful protest,” investigators found. And while intelligence gaps remain, “No witness has reported believing at any point that the attacks were anything but terrorist acts,” the report added.

On Saturday September 14, 2012, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes wrote in an email titled “PREP CALL with Susan,” that one of the goals for the administration’s public statements should be “To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.” The House report says these conclusions were “incorrect.”

Judicial Watch, not Congress, obtained the Rhodes email as the result of a federal lawsuit.

The Obama White House did not move away from the protest explanation for the attack that killed four Americans – Ambassador Chris Stevens, State Department Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, and former Navy Seals and CIA contractors Ty Woods and Glenn Doherty – until September 20, when then White House Spokesman Jay Carney told reporters ‘It is, I think, self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack,” and the State Department did the same much later.

The report found the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs made three “substantive” changes to the talking points that included the removal of references to Al Qaeda and swapping the word “attacks” with “demonstrations.” It is not clear from the publicly available, and heavily redacted emails exactly who made the changes and who directed them, since the CIA public affairs office would be unlikely to make these changes unilaterally…

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Libya Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. Cassie James says

    Nov 22, 2014 at 3:20 pm

    Maybe if one of Obama’s daughters were President, common sense would prevail??? He is a total loss!

  2. somehistory says

    Nov 22, 2014 at 4:11 pm

    A lot of us knew this already. But the liars and the usual suspects will attempt to cover it over until it can’t affect them any longer.

    • Jay Boo says

      Nov 23, 2014 at 3:42 am

      Obama and Hillary swamped the media with a sensationalized piece of BS bait.
      Whores that the media are, it is quite understandable that they went after the bait.
      What is surprising is that they kept chomping on it without shame long afterward rather than admit that they took a huge bite in the first place.

      • Alissa says

        Nov 23, 2014 at 8:56 pm

        That picture of Stevens should be blown up poster size, framed and send to both Clinton and Obama; it should be plastered on buses and billboards for everyone to see what we are dealing with. Makes me cringe and feel sad every time I see that. His poor family.

  3. profitsbeard says

    Nov 22, 2014 at 4:14 pm

    “Libya?

    Don’t they made canned peas or something ?

    Libya Libya Libya on the label label label?”

    As long as the electorate and media have the intelligence level of creamed corn and Obama and his team of slimy liars can con them into swallowing steaming piles of horseshit and saying “Yummy!” Tastes like chicken!” the country continues down this death spiral toward anarchy, executive fascism, and Balkanized ruin.

    • Alissa says

      Nov 22, 2014 at 5:25 pm

      I agree wholeheartedly. So what’s the plan. Everybody on this site says the same thing as you. What’s the action plan?

      • voegelinian says

        Nov 23, 2014 at 4:48 pm

        Before you can have an action plan, you need two things: 1) a consensus on the content of the action plan; and 2) the sociopolitical wherewithal to actualize #1. The Counter-Jihad currently has neither.

        So the question then becomes: How does the Counter-Jihad get 1 and 2 going? Well, for that process to engage, two things need to happen: a) the Counter-Jihad has to want to do 1 and 2; and b) the Counter-Jihad has to put that desire into intellectual shape through a platform or manifesto, drafted by talented members and approved by general vote.

        Currently, the Counter-Jihad does not seem to have the desire (a) and seems utterly oblivious to the need to do (b).

        Furthermore (I’m not quite done yet), in order even to get to (a) and (b), the Counter-Jihad needs to organize a giant Conversation lasting several days among all its members, in which all these matters are hashed out. Now, if only there existed some kind of electronic medium by which people from all over the world could communicate with each other in real time… hmmm…. what could that be…. (he said, dripping with sarcasm).

        Currently, not only are none of these things in place or even on the table for consideration, nobody in the Counter-Jihad seems even aware of them as an exigency. Without (a) and (b), we can’t get to #1 and 2; and without #1 and 2, we can’t get to a plan of action. Apparently, the Counter-Jihad (“such as it is,” as Diana West wryly remarked) is semi-consciously content to wait with its pants down around its ankles until the shit hits the fan, at which time the extemporaneous plan of action will be to bolt from the outhouse and run stumbling across the field with toilet paper hanging from between its buttcheeks.

        • Alissa says

          Nov 23, 2014 at 8:51 pm

          It must be a grassroots initiative.

      • jsteves2000 says

        Nov 23, 2014 at 5:52 pm

        A good plan would be to do to them what they want to do to the Jews, before they are able to do just that, but I don’t think the Jews will just lay down and be raped by islam.

    • pumbar says

      Nov 22, 2014 at 11:52 pm

      “Don’t they made canned peas or something ?”

      I think they specialise in cans of worms…

  4. Alarmed Pig Farmer says

    Nov 22, 2014 at 5:33 pm

    (Republican) Trey Gowdy and (Democrat) Elijah Cummings have done a good job,” RINO Senator Lindsey Graham said.

    If the job they did was so good, why didn’t the Committee go into the fact that the Moslems who murdered Stephens gang raped him anally as he was dying?

    Would that very unpleasant fact be too upsetting for the American people? Is acknowledging that disturbing fact irrelevant to understanding why this murder was done? Would it upset Moslems to mention yet another example of the hyper-sexualism of Islam? Would bringing this up be sensationalist?

    Senator Graham should shut the hell up and retire. The same goes for other RINOs like John McCain and Peter King. Their silence is sickening and dangerous.

    Moslems are creepy people. Until public figures come to say that publicly, we have no chance. Forget their manifold crimes, look at *what* Moslems are.

  5. tnt says

    Nov 23, 2014 at 12:54 am

    humm, protest linked to anti muslim movie….. ansar Minbar / Ansar al-Sharia / ISIS/ brotherhood freedom fighters. all linked to the ISIS flag and caliphate white flag, since 2012 and possible 2011.theres plenty of links there. so NATO is allied to ISIS, in lybia, Egypt, Syria, Iraq. all enemies of the West. while UN now concerned about Lybia turning into a terrorist state with ISIS taking over the country, really! isn’t ISIS an islamic state. or to call them the islamic state would that be islamophobic. and somehow this is all linked back to Benghazi and the murder of 5 Americians. pre meditated, yup Macains heros! and protests heck they are having protest all the time! do they honesty realise how stupid they are making themselves look! high educated world class liberals. man o man. quote ” Ansar al-Sharia in Derna pledging allegiance to ISIS gets us even closer to ISIS being involved in the Benghazi attacks.”

  6. Arjay says

    Nov 23, 2014 at 9:42 am

    When Benghazi happened… US embassy staff and soldiers murdered. The Ambassador raped, killed and his corpse dragged around in a gory celebration. The culprit? Why according to incompetent Secretary of State Clinton… it was America’s Freedom of Speech and a video clip on line.

    If a video clip is “responsible” for people to riot and murder… or if it is a comic strip, a teddy bear, buffet food at an Ivy League University’s restaurant, lego playsets, German flags, tombstones with crosses on them…

    Then guess what US Government administration… you are dealing with a movement, philosophy, religion (or actually political death cult) that is and enemy to the American people.

  7. RonaldB says

    Nov 23, 2014 at 10:49 am

    The good news about this report and the Congressional findings is that they may well knock Hillary out of the race for Democratic Presidential nominee. The Democrats can anticipate endless showings of clips with Hillary blaming the video protests, along with clips of the actual reports.

    I would like to see the Democrats field an actual moderate, open to facts. Certainly, almost anyone would be preferable to the former Republican candidate John McCain, who breaks his steady support for disastrous US policies only when his huge ego is pricked in any way.

    • Jay Boo says

      Nov 23, 2014 at 1:42 pm

      Don’t be so quick to count Hillary out of the race.
      Remember how she bumped her head just in the nick of time to delay her testimony and practice her evasions while the news media were hot on the story
      By the end of the presidential debates she is going to have more self inflicted head bumps than a pious carpet kissing Muslim.

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