Thread: The Benghazi Hearings

Trey Gowdy isn’t mentioning the name of the target of his Benghazi committee but it’s pretty obvious he was speaking about Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy. His office was responsible for accepting and responding to added security requests for the Benghazi compound. Almost equally important is that Kennedy is the official who wrote to the defense department in 2012, stating that the Benghazi compound would no longer need the 16-man Security Support Team.

So why was he not held accountable for his actions? The answer is simple. Hillary Clinton and Patrick Kennedy were the ones who picked out the members of the Accountability Review Board that Democrats kept quoting. Instead, the ARB nailed four middle management officials at the State Department that had no responsibility for security. All four were hired back by the State Department .

In 2013, the House Foreign Affairs Committee filed a report on the Benghazi affair that named Kennedy as a central figure in the failure to protect Benghazi. Here is an excerpt from that report:

“The Under Secretary for Management then is responsible for approving or rejecting security requests in consultation with the Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources,” the report reads. “This process implies that the approval and denial of security resources would have been made by — or at least briefed to — Under Secretary Kennedy, and perhaps even the former Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources, Thomas Nides.”

“In addition to their duties in reviewing security requests, these two individuals are functionally responsible for the deployment of personnel and the approval of expenditures at overseas posts, making the Benghazi ARB’s silence about their respective roles a clear oversight.”

Gowdy’s committee is still waiting for the bulk of Kennedy’s emails. Kennedy was named by two State Department officials as the one responsible for security measures in Benghazi, including whistleblower Gregory Hicks. Eric Nordstrom testified that all requests for additional security went through Kennedy’s office.

http://conservativefiringline.com/go...trick-kennedy/

From Gaga to Affleck, latest release shows who had Clinton's personal email address while at State
Sadly her "good friend" wasn't among them
Published October 31, 2015 · FoxNews.com

Americans will have to wait until President Obama leaves office to see his email exchanges with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But a new batch of State Department emails from when Clinton ran the agency reveals the breadth of her personal network -- from Lady Gaga to then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The 7,000 emails released Friday show her Rolodex included powerful celebrities, CEOs, political advisers and politicians that she's now tapping for her Democratic presidential campaign.

The release, the largest since the State Department began posting the records in May, show Clinton and her aides balanced requests from a long list of boldface names.

Lady Gaga complimented her, Blair praised her for doing the "Lord's Work," Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi asked for technology help and former President Jimmy Carter pitched in on negotiations with North Korea. But as with prior releases, any communication between Obama and Clinton was absent.

An administration official told Fox News there is a “small number” of such exchanges and described them as “mostly non-substantive” because the two leaders conducted most their discussions in person or by phone.

The White House position is that the president’s communications are not subject to public record requests under the Freedom of Information Act and can be withheld until he leaves office in 2007. The George W. Bush White House likewise held that his correspondence would not be released until he left office, while the Clinton campaign has pledged to make her records public.

Meanwhile, the State Department plans to release a total of 55,000 emails handed over by Clinton, who was using a private email address and server during her tenure as secretary of state, from 2009 to 2013. A State Department spokesman said the latest batch contains 200-300 emails with information that has since been deemed classified.

Heavily redacted exchanges regarding Burma, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen are among the retroactively classified emails in the batch.

Clinton has faced questions about whether her unusual email setup, which involved a private server located at her New York home, was sufficient to ensure the security of government information and retention of records.

At least two Senate committees are still investigating her email arrangement and seeking the release of correspondence from her top aides. The FBI is also investigating the security of Clinton's private setup.

Clinton has maintained all along that she had never received or sent any classified documents under the setup.

Republicans and others investigating the 2012 terror attacks on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, have shown that Ambassador Chris Stevens, who died in the strikes, made numerous official requests for additional security. However, he did not appear to have Clinton's private email address.

Unclassified exchanges include an email from close adviser Sidney Blumenthal, who refers to Obama’s faltering poll numbers, calling it the “vulnerability of charisma.” Blumenthal has been a frequent name among the thousands of emails already released, often offering the then-secretary advice and gossip on foreign policy flashpoints, including the run-up to the intervention in Libya.

Though past email releases showed Blumenthal offering advice mostly on Libya, this batch showed him also writing to Clinton about Syria and other countries.

Some communications even pertained to the use of personal email.

A June 2011 email from senior official Anne-Marie Slaughter to Clinton advised "it would be a great time for someone inside or outside to make a statement/ write an op-ed that points out that State's technology is so antiquated that NO ONE uses a State-issued laptop and even high officials routinely end up using their home email accounts to be able to get their work done quickly and effectively."

Republicans zeroed in on the fact that hundreds more emails contained retroactively classified material.

"This court-ordered email release is another reminder of why Hillary Clinton cannot be trusted in the White House," Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement.

While Clinton's private email address was unknown to much of official Washington, at least one Hollywood celebrity wrote to her there. Actor Ben Affleck, a longtime Clinton supporter, urged her in April 2012 to review a draft of a report about security problems in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Roughly half of Clinton's 30,000 work-related emails are now public, and the State Department's effort to release the rest will linger into next year. Most of the correspondence made public to date involves the mundane workings of government -- scheduling meetings, organizing secure phone lines and booking flights.

A few of them hint at the ways Clinton maintained her network of campaign donors, even while serving in a position at a distance from electoral politics. In a June 2011 message, an aide informs Clinton that longtime donor Susie Buell contributed $200,000 toward a summit at which Clinton was scheduled to speak. "She wants it to be wonderful for you," wrote Clinton aide Melanne Verveer.

Other emails highlight the struggles of her daily life at the State Department.

In April 2011, daughter Chelsea Clinton, using the email alias Diane Reynolds, emailed her mother a link to a Wall Street Journal story headlined "The Sleepless Elite: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015...ersonal-email/

And after those 7 minutes, with the attack still going on, President Bush acted, scrambled Jets, grounds commercial aircraft, closes airspace over the entire country, and flies back to DC against the wishes of his secret service protectors, while the outcome was still in doubt. That is courage. Securing America first.

Hillary and Obama went to bed while the battle raged and even more died, and when they woke up in the morning, they told America it was the fault of some producer and his video? This is indifference. This threatens America to this day.

Why anyone believes anything this administration says is beyond me.

... and flies back to DC against the wishes of his secret service protectors...

The MSM was broadcasting WHERE Air Force One was landing; first at a base in Fl, then in a base in LA. Since there was no secrecy - nor safety - in avoiding the Capitl, he returned to DC - and YES against the wishes of the Security teams

'Spinning up as we speak': Email shows Pentagon was ready to roll as Benghazi attack occurred
Published December 08, 2015
·As the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was unfolding, a high-ranking Pentagon official urgently messaged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top deputies to offer military help, according to an email obtained by Judicial Watch.

The revelation appears to contradict testimony Defense Secretary Leon Panetta gave lawmakers in 2013, when he said there was no time to get forces to the scene in Libya, where four Americans were killed, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.

“I just tried you on the phone but you were all in with S [apparent reference to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton],” reads the email, from Panetta’s chief of staff Jeremy Bash. “After consulting with General Dempsey, General Ham and the Joint Staff, we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.”

" ... we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.”

- Jeremy Bash, Pentagon chief of staff

The email was sent out at 7:19 p.m. ET on Sept. 11, 2012, in the early stages of the eight-hour siege that also claimed the lives of Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith and two former Navy SEALs, Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, private CIA contractors who raced to the aid of embattled State Department workers.

Although the email came after the first wave of the attack at the consulate, it occurred before a mortar strike on the CIA annex killed Woods and Doherty.

"This leaves no doubt military assets were offered and ready to go, and awaiting State Department signoff, which did not come,” Judicial Watch, a nonprofit government watchdog said in a statement.

Parts of the email from Bash were redacted before release, including details on what military forces were available.

In defending the Obama administration’s lack of a military response to the attack, Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee nearly two years ago that “time, distance, the lack of an adequate warning, events that moved very quickly on the ground prevented a more immediate response.”

The first assault occurred at the consulate at 3:40 p.m. ET. The second attack on the CIA annex a little over a mile away began three hours later. Bash’s email was sent approximately 40 minutes after that attack began.

Bash’s email, which bore the subject line “Libya,” was sent to Clinton’s then-deputy chief of staff Jacob Sullivan, Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Thomas Nides.

The attack came in three waves at two locations. It began when a handful of attackers scaled the wall of the diplomatic post at dusk and opened a gate, allowing dozens of armed men inside who then set the building on fire. Stevens and Smith died after breathing in smoke while hiding in a safe room, and later died.

Hours later, a nearby CIA annex was attacked twice. Woods and Doherty died there while defending the annex from the rooftop. A team of six security officials summoned from Tripoli and a Libyan military unit helped evacuate the remaining U.S. personnel who were taken to an airport and flown out of Benghazi.

The Obama administration later falsely claimed that the attack was triggered by an Internet video that insulted Islam.

Lawmakers investigating the events surrounding Benghazi already had acquired the e-mail, along with tens of thousands of others related to the probe, according to Matt Wolking, spokesman for the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

“The Select Committee has obtained and reviewed tens of thousands of documents in the course of its thorough, fact-centered investigation into the Benghazi terrorist attacks, and this information will be detailed in the final report the Committee hopes to release within the next few months," Wolking told FoxNews.com. "While the Committee does not rush to release or comment on every document it uncovers, I can confirm that we obtained the unredacted version of this email last year, in addition to Jake Sullivan’s response."

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/12.../?intcmp=hppop

NEW EMAILS SHOW THAT pANETTA LIED TO CONGRESS IN 2013

Leon Panetta was secretary of Defense on Sept 11, 2011 the date of the aTtack in Benghazi. He testified in 2013 to Congress that there wasn't time to send troops to Benghazi. New emails found by Judicial Watch show that from his chief of staff, after consultation with General Ham and General Dempsey. Email read “I just tried you on the phone but you were all in with S [apparent reference to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton],” reads the email, from Panetta’s chief of staff Jeremy Bash. “After consulting with General Dempsey, General Ham and the Joint Staff, we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.”

The email was sent out at 7:19 p.m. ET on Sept. 11, 2012, in the early stages of the eight-hour siege that also claimed the lives of Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith and two former Navy SEALs, Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, private CIA contractors who raced to the aid of embattled State Department workers.

Although the email came after the first wave of the attack at the consulate, it occurred before a mortar strike on the CIA annex killed Woods and Doherty.

http://americaswatchtower.com/2015/1...azi-testimony/

This is sick. General Ham lost his job after he spoke out that he had troop that he could send.

We reported recently what some thought might be former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s most despicable lie yet — telling the grieving families of the Benghazi victims an anti-Islam video was to blame for the deaths of their loved ones, knowing this was a flat-out lie. http://www.allenbwest.com/2015/12/co...cable-lie-yet/

Of course, Clinton continues to deny saying this, despite members of all four victims families reporting she said exactly that.

But while lying to grieving family members was despicable enough, what the leading Democrat candidate for president just suggested about these family members may be a new low.

Via The Daily Caller: http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/31/hi...tims-families/

Hillary Clinton is denying once again that she told family members of Benghazi attack victims that a video was to blame for the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks — leaving only the possibility that the families are either lying or grossly mistaken about what the then-secretary of state told them in private.

During an editorial board meeting with The Conway (N.H.) Daily Sun, Clinton was asked about an interview she recently had with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in which she denied that she told family members of the Benghazi victims during a Sept. 14, 2012 memorial service at Andrews Air Force Base that the film “Innocence of Muslims” was the catalyst for the attack.

The family members have publicly disputed Clinton’s claims, saying that the then-secretary of state explicitly blamed the film that day and said that she would go after the maker of the film, which many Muslims considered offensive.

Daily Sun columnist Tom McLaughlin pressed Clinton on the conflicting claims. http://www.conwaydailysun.com/newsx/...e-sun-ed-board

“Somebody is lying,” McLaughlin said during the editorial meeting. “Who is it?

“Not me, that’s all I can tell you,” Clinton replied.

Does ANYONE believe that for a second? Nope. And yet, Clinton has the audacity to suggest it’s not her, it’s actually the grieving family members, who are lying.

But Clinton’s critics are disinclined to believe her, especially given that she gave conflicting accounts in private and in public of what motivated the attacks.

One glaring example of that is an email Clinton sent to her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, on the night of the attacks, claiming that they were carried out by “an Al Queda-like [sic] group.”

And according to notes from a phone call that Clinton had with Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil the next day, she acknowledged that “we know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack, not a protest.”

At least four Benghazi victims’ family members have said that Clinton talked about the importance of the video — which was produced by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula — during the Sept. 14, 2012 memorial service.

During her Dec. 6 interview with Stephanopoulos, Clinton specifically denied that she spoke to the families about the video or the filmmaker. She also said that she “can’t help it” that the Benghazi victims’ families believe that she fingered the video during their private conversations.

“I understand the continuing grief at the loss that parents experienced with the loss of these four brave Americans. And I did testify, as you know, for 11 hours. And I answered all of these questions,” Clinton added. “Now, I can’t — I can’t help it that people think there has to be something else there.”

How far this woman will go in order to protect her own political hide is truly sickening; she has no conscience and apparently a total lack of empathy. It wasn’t bad enough she lied to the grieving family members in the first place; she’s now gone so far as to impugn THEIR character to deflect from her own lies.

The Benghazi incident alone should disqualify Hillary Clinton to be commander in chief, in my humble opinion. SMH.

http://www.allenbwest.com/2015/12/ne...nd-despicable/

Democrats: Special Forces Who Were On The Ground In Benghazi Are Liars
By: Jay Caruso | January 14th, 2016

It takes a lot of nerve to say to somebody in the special forces, “You’re a liar.” Especially when you’re a Democrat politician and your allegiance is not to the truth so much as it is to seeing Hillary Clinton being elected President.

But that is basically what Democrats are saying about Kris Paronto, John Tiegen and others who were on the ground in Libya on September 11, 2012. The movie, ’13 Hours’ premiers this week and according to the men on the ground, a “stand down” order was given.

Paronto says he heard the exact words, “Stand down” when he and Tiegen were urging the base chief there to let them go and help the diplomats who were under attack.

Democrats insist however, it’s a lie: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/0...-debate-217622

“If the film portrays them as having ordered a stand-down, it’s clearly at odds with the facts,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), whose district includes Hollywood and who sits on the committee. “If the film portrays those who went to rescue people at the diplomatic facility as doing so in disregard of orders, that’s also plainly at odds with the facts. … It may make for good entertainment; it doesn’t make for a well-informed public.”

“I think all the evidence has been overwhelming that there was no stand-down order — everybody says that,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), who serves as ranking member on the Benghazi committee and has read the book “13 hours” but doesn’t subscribe to the stand-down account. “[I]f they tried to allege that, it’s inconsistent with the evidence that’s shown, and people will view that as, perhaps … some exaggeration of certain points to make this [movie] more interesting.”

Paronto however, says despite all of the committee hearings, the findings are not valid because the guys on the ground were not interviewed:

“There are seven reports based off of what happened in Benghazi; I’ve been interviewed for one,” he said. “What kind of credibility is that? How can you get the information without interviewing the guys on the ground?”

That “one” was former House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers’ probe. But even his final report on the matter specifically said there was no stand-down order given. That report divided the GOP. And most of Rogers’ GOP panel members — including Benghazi panel member Pompeo — refused to sign the final document because they felt it did not tell the full story.

Now before anybody gets into thinking there was some diabolical plot with Hillary Clinton at the center of all of, don’t go there:

Paronto said he doesn’t necessarily believe the “stand down” he heard was nefarious or a command from on high from CIA leaders at headquarters. Rather, he said, the CIA supervisor or base chief was “very risk adverse” and probably did not know what to do.

The base chief, according to GOP sources, has consistently refuted this account, creating a he-said-she-said predicament that pits the lower-level contractors — all ex-SEALs, rangers or military officers — against people at the top.

The “people at the top” however, are all politicians. They’re the ones with the incentive to cover their asses and lie.

Not the ex-SEALs, Rangers or military officers.

http://www.redstate.com/2016/01/14/d...enghazi-liars/