Real Clear Politics
Benghazi Coverup Much Worse Than "Third-rate Burglary"
By _Jack Kelly_ (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/authors/jack_kelly/) -
October 31, 2012
The ride on the Obama bus gets bumpier as more bodies are thrown under it.
The latest to go thumpity thump are journalists who trumpeted the
administration's excuse that faulty intelligence is why the president said for
so
long the attack on our consulate in Benghazi was a "spontaneous" protest over
a Youtube video.
The journalists went under the bus because the Foreign Service and career
intelligence officers the administration tried to scapegoat refused to go
there. They've leaked emails that reveal the White House was informed while
it was still going on that the attack was the work of terrorists affiliated
with al-Qaida.
To put this in the context of the Mother of All Scandals, these emails are
the equivalent of a transcript of what was on the 181/2 minutes of the
secret White House tapes President Nixon's secretary erased.
"What did the president know, and when did he know it?" Sen. Howard Baker,
R-Tenn, asked during the Watergate hearings. The answer in the leaked
emails is that the president knew everything, all along.
They were sent by the Regional Security Officer in Libya to the State
Department in Washington, the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon, the FBI
and thedirector of National Intelligence.
The first said the consulate was being attacked by "about 20" armed men.
The third, sent two hours later, reported that Ansar al Sharia, an Islamist
militia, was claiming credit for the attack.
A fourth, sent at 11:57 p.m. EDT, described a mortar attack on the
consulate annex, where the Americans were killed.
About 300 watch officers at the NSC, State, Defense, the FBI and other
agencies would have read these emails as soon as they were received, and
informed their superiors right away. This was a crisis. Men armed with mortars,
machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades were attacking a U.S. consulate.
The ambassador was missing. The secretary of state, the DNI and the
president would have been briefed within hours.
When the "three a.m. phone call" came (at 6:07 p.m. EDT), the president
ignored it. The day after learning Ambassador Stevens had been murdered and
sensitive intelligence documents were missing, he jetted off to a fundraiser
in Las Vegas.
And for nearly two weeks afterward, Mr. Obama and his senior aides blamed
the attack on the Youtube video -- even though they knew that wasn't true.
His interview with Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes, taped the day after the
attack, indicates that Mr. Obama has been lying from the get-go.
"My suspicion is, is that there are folks involved in [the attack on the
consulate] who were looking to target Americans from the start," the
president told Mr. Kroft.
The fact that CBS cut this from the broadcast -- airing instead Mr. Obama's
attack on Mitt Romney for criticizing his Middle East policy -- indicates
why the White House remains confident the "mainstream" media will continue
to downplay the scandal.
This cover-up, like that in Watergate, goes right to the top. What's being
covered up is much worse than a "third rate burglary." Why was security so
lax? Why were the ambassador's pleas for more turned down? Why did the
president lie? Americans have a right to know. Few in the media have tried to
find out.
Appeals to their integrity are unlikely to get "mainstream" journalists to
do their jobs, since they have so little of it. Self preservation may. The
leaked emails expose journalists who touted the administration's story as
gullible chumps, corrupt shills, or both.
Spooks and diplomats are angry at the attempt to make them scapegoats;
furious that the president didn't lift a finger to help their comrades in the
consulate during the seven-hour siege. More leaks may be on the way. If they
fail to follow up, journalists could lose more credibility than the
president. They haven't much credibility left to lose.
Jack Kelly is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Blade of
Toledo, Ohio.
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