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.
