A couple of additional details came out recently—to almost
no fanfare, even though they are damning to both the president and
then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who should be therefore disqualified
from running for president.
A couple of weeks ago, Judicial Watch received about 100
pages of previously classified documents.
These result from a Freedom of
Information Act lawsuit filed a year earlier, May 2014, and forced by a US District Court order
September 9, 2014[i], requesting all
communications between the Department of Defense and the State Department and
congressional leaders, “on matters related to the activities of any agency or
department of the U.S. government at the Special Mission Compound and/or
classified annex in Benghazi.”
The documents[ii]
show several things:
· The administration knew almost immediately that
it was a terrorist attack (and never thought it was related to an anti-Islam
video).
· The administration was aware of (if not involved
in) arms being transported from the port of Benghazi to Syria, and was in a
position to stop the transfers but didn’t. (Information on who was involved is
redacted in the documents.)
· The administration was aware of the rise of ISIS
and the establishment of a caliphate a full year and a half before Obama
described them as not a threat (the “JV team”).
· The administration has been actively covering up
what happened in Benghazi.
I didn’t hear about this on any regular news. It was
reported on Fox News May 18, 2015, in a report by Martha MacCallum, talking
with chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge. I was apprised of it
two days later on Glenn Beck radio, and then I sought it out.
Just for the record, I’ve included most of the transcript below:
Martha: Documents
are now revealing that US intelligence agencies were fully aware that weapons
were moving from the terrorist stronghold in Libya to Syria before the attack
that killed the four Americans that you see at the center of our screen. The
paper trail also contradicts President Obama’s assertion that the rise of ISIS
came as somewhat of a surprise to the administration….Catherine, what are we learning
here about this?
Catherine: Martha,
newly released documents show a serious disconnect between what the
administration said and what the Defense Intelligence Agency, also known as the
DIA. This September 16, 2012, memo copied to the National Security Council, the
State Department, CIA, and others, concluded the Benghazi terrorist attack was
planned at least ten or more days in advance. The DIA memo also reports the
attack was also tied to 9/11 and was retaliation for a June 2012 drone strike
that killed an al-Qaeda strategist. There is no discussion of a demonstration
or an anti-Islam video. Quote:
“The intention was to attack the consulate and to kill as
many Americans as possible to seek revenge for the [US] killing of Aboyahiye
(Alaliby) in Pakistan and in memorial of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the
World Trade Center buildings.”
Judicial Watch obtained these new records by suing in federal
court….
And another DIA memo from 2012 predicts the rise of ISIS and
the establishment of a caliphate 17 months before the president called the
terror group the JV team….
Martha: There’s
been a lot of discussion about what our operatives were doing there at the time
when this attack happened, and that there was discussion about moving weapons
out of that very volatile area in Libya. What do we learn about that in here,
Catherine?
Catherine: Well,
Martha, another DIA memo dated October 5th, 2012, leaves no doubt that US
intelligence agencies were clearly aware that lethal weapons were being shipped
to Syria via the port of Benghazi. In a recent interview with Brett Baer, the
former acting CIA Director skirted the topic.
[video: Bret Baier asks
acting CIA director about the movement of weapons; the director claims we did
not play a role, but cannot speak about what we watched others do.]
Catherine: The DIA
memo also reported that military stockpiles were moving from Benghazi to the
Syrian ports of Banias and Borj IsLam. And the shipments included rifles, RPGs,
and missiles.
This DIA document may also be problematic for Mrs. Clinton,
who also skirted the weapons issue during her only Congressional testimony on
Benghazi of January 2013.
We knew clearly by October 2012 that blaming a video was a
lie inserted by the administration. It didn’t come from intelligence. It wasn’t
a matter of not knowing what had happened; it was a matter of someone purposely
adding that stray claim for purposes that the media has not been curious about.
But this past week, in the ongoing effort to disclose emails
that have been withheld—and made more difficult to obtain because of Hillary
Clinton’s use of a private server for State Department emails—we learned the
source of the video story: Sidney Blumenthal, long-time Clinton confidante.
Clinton received the suggestion from Blumenthal by email and passed it along to
Jake Sullivan, her foreign policy advisor, without indicating where it had
originated. Blumenthal had sent at least a couple of dozen emails on Libya,
including several specifically on Benghazi, which Clinton passed along without
sourcing.
We know she knew it was a planned terrorist attack. And she
also knew that Blumenthal wasn’t privy to better intelligence than she had. So
she had some reason other than sharing truth for passing along his email.
This revelation was reported by the New York Times.
There is a September 12, 2012, memo
describing events in Benghazi as stemming from the internet video. The
following day there is an additional memo from Blumenthal adding more accuracy.
According to the Times article, by
Michael Schmidt,
The next day, Mr. Blumenthal sent Mrs. Clinton a more
thorough account of what had occurred. Citing “sensitive sources” in Libya, the
memo provided extensive detail about the episode, saying that the siege had
been set off by members of Ansar al-Shariah, the Libyan terrorist group. Those
militants had ties to Al Qaeda, had planned the attacks for a month and had
used a nearby protest as cover for the siege, the memo said. “We should get
this around asap” Mrs. Clinton said in an email to Mr. Sullivan.
Except that there wasn’t a nearby protest. So this is
nothing more than pasting partial truth over the overt lie for some as-yet
unknown purpose. The purpose of the lie may be simply trying to support the
Obama claim that the war on terrorism had been won, which was a line meant to
make him re-electable.
But the whole thing stinks.
Glenn Beck, connecting the dots on Benghazi October 24, 2012 Image from TheBlaze.com |
Back in October 2012 Glenn Beck had brought together a
number of strategists to try to figure out the most likely scenario to explain
why the ambassador was in the more dangerous Benghazi area, instead of at the
embassy in Tripoli, why the administration repeatedly put out the lie about the
videotape when they knew (and by then we all knew) it was a terrorist attack,
why the president was uninformed of the continued situation throughout the
night, why the investigation team didn’t show up until a couple of weeks later
after evidence had disappeared. Why was the administration willing to appear
inept and out of touch, rather than specify what was really going on? It had to
be really bad.
Beck linked that episode
on Facebook the other day, to give
people a reminder. To reconnect the dots. It’s worth reviewing. He thought, 2 ½
years ago, the most likely answer was that the administration was illegally gun
running—arming Syrians by way of Libya. That’s why they had to “disavow any
knowledge of the actions” of the ambassador and CIA agents there, and to make
sure the place was ransacked of all evidence before the investigation could
begin.
We know now that gun running was taking place; we don’t know
who did it. But we have so little trust in this lying administration that we
can almost take it for granted they would do such a thing. There were no good
actors in Syria, but the mass of weapons went to ISIS. If it can be proven—and
without exaggeration—arming the enemies of the US is treason.
I’m no expert on Benghazi; I’m just a regular citizen. But I’ve
tried to remember and record, so that history can’t be rewritten. Here are a
few previous posts:
[ii] DOD documents: http://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/jw-v-dod-and-state-14-812-dod-release-2015-04-10/,
and Department of State documents: http://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/jw-v-dod-and-state-14-812-state-release-2015-04-10-2/
right on. thank you for pursuing this, alike to GBeck and FOX and yes this is treason. The admin was doing Saudi bidding, their imperative being to sever the Shi'ite Crescent then growing across their northern border: Iran-Iraq-Syria. This is THEIR obsession, at least 1200 years long, at this point. Now we know why BO bowed to their vicious gutter king.
ReplyDeleteright on. thank you for pursuing this, alike to GBeck and FOX and yes this is treason. The admin was doing Saudi bidding, their imperative being to sever the Shi'ite Crescent then growing across their northern border: Iran-Iraq-Syria. This is THEIR obsession, at least 1200 years long, at this point. Now we know why BO bowed to their vicious gutter king.
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