Benghazi Update

Some things are inexorable. I hope that the truth of what happened in Benghazi is one of those things. That little by little—or preferably all at once after so much little by little—the truth will be full, and open, and clear.

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:

·         Blog post 9-12-2012  Another Bad 9/11

·         Blog post 10-19-2012  Benghazi Boondoggle

·         Blog post 5-13-2013  Lies and Videotape

·         Blog post 5-15-2013  You Might Be Living Under Tyranny If…

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[i] http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/JW-v-Defense-State-00812-court-order.pdf

[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/