2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumBenghazi Whistleblowers Reveal Their Clinton Cover-up Moment
ALEXANDER ABAD-SANTOS 8:55 AM ET
Mark I. Thompson, the acting deputy assistant for operations in the State Department's counterterrorism bureau, will testify on Wednesday that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton willfully blocked out his department's involvement on the night of the September 11 Benghazi attacks and that he has been threatened and intimidated by unnamed State Department officials about saying as much in public, and that al-Qaeda was involved all along. The scoop comes from where else? sources close to the congressional investigation speaking to Fox News, two days ahead of testimony by Thompson and two other whistleblower witnesses before Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Fox's sources characterize Thompson has having "concluded on Sept. 11 that Clinton and Kennedy tried to cut the counterterrorism bureau out of the loop as they and other Obama administration officials weighed how to respond to and characterize the Benghazi attacks."
That charge would seem to suggest that the State Department's actions that night last summer came straight from the top and allegedly without input from Thompson's Counterterrorism Security Group at Foggy Bottom. As CBS News reports, we know that the Obama administration "did not convene its top interagency counterterrorism resource, the Counterterrorism Security Group." And since a certain segment of Issa's Washington is (still) looking back and (still) trying to figure out what went wrong when the American diplomatic mission was attacked, one of the big questions heading into Wednesday's hearing is whether or not CSG involvement would have made a difference. As The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin insists, the two other witnesses a regional State Department security officer in Libya and a former department deputy chair of the mission could send the affair "into a whole different level of scandal."
But remember that this is very much an after-the-fact whistleblower affair, to the point where President Obama refuses to really acknowledge a string of Fox reports about the testimony during his press conference last week. And Thompson's claims about willful ignorance at the top levels of the State Department will not go without questioning. According to a National Security Council spokesman who spoke on the record with CBS, Thompson's group was involved: "From the moment the president was briefed on the Benghazi attack, the response effort was handled by the most senior national security officials in governments. Members of the CSG were of course involved in these meetings and discussions to support their bosses," the spokesperson, Tommy Vietor, told CBS. The network also spoke to a source in CSG who didn't exactly rebuke Vietor's claim but did say that only the top officials in the executive branch were convened about the matter and that their top counterterrorism experts were not active decision makers.
Perhaps the most important part in the claims going on the record this week is whether or not CSG would have actually made a difference in the attack. Fox's James Rosen brings it all back to those much much debated Benghazi talking points, suggesting that Clinton's alleged ignorance of the CSG has ties to some sort of al-Qaeda cover-up:
full article:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/05/benghazi-whistleblowers-clinton-cover-up/64902/
graham4anything
(11,464 posts)80% of the nation is tired of the negativity
and the same old smears are petty and of course, every smear gives Hillary more votes
Picking on the woman candidate will bring more and more into the voting booth, and the democratic party will sweep the house and senate and governorships nationwide
WCGreen
(45,558 posts)These people look at this crap with microscopes while blah blah blah the willful lying that got us into to Iraq..
This is a fucking joke.
Nancy Waterman
(6,407 posts)When all the claims are disproved, they hope the damage will have been done.
cliffordu
(30,994 posts)marshall
(6,665 posts)She's still recovering from the attack that sent her to the hospital.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)... it will be used to smear Hillory should she seek the 2016 nomination. Their faithful will remember "there was a big stink" and think "where there's smoke, there's fire".
Frustratedlady
(16,254 posts)When he came in as head of the Oversight committee, wasn't he bragging about how he was going after all the corruption and mistakes of the Obama administration? He had a bunch of Democrats targeted for investigations, but I can't recall any scandalous findings. But then, my memory isn't the best.
Isn't he mostly mouth and motive?