Behind The Smoke And Mirrors -The New Clinton Email Scandal Explained

 

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive! " - Sir Walter Scott

The latest bombshell to hit this already explosive campaign season is an announcement by FBI director James Comey that the FBI has opened up a new investigation into the Clinton e-mail scandal...and that Clinton's special assistant Huma Abedin and her 'husband' Anthony Weiner are involved.

As usual with Clinton Inc., this is a really tangled web, so let's examine what's going on, and of course, what it means.

First, let's quickly review:

As you know, Hillary Clinton went through what passed for an investigation into the felonies she committed as Secretary of State with her illegal, unprotected private servers and her careless handling of classified materials in violation of the Official Records Act. She has said repeatedly that she told the FBI that she had turned over all her e-mails. We certainly don't know if she actually did, because she deleted 32,000 of them without turning them over and than used a software called Bleachbit to destroy any possibility of recovering them. Since the FBI didn't even record her interview or make a transcript, that's where that stands.

Moreover, the FBI gave Clinton aide Cheryl Mills immunity while allowing her attorney client privilege (unheard of in these circumstances where someone being interviewed is a possible target) in exchange for her turning over her laptop...which they destroyed even though it had been subpoenaed by congress as evidence.

Basically the fix was in and Bill Clinton's little 45 minute meeting with AG Loretta Lynch aboard her private plane - just by chance, of course - was obviously to work out the details and and reaffirm Mrs. Clinton wasn't going to be charged because the Obama Department of Justice would tell FBI Director James Comey they weren't going to prosecute. And as the Wall Street Journal reveals, that Lynch and her DOJ goons would make sure there wasn't going to be any investigation of the Clinton Foundation.

So one day later, having gotten his orders from Lynch and the DOJ, Comey went to the unusual extent of calling a press conference, went over all the reasons Hillary Clinton should have been charged and then finessed it by saying that he would recommend no charges be filed.

While that caused a firestorm at the time in many quarters, Democrats acted as though Comey deserved the Medal of Honor. They lauded his ethics, praised him to the hilt and the Media rejoiced.

Then last week, FBI Director Comey suddenly announced that the FBI was opening a new investigation on the Clinton e-mails.

You see, Clinton shadow Huma Abedin has told the FBI that she had turned over all of her e-mails and all of her devices. Apparently she didn't, and a new batch of 650,000 emails were found on a laptop belonging to - wait for it - Abedin's hubby, none other than the infamous Anthony Weiner!

 

Here's the New York Times bewailing the sad news but unable to avoid reporting it, because everyone else was:

Federal law enforcement officials said Friday that the new emails uncovered in the closed investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server were discovered after the F.B.I. seized electronic devices belonging to Huma Abedin, a top aide to Mrs. Clinton, and her husband, Anthony Weiner.

The F.B.I. is investigating illicit text messages that Mr. Weiner sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. The bureau told Congress on Friday that it had uncovered new emails related to the Clinton case -- one federal official said they numbered in the thousands -- potentially reigniting an issue that has weighed on the presidential campaign and offering a lifeline to Donald J. Trump less than two weeks before the election.

Comey's letter to Chaffetz said:

"In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation … I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation."

Aiyeee! I have a feeling that Weiner, with nothing left to lose told the FBI what he had and cut a deal.

Of course, no sooner had Comey announced this then he went from being a Democrat hero to someone who was a law breaker, who was 'endangering the election process,' 'unethical.' and a disgrace. Apparently, Comey announced this even though he was ordered not to by the Obama department of Justice and Loretta Lynch.

I have to admit to a nasty laugh or three as I watch the same people who applauded Comey when he interfered in an election by getting Clinton off the hook now want him burnt at the stake:



 Trey Gowdy a distinguished ex-prosecutor is entirely correct, of course. Hillary Clinton made the decisions that led to this state of affairs, and for her or her creatures to blame anyone else is just ridiculous, just an attempt at the old shell game to get people's attention diverted.




So why did Comey do this? And why now?

Since the investigation of Hillary Clinton's e-mails and the Clinton Foundation were deliberately stonewalled and set aside by the Obama Justice Department , there's been a major morale problem at the Bureau according to various sources. Comey understandably had lost the respect of many of the agents, there are quite a few resignation letters on his desk and it's at the point where, reportedly, a number of people won't even return his greetings and limit their interaction with him as much as possible. Reportedly, even his wife was disappointed in him and kept urging him to admit he was wrong when he said Hillary shouldn't be charged.

This was perhaps a way of trying to recover a little self respect and mollify folks he works with by actually pursuing an investigation. Certainly he's not doing it to win friends and influence people having alienated most of DC.

Another reason is that having seen the reeking criminality of the Clintons up close, he might actually have had some pang of conscience over what her becoming president might actually mean for America. People who work in law and law enforcement have, typically, an inordinate respect for the law, what it means, how it works and what it does. The idea of seeing an unrepentant criminal like Hillary Clinton become president might have been just too much for James Comey to stomach.

So what effect is all this going to have? What's likely to happen?

In spite of what the media is saying, Hillary Clinton's huge drop in the polls was already a fact before this came out. Like James Comey, apparently a lot of people are doing some serious thinking about whether they really want Hillary Clinton in the White House with all that entails. This latest revelation won't help, of course, but the Wikileaks releases, Mrs. Clinton's conduct during the campaign, total disgust at the ridiculously partisan media and a desire for real change have all had an effect. This last item just cements what was already apparent.

Comey could be fired by President Obama, but at this point that might almost be a relief for him. Like Anthony Weiner, James Comey has nothing left to lose. It would also give even more credence to Mrs. Clinton's having a lot to hide if it appeared he were being punished merely for doing his job. The optics wouldn't look good. But don't be surprised if Comey 'resigns' after the election during Obama's lame duck period..and if I were him, I would seriously watch my six. These are ruthless and very vindictive people he's dealing with here.

That said, don't expect anything serious to come of this. It's already a known fact that President Obama lied openly about not knowing about Mrs. Clinton's illegal e-mail setup and even sent her e-mails on it, which is exactly why he invoked executive privilege on any emails using the alias he created. But if Mrs. Clinton looks like she's going to be convicted of anything, she knows where a lot of bodies are buried, can cut a deal and implicate him.

If he's elected, President Trump might very well decide to walk back his pledge to investigate Hillary completely since he has to know where that's going to end up leading. While both these vampires rate a stake in the heart, perhaps just getting them off America's neck and concentrating on fixing the massive damage they did might be more constructive than putting them in orange jump suits as guests of the Federal government, as justified as that would be.

The Clearest (No Spin) Summary of The FBI Report on Hillary's Email Scandal

 

One of the things serially corrupt politicians like Hillary Clinton rely is political activists masquerading as journalists who allow them to stonewall to the point where what actually happened  becomes tangled and confused in the public mind.

But believe it or not, there are still a few actual journalists in America believe it or not. One of them is prize winning investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson, who has put together for your enlightenment an informative and no holds barred summary of exactly what you need to know about the FBI report on Hillary's Email scandal:

The Takeaways. The Players. The Timeline.

The Takeaways

The FBI could not review all of the Hillary Clinton emails under investigation because:

• The Clintons’ Apple personal server used for Hillary Clinton work email could not be located for the FBI to examine.
• An Apple MacBook laptop and thumb drive that contained Hillary Clinton email archives were lost, and the FBI couldn’t examine them.
• 2 BlackBerry devices provided to FBI didn’t have their SIM or SD data cards.
• 13 Hillary Clinton personal mobile devices were lost, discarded or destroyed. Therefore, the FBI couldn’t examine them.
• Various server backups were deleted over time, so the FBI couldn’t examine them.
• After State Dept. notified Hillary Clinton her records would be sought by House Benghazi Committee, copies of her email on the laptops of her attorneys Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson were wiped with BleachBit, and the FBI couldn’t review them.
• After her emails were subpoenaed, Hillary Clinton’s email archive was also permanently deleted from her then-server “PRN” with BleachBit, and the FBI couldn’t review it.
• Also after the subpoena, backups of the PRN server were manually deleted.

Even though the FBI did not have a complete record of Hillary Clinton’s emails on three unclassified personal servers, it found:

• 2,093 emails State Dept. currently classifies as Confidential or Secret. (State Dept. did not address what their classification was at the time they were sent.)
• 193 emails (81 separate email conversations) that were classified at the time they were sent, ranging from “Confidential” to “Top Secret/Special Access Program.”
• 68 of the 81 email chains remain classified today.
• 8 were Top Secret.
• 37 were Secret.
• 36 were Confidential.
• 7 were Special Access Program.
• 3 were Sensitive Compartmentalized Information.
• 36 were Not Releasing to Foreign Governments.
• 2 were Releasable Only to Five Allied Partners.
• 12 of the suspect email chains were not provided by Hillary’s attorneys. The FBI found them other ways.
• The email chains contained classified information from 5 other agencies: CIA, DOD, FBI, NGA and NSA.

Lots more at the link...read the whole thing.

Megyn Kelly Reveals Who She Really Is

FOX news anchor Megan Kelly has become the only FOX employee or news personality to back up former FOX news host Gretchen Carlson in her suit against Fox News executive Roger Ailes for alleged sexual harassment. She has reportedly described 'unwanted sexual advances' by Ailes in detail, which allegedly took place back when Kelly, a former corporate attorney, was just starting out as a legal correspondent in Fox’s Washington bureau.

Odd...that's not what she had to say about Roger Ailes publicly back in October:



Given her stardom at the network there was obviously no need for her to be that effusive in praising him. The other networks would fight to hire her.

I'm not quite sure what's going on here.

Is she lying now, or was she lying back then? Even if those 'unwanted sexual advances' occurred, it seems to me to be a fairly nasty betrayal of someone who she admits was a good friend and mentor who advanced her career unless we're talking about rape or a direct insistence of a quid pro quo. And that's unlikely, since Kelly had a profitable career as an attorney to fall back on when she started at FOX.

Two things are also worth noting. No other FOX employee except for Gretchen Carlson has accused Ailes of anything like this (in fact, they've defended him), and people who engage in sexual harassment usually do it serially as their normal behavior. And second, Ailes' defense team includes none other than left leaning Democrat feminist and FOX consultant Susan Estrich. While I disagree with her politics, I know for a fact she's a woman of principle. It's highly unlikely she'd be involved in Aile's defense if there was much to this.

In any event Megyn Kelly has pretty much revealed what kind of person she is, proving once again that beauty outside can conceal some fairly nasty stuff on the inside. If FOX rolls over for her on this, they have no clue as to what they'll be unleashing. She will be absolutely insufferable in her demands.

UPDATE: It has now surfaced that Roger Ailes' 'sexual harassment' consisted of one incident in 2006 when Megyn Kelly 'didn't like' the way he hugged her! That's it.

There's also talk that if Ailes is fired or forced to resign, top stars Sean Hannity, Greta Van Susteren, Bret Bairs and Bill O'Reilly among others will walk away as well.

Both Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson are also reportedly very unpopular with their colleagues.

Chris Christie - Has The Hindenburg Crashed?

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie appears to be in some real trouble.

A couple of readers have asked for my take on this, but I was pretty much content to leave it alone in favor of stories and outside projects I felt were a lot more important then some tale of petty political revenge. That was especially true since my views on Governor Christie, especially as a presidential candidate are pretty well known and have been for some time.

But that was before I found out that these antics actually resulted in someone's death.That puts this in a whole other realm.

What happened here is that one of Governor Christie's top aides ordered the closing of the George Washington Bridge as a retaliation against Fort Lee’s Democratic mayor, Mark Sokolich for not endorsing Christie in his re-election run for governor last year. That resulted in a 4 hour traffic delay, something Christie was pretty callous and disinterested about at the time.

This would have stayed hidden except that e-mails surfaced between Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie’s deputy chief of staff for legislative and intergovernmental affairs and David Wildstein, a long time Christie aide and New Jersey's Port Authority Director of Interstate Projects. check this out:



Unfortunately, the fall out wasn't just political.A woman died because of the politically motivated delays while waiting for EMS techs to get to her location through the traffic. As one of my attorney friends tells me, this is known as involuntary manslaughter and he'd be very surprised if the woman's family wasn't fielding non-stop calls from Jersey attorneys seeking to represent them in a lawsuit.

Christie originally said his office had nothing to do with the closures, something we now know was, well, pretty much one of those politically expedient falsehoods we've gotten used to in the Age of Obama.

After being caught out on that one, he was forced to talk to the media today. The new line? He apologized, but "Hey I didn't know nuthin'." He claims that he hardly ever even spoke to David Wildstein, someone he's been close friends with since high school and whom he personally appointed to the post of Port Authority Director.And now, since he's apologized, he wants us all to just move on, nothing to see here.

So, what does all this tell us about Governor Christie?

Not too much I wasn't aware of before, but this episode underlines it nicely.

For one thing, with him its all about theatrics and plausible deniability. Even if a few top aides went rogue and did this on their own (an unlikely story, but let's go with it) the governor is either guilty of gross incompetence and lousy judgement if he's telling the truth, and petty, Obama-like use of government for political revenge if he isn't and was in on this from the jump.The George Washington Bridge is not some small town two laner but a major commuter and commercial artery. A four hour closure is something that ordinarily would merit top priority from a governor, especially in a small state like New Jersey - unless it was something he okayed personally. If he didn't, than he obviously wasn't doing his job and was focused elsewhere, something we've also become accustomed to in the Age of Obama.Andthe fact that this stunt in the name of politics resulted in someone's death also strikes a familiar note..sort of a small scale version of Benghazi or Fast and Furious.

Obviously, there's are good reasons the governor and President Obama get along so well.



As I wrote elsewhere, the governor agrees with President Obama on all the major issues anyway. He's anti  Second Amendment, (New Jersey has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation), pro   amnesty for illegal migrants, pro abortion on demand, and on board for pretty much everything else that's part of Obama's agenda except the sanctity of the public employee unions. And even that was limited to a couple of famous YouTube clips. He even agrees with the president on ObamaCare, agreeing to accept Obamacare funding to expand Medicaid and reversing himself after declaring a year ago that it would be fiscally unsound.

And speaking of things fiscal, for all the rep Christie has as a fiscal conservative, New Jersey's  official unemployment rate is still 8.4% (the real U-6 rate is over 10%), it's one of the highest taxed states in the country, and under Christie's stewardship, the state's debt rose by $6 billion in fiscal 2012, up 9 percent, to about $71 billion. last year ,with Moody's downgrading the  state's bond outlook from stable to negative.

In other words, he's pretty much similar to Barack Obama  with less of a tan and a slightly bigger resume.

In the event the GOP manages to strong arm the party's base and make him the 2016 Republican nominee, he'd be a real waste of effort - almost certainly a losing candidate because the base would stay home again, but an absolute nightmare in office if he managed to win somehow.

So if this scandal manages to end his presidential aspirations, consider that a blessing in disguise.

GOP chairman of House Intelligence Committee Puts His Foot In His Mouth...

Rep.Mike Rogers(R-MI) is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He went public on one of the Sunday shows today, saying that the NSA's surveillance program was just dandy, stopped 'dozens of plots' (which of course no one can recall or name a single one) and that there was a lot of what he called “misleading rhetoric,” including reports that the NSA was listening to phone calls. He called the program a “lockbox” with “lots of protections.”

Too bad for Rep. Rogers that at he wasn't paying attention. Just the day before, the NSA was admitting that they did in fact listen to phone calls..without any warrants whatsoever. And simply on the say so of one 'analyst':

The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls, a participant said.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed on Thursday that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."

If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

Not only does this disclosure shed more light on how the NSA's formidable eavesdropping apparatus works domestically, it also suggests the Justice Department has secretly interpreted federal surveillance law to permit thousands of low-ranking analysts to eavesdrop on phone calls.

Whoopsie.

Not only that, but there's little or no oversight over who has access to the private data on American citizens that been stored digitally...perhaps for later use against the Obama regime's political enemies, just as the IRS was.

Earlier reports have indicated that the NSA has the ability to record nearly all domestic and international phone calls -- in case an analyst needed to access the recordings in the future. A Wired magazine article last year disclosed that the NSA has established "listening posts" that allow the agency to collect and sift through billions of phone calls through a massive new data center in Utah, "whether they originate within the country or overseas." That includes not just metadata, but also the contents of the communications.

William Binney, a former NSA technical director who helped to modernize the agency's worldwide eavesdropping network, told the Daily Caller this week that the NSA records the phone calls of 500,000 to 1 million people who are on its so-called target list, and perhaps even more. "They look through these phone numbers and they target those and that's what they record," Binney said.

Brewster Kahle, a computer engineer who founded the Internet Archive, has vast experience storing large amounts of data. He created a spreadsheet this week estimating that the cost to store all domestic phone calls a year in cloud storage for data-mining purposes would be about $27 million per year, not counting the cost of extra security for a top-secret program and security clearances for the people involved.

CBS Reporter On Benghazi, Fast And Furious Reveals Her Computers Were Hacked

 

Emmy-award winning CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson,noted for her in depth reporting of the Obama Administration scandals of Fast and Furious and Benghazi has revealed that her work and personal computers were hacked:

"I can confirm that an intrusion of my computers has been under some investigation on my end for some months but I'm not prepared to make an allegation against a specific entity today as I've been patient and methodical about this matter," Attkisson told POLITICO on Tuesday. "I need to check with my attorney and CBS to get their recommendations on info we make public."

In an interview, Attkisson told WPHT Philadelphia that she first realized she'd her computers were compromised back in February of 2011, when she was reporting on the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal and on the Obama administration's crony capitalism green energy scandals, which she said "the administration was very sensitive about."

Attkisson also said she thought there might be some relationship between what happened to her computers and "what's happened to James [Rosen]," the FOX News Senior White House correspondent whose phone records, computers and private e-mails were accessed when he was spied on by the Justice Department.

Senior FOX News Correspondent Also Spied On By Obama Administration

The latest news reporter to surface whose First Amendment rights were violated when he was targeted by the Obama Administration is none other than the chief Washington correspondent for FOX News James Rosen. Not only did they illegally access his phone records, they tracked his movements, used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department and accessed his personal e-mails.

In essence the Department of Justice signed off on this for the crime of basic news gathering and reporting by one of its perceived 'enemies'. Actually, FOX News has named 3 staffers that were similarly targeted by the Obama DOJ, including Rosen, reporter William La Jeunesse, and Producer Mike Levine.



Eric Holder’s Department of Justice took the unheard if step of portraying standard journalistic practices as “criminal conspiracy”. Then they shopped for a friendly judge to get a warrant.

This morning, Brit Hume appeared with Martha MacCallum on FOX's America’s Newsroom tand appeared cool and collected but visibly shocked.

Hume said this this means “That the Obama/Holder Justice Department is now prepared to treat the ordinary news gathering activities of reporters trying to seek information from government officials - as a possible crime. That is…. I’m not saying it’s unprecedented because I haven’t researched this, but I can’t think of a case in which that’s ever happened before. It kind of takes the whole AP thing and casts a new light on that - of the attitude of this Justice Department - toward the news gathering activities of 1st Amendment protected organizations.”

As we get into this, I'm certain we'll find other reporters who were targeted as well.

IRS Was Far Easier On Muslim Groups Than On Conservatives, Evangelicals

Corporate and tax attorney Maryam Khan Ansari who specializes in helping groups obtain tax exempt status from the IRS wrote an article in Illume magazine entitled "Do Muslim Nonprofits Have it Easier Than Tea Party Groups?" that sheds some interesting light on a few things. I'd provide a direct link which was here, except it's mysteriously disappeared into the memory hole:

Per the PJ Tater:

Having spent most of my legal career working with tax exempt entities, the IRS scrutiny on the Tea Party isn’t news to me. In my days at large law firms, I handled a portfolio of nonprofit Tea Party organizations and saw firsthand how the IRS treated them when it came to granting exemptions.

In many cases, the organizations fight tooth-and-nail to get through IRS scrutiny, often facing pages of questions from the IRS on their activities.

In some instances, the IRS went about it in a more roundabout way, calling into question the organization’s use of funds, its outside grants and operational issues.

Several of the applications were even sent up to the IRS’ National Office for elevated scrutiny.

The experiences mirror the allegations of the American Center for Law and Justice, who represented 27 organizations.

On the flip side, I’ve worked with numerous Muslim organizations as well. And every single application of a Muslim nonprofit has gone through the IRS, with less scrutiny. Of course, they still did get scrutiny– after all, Islamophobia is still pretty rampant everywhere and it’s inaccurate to say that they got a free pass. But truth be told, they never got a 10-page questionnaire on each and every one of their grantees.

And guess what?The IRS has also granted The Muslim Brotherhood front group  CAIR its tax-exempt status back  again despite their foreign-funding, status as an unindicted co-conspirator in terrorism  and numerous failures to report.

Some animals are very much more equal than others, especially when it comes to the Obama Administration and the IRS.

The IRS Scandal...Just The Tip Of The Iceberg

It says a great deal about the degenerate nature of our media that the above exchange, between Rep. Mike Kelly and outgoing IRS head Steve Miller is being aired on CSPAN and not on every network in America.

Note the respinse of the spectators once Rep. Kelly stopped speaking.

We now know that the IRS specifically targeted conservative groups seeking 501 C3 and 501c4 tax exemptions for invasive questioning and administrative delays in an attempt to deny them the same privileges many Left wing and Democrat advocacy groups have.

We now know that the top levels of the IRS (and almost certainly beyond the Agency) were fully aware of what was going on but made a calculated decision not to touch this until after President Obama's re-election:

The IRS commissioner "has known for at least a year that this was going on," said Myers, "and that this had happened. And did he share any of that information with the White House? But even more importantly, Congress is going to ask him, why did you mislead us for an entire year? Members of Congress were saying conservatives are being targeted. What's going on here? The IRS denied it. Then when -- after these officials are briefed by the IG that this is going on, they don't disclose it. In fact, the commissioner sent a letter to Congress in September on this subject and did not reveal this. Imagine if we -- if you can -- what would have happened if this fact came out in September 2012, in the middle of a presidential election? The terrain would have looked very different."

We now know that donors to Mitt Romney and to conservative cause like Frank VanderSloot, Hal Scherz and a host of others were audited, many for the first time once it became known they were backing conservative of Republican causes. In Frank VanderSloot's case, he hadn't been audited in over thirty years...until he donated almost a million dollars to conservative causes and to Mitt Romney.

We know that Lois Lerner, who was overseeing tax-exempt groups for the IRS, finally acknowledged, under pressure of a looming investigative report, some of what the IRS was doing...and unsuccessfully tried palming it off on what she described as a few low level employees in Cincinnati, Ohio. And we now know that she outright lie, because as Reuters reported, high-level IRS officials, including its chief counsel, knew in August 2011 about the targeting. And the entire corrupt operation reached its peak around May of 2012, in the midst of President Obama's re-election campaign.

In a particularly outrageous insult to our intelligence, President Obama made made some obviously ingenuous remarks of how shocking this all was to him, and the director of the agency, Steve Miller 'resigned'...except, as Miller himself revealed, he was scheduled to leave in June anyway!

We know, too, that the IRS outright lied about  the existence of  a large number of documents related to the policy of targeting, Pro Israel, Conservative, Republican and Tea Party organizations in response to a 2010 Freedom of Information Act request, even though the documents were later discovered by the IRS inspector general.

And we also know that Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS executive (and registered Democrat) in charge of the tax exempt division in 2010 the targeting of conservative Tea Party, evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harassment got bonuses and a raise during her tenure for a job well done:

Ingram received a $7,000 bonus in 2009, according to data obtained by The Washington Examiner from the IRS, then a $34,440 bonus in 2010, $35,400 in 2011 and $26,550 last year, for a total of $103,390. Her annual salary went from $172,500 to $177,000 during the same period.

Bonuses as large as those awarded to Ingram normally require presidential approval, according to the Office of Personnel official regulations.

Not only that, but Ingraham is being rewarded with a promotion. Thanks to her outstanding work in violating the rights of her fellow Americans, she's been promoted to - wait for it - head the IRS division enforcing ObamaCare.

Lois Lerner's bonus last year, by the way? a whopping $42,531 in 2012. Not bad for someone who works for the IRS but by her own admission 'isn't good at math'.

That's what we know so far.

What we don't know is how far up this goes.

It's obvious that the word was out from upstairs - 'get the Tea Party, get the Republicans, go after the opponents of the Democrats'.

Outgoing head Steve Miller says he used to know who was responsible for initiating these policies but he, um, forgot.

I think we're going to find out, and the question isn't going to go away...what did David Axelrod, Jim Messina and David Plouffe whop ran Obama's re-election campaign know? What did President Obama know? And when did he know it?

Obama Administration Threatening Benghazi Survivors To Keep Them Quiet

This if nothing else ought to tell us that there's a lot about the Benghazi fiasco we're going to find out.

Rep. Darrel Issa of the House Oversight Committee is holding new hearings and specifically advised some of the survivors that they were going to be subpoenaed and to 'lawyer up' in his words.

The Administration's response has been to threaten the Benghazi aurvivors in an attempt to silence them and to deny their attorneys access to material needed to secure their rights as whistle blowers, something illegal under federal law.

Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican from California who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry on April 26 to complain that the department has not provided a process by which attorneys like Toensing can receive the security clearances necessary for them to review classified documents and other key evidence.

“It is unavoidable that Department employees identifying themselves as witnesses in the Committee’s investigation will apply for a security clearance to allow their personal attorneys to handle sensitive or classified material,” Issa wrote. “The Department’s unwillingness to make the process for clearing an attorney more transparent appears to be an effort to interfere with the rights of employees to furnish information to Congress.”

Victoria Toensing is an attorney representing one of the whistleblowers and said publicly that he and others have been threatened by members of the Obama Administration.

“I’m not talking generally, I’m talking specifically about Benghazi – that people have been threatened,” Toensing said in an interview Monday. “And not just the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA.”

“It’s frightening and they’re doing some very despicable threats to people,” she said. “Not ‘We’re going to kill you,’ or not ‘We’re going to prosecute you tomorrow,’ but they’re taking career people and making them well aware that their careers will be over [if they cooperate with congressional investigators].”

Toensing has also complained about not being given access by the State Department to materials needed to adequately represent her client. Since she's a former Justice Department official and a former counsel to the Senate intelligence committee, she already has a top security clearance - but the State Department is still refusing to release the information she needs.

Odd, but in spite of what she's saying and in spite of Issa's letter to Secretary Kerry, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell still claims he's 'unaware' of any attorneys seeking security clearances...or even attorneys like Toensing who already have such clearances seeking access to classified materials.

So somebody's lying. Three guesses who...

But eventually we're going to get some answers, especially since some of the government functionaries in State and the CIA appear ready to testify regardless of how they're pressured.

From what I'm hearing, a number of them are fairly disgusted over what happened in Benghazi and the subsequent coverup, and they're not going to stay silent.

Update: The Benghazi Pneumonia and the Hillary Flu..

 

The State Department's Accountability Review Board finally released its report last week, and it's notable in that we now know even less than we did before.

The report does say that security at the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was “grossly inadequate” - the result of “systemic failures” of leadership and management. And it totally discredits the Obama administration’s deliberate lie that the murder of four Americans was a result of a “spontaneous” protest to an offensive video.

What it doesn't say a word about, of course, is whodunnit, or provide any of the answers to a number of relevant questions about what could be justifiably termed a coverup.

The whodunnit part was supposedly resolved by the Administration's announcement of the resignation of four State Department underlings because of their performance blunders on Benghazi.Of Course, as it turned out, they didn't actually resign at all.

And the unanswered questions?

The Obama Administration has live action, real time films from two drones that were overhead during the seven hour attack on the consulate, as well as from security cameras on site. It also has live transcripts of phone calls between the CIA annex and the consulate and the Situation Room in Washington and the debriefings and testimonies of the U.S. personnel who were evacuated from Benghazi and knew this was an organized attack and not a spontaneous demonstration over a video.

All of this material has been classified top secret so that no one in Congress can see them. Why? What is the justification for that, when according to President Obama's own words, his administration was going to be the most transparent in history?

And since the Administration obviously had access to all these items within 24 hours of the attack, why the false narrative about a spontaneous demonstration over a video for two weeks? President Obama and Secretary Clinton obviously had access to this material. Why did they make what amounted to false statements to the American people? And if they're still claiming that it was the intelligence community that withheld the information that led to those false statements, whom withheld it? And why haven't they been disciplined for it?

There were a number of previous assaults on foreign offices in Benghazi, including attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that occurred in April and June 2012, the local Red Cross offices and an assassination attempt on the British ambassador in Benghazi. The British and the Red Cross office both pulled out because of the deteriorating security situation. Did the president’s national security staff make him aware of this? And if he was informed, what steps did he take to ensure that our personnel there were better protected?When did Secretary Hillary Clinton become aware of the previous attacks and what steps did she take to protect State Department officials in Benghazi?

The attack took place on the anniversary of 9/11, and a year after the assassination of Osama bin-Laden. Any reasonable person could have foreseen massive unrest in the Arab world, especially in Benghazi, a known hotbed of al-Qaeda and similar salifists in Libya.Why weren't American military units and assets on alert and in place to protect our consulate? Why was security stripped from the consulate despite Ambassador Stevens' own requests?

The attack took place over seven hours. We had special ops military assets two hours away expressly designed for these situations that could have saved our people, we had helicopter gunships within easy reach and two ex-Seals with a laser sight in the CIA annex pinpointing targets and calling out coordinates.

During those seven hours, what were Secretary Clinton and President Obama doing? Where were their whereabouts?

These are all questions the State Department's Accountability Review Board report didn't answer at all.

That's to be expected. One doesn't ask a fox to investigate a murder in a hen house.

One place some of the answers were expected to come from was Hillary Clinton, who was scheduled to testify before Congress on the matter.

Except surpise,  she suddenly contracted stomach flu, fainted and reportedly sustained a small concussion. Perhaps she was reliving being shot at by sniper fire is Bosnia. At any rate, she was not able to appear.

The convenience of this for everyone concerned is obvious. After Mrs. Clinton fully recovers - months later- Benghazi and four dead Americans will be conveniently forgotten by the non-Fox media, and Mrs. Clinton undoubtedly just wouldn't recall certain details. That concussion,you know. Nasty.

Except a number of  Republicans in the Senate had a surprise of their own.

They've announced that they will hold up any votes on confirming Senator John Kerry as her successor as Secretary of State until she comes to congress and testifies. So Mrs. Clinton might just be under some pressure now by the Obama White House to recover her strength, slap on a clean pantsuit and answer a few tough questions.

The cover up. It's always worst than the original crime.

WH: Obama 'Not Concerned" About Whether American People Were Misled On Benghazi

At least spokeshole Jay Carney is being honest for a change. They really don't care, since they know the media will cover for them. And of course, they can always hurl charges of racism at anyone who doesn't drink the Kool-Ade.

I guarantee you, if this had happened with a Republican in the White House, the press would be in full Watergate frenzy.

However, sooner or later, just as with Watergate, someone will rat someone else out, something else will leak from one of the disgruntled intelligence professionals who've been maligned, and we're going to find out a lot more about this.

I'd be very surprised if this just went away.

Office Of DNI Blamed For Deleting al-Qaeda, Terrorism references from Benghazi CIA Memo

According to CBS, its now leaked out that the editing of the CIA memo and talking points calling the 9/11 Benghazi debacle a terrorist attack carried out by al-Qaeda affilites was done in the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), run by Obama Appointee James Clapper :

CBS News has learned that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) cut specific references to “al Qaeda” and “terrorism” from the unclassified talking points given to Ambassador Susan Rice on the Benghazi consulate attack – with the agreement of the CIA and FBI. The White House or State Department did not make those changes. …

However, an intelligence source tells CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan the links to al Qaeda were deemed too “tenuous” to make public, because there was not strong confidence in the person providing the intelligence. CIA Director David Petraeus, however, told Congress he agreed to release the information — the reference to al Qaeda — in an early draft of the talking points, which were also distributed to select lawmakers.

“The intelligence community assessed from the very beginning that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.” DNI spokesman Shawn Turner tells CBS News. That information was shared at a classified level — which Rice, as a member of President Obama’s cabinet, would have been privy to. …

The head of the DNI is James Clapper, an Obama appointee. He ultimately did review the points, before they were given to Ambassador Rice and members of the House intelligence committee on Sept. 14. They were compiled the day before.

You might remember James Clapper as the man who once called the Muslim Brotherhood 'a secular organization'.

The report is pretty careful not to actually say it was Clapper who edited the CIA memo, but if not him, who else could it have been? Some low level aide or staffer? And if it was done with the agreement of the FBI and CIA, why is General Petraeus saying publicly that he has no idea who redacted his memo?

The explanation now being given for the selective editing was that the link to Al-qaeada was “too tenuous.”

Yet, General Petraeus, a military man, knew “almost immediately” that this was a planned terrorist attack because of the presence of heavy weapons and the obvious planning involved. So did others in the CIA.

This was no 'spontaneous mob' incensed by a YouTube video. Yet the actual intelligence was removed and that even more tenuous nonsense substituted.

Who made that decision? I doubt it was James Clapper, since the decision was ultimately a political one.

It almost certainly came from the White House, who also made the decision to send Susan Rice out to push that bogus narrative about a video on no less than 5 Sunday talk shows.

Other questions have to do with how the White House handled General Petraeus. He had to know that the talk about the video was sheer nonsense, yet he said nothing. In fact, he even parroted the Administration narrative before Congress on September 13th.

Was he being blackmailed? Did someone at the White House have a chat with him about his extramarital activities and promise him that if he kept quiet and played ball,it would all just remain their little secret? Did the White House double cross him after the election was safely won and out the story about his affair in order to make sure that anything he said about Benghazi would be discredited? Were there other people that were pressured to keep their mouths shut about the truth in order to keep Benghazi off the front pages and make sure it didn't effect the president's re-election campaign?

And once again..why weren't our easily available military assets sent in to rescue of diplomats? And why was security from the Benghazi consulate removed and Ambassador Stevens' requests for increased security ignored?

Ultimately, this smells like a scandal that dwarfs Watergate. It will take time, especially since the media is so involved in protecting this president, but we'll eventually get answers to those questions.

Benghazi: 'Who Are You Gonna Believe, Me or Your Lying Eyes?"

 

Former CIA head General David Petraeus testified behind closed doors before Congress Friday, and what he had to say not only differed from what he told Congress back on September 13, but it raised new questions about the Benghazi debacle.

Back on September 13th, General Petraeus pretty much parroted the Administration line that this was an out of control mob incensed by a YouTube video. At that time, as we now know, the Obama Administration had full knowledge of the General's extramarital affairs and it's not out of the realm of possibility at all that he was promised his indiscretions would not be trumpeted publicly in exchange for his cooperation.

As I mentioned previously, the General is not the first high ranking DC figure to have been caught with an inappropriate part of his anatomy caught in the cookie jar, but this kind of public outing is quite rare.

If it was done after he cooperated and the election was safely over, it could only have been done with the idea of totally discrediting anything he had to say about what really happened, which gives what he had to say Friday an added kick.Especially if he was given private assurances by Congress that no charges would be filed for perjury.

The General is now claiming that he and the CIA knew from the very beginning that Benghazi was a terrorist attack primarily staged by al-Qaeda militia Ansar al Sharia, and that he issued a memo containing talking points to that effect that somehow got changed after they were distributed to multiple departments, including the State Department, National Security Council, Justice Department and White House.

No one seems to know exactly how that happened, including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Acting CIA Director Mike Morell, who were also questioned.

It's also leaked out now that the President was formally notified within 72 hours that this was a terrorist attack with al-Qaeda involvement.

He almost certainly knew this before then, because a drone was overhead and providing a live, real time feed shortly after the attack was reported, both the consulate and the CIA annex were in live phone contact with the White House and the president was personally briefed by SecDef Panetta at 5PM DC time.

Yet Ambassador Susan Rice, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, the president and White House spokesperson Jay Carney all pushed the narrative that this was a spontaneous protest over a video that just got out of hand:

Petraeus' testimony both challenges the Obama administration's repeated claims that the attack was a "spontaneous" protest over an anti-Islam video, and according to (Rep. Peter} King conflicts with his own briefing to lawmakers on Sept. 14. Sources have said Petraeus, in that briefing, also described the attack as a protest that spun out of control.

"His testimony today was that from the start, he had told us that this was a terrorist attack," King said, adding that he told Petraeus he had a "different recollection."

Still, the claim that the CIA's original talking points were changed is sure to stoke controversy on the Hill.

"The original talking points were much more specific about Al Qaeda involvement. And yet the final ones just said indications of extremists," King said, adding that the final version was the product of a vague "inter-agency process."

King said a CIA analyst specifically told lawmakers that the Al Qaeda affiliates line "was taken out."

A congressional source familiar with this week's testimony also told Fox News that the language in the CIA talking points about Benghazi was changed from "Al Qaeda-affiliated individuals to extremist organizations" -- which had the effect of minimizing the role of terrorists in the attack.

"It really changed the whole tone of it," King told Fox News.

The White House, of course is denying that anything was changed, and sticking to the new narrative that Susan Rice and other Administration figures were merely repeating info they were given 'based on the best assessments at that time'.

Which leaves us with this question: why, when President Obama knew within 72 hours (at the very latest, and almost certainly before then) that this was a terrorist attack did he and members of his administration continue to talk about a riot sparked by a video for over a week?

And if they really believed it was merely a riot, why not send in military assets we had readily available to rescue our people?

We had helicopter gunships within easy reach, and a unit of the Commander's In-extremis Force (CIF), a unit specifically designed for exactly these kinds of situations already deployed at our base in Sigonella, Sicily, less than a two-hour plane ride away.

There was even an ex-Navy SEAL with a laser sight in the CIA annex that was in live communication with the White House phoning in exact coordinates of targets.

Why weren't they sent, if the White House and this president really believed it was just a mob?

The obvious lies and outright misrepresentations to the American people about what did and did not happen in Benghazi r4esemble the way Fast and Furious was handled.

It remains to be seen whether either of these fiascos is going to be pursued in any meaningful way.

The Petraeus Affair Raises New Questions On Benghazzi

The David Petraeus sex scandal is resonating far beyond its original borders.

Since I wasn't particularly interested in the sleazier aspects of the story, my main thought was to wonder why General  Petraeus was  sandbagged in this fashion.

After all, plenty of men in high places have been caught with inappropriate parts of their anatomies caught in the cookie jar before, and while it may lead to resignations for various contrived reasons, it rarely leads to this kind of public scandal...unless somebody in power wants it that way. The general's little love triangle ( or is it a hexagon?) didn't need to be outed, especially since people leave White House  jobs in DC all the time after an election. Yet it was. Why?

Charles Krauthammer thinks he knows:



What Dr. Krauthammer is talking about is the fact that the FBI knew all about General Petraeus' extracurricular activities way back in May of 2012, yet he was allowed to continue in place until now, with the White House ignoring the national security implications of possible blackmail or security leaks.

While I originally thought that the delay was just to avoid embarrassing the president during election season, it looks like this goes even deeper.

It is, of course, an old tradition in certain political circles to collect useful tidbits like this and hold them in reserve for when you need them.If the Obama Administration in fact did that,it's a serious matter - a major security lapse allowed solely for political purposes.

But now, it appears that a question has been raised about whether Petraeus was promised a chance to resign gracefully or even to stay on provided he toed the Administration line about an out-of-hand mob incensed by a video..which is pretty much what he did in his testimony of September 13th.

But then the question remains..if this is how it went down and General Petraeus submitted and did what the administration wanted, why destroy him anyway?

I can think of reasons.

General Petraeus was never one of the president's Chicago circle, he's always conducted himself with honor, he's not particularly an Obama loyalist and as such, there's no telling when he might roll back over. This way, he's disgraced and discredited no matter what.

No matter what he says about Benghazzi when he testifies before Congress, it can now be ignored with a nudge, a smirk and wink by the regime and their media allies.

Not that I think the General is going to contradict his performance of September 13 all that much unless something special happens, like an offer of immunity. There is this thing called perjury.

What he will likely have, for now at least, is a few rough hours as congress parses his Libya Report to the White House, provided they can manage to pry it loose form the Obama Regime.

The Obama Administration Picks An Islamist Sympathizer To Investigate Benghazi

That's a fairly accurate way to describe former U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, the Obama Administration's choice to head the official State Department 'investigate' what happened in Benghazi.

Aside from his connections with Muslim Brotherhood front group CAIR, Pickering is also co-chairman of the board of George Soros’ International Crisis Group which has ties to other Islamic organizations as well, including the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) an lobbying group for the Iranian regime.

Pickering also sits on the boards of two pro-Tehran groups, the American Iranian Council and the National Iranian American Council.

He's advocated engagement with the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, opening relations with Hamas and taking them off the official list of terrorist groups, peace talks with the Taliban,and talks with the Iranian regime with no preconditions.

And in case you had any other doubts, reporter Matthew Vadum has an account of his performance at an Oct. 23 panel discussion at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. on “what role the faith community can play in fighting Islamophobia.”

Among the other panel members were Arab American Institute president Jim Zogby, who's well known for his apologetics for Muslim terrorism, particularly by Hamas and the Palestinians. And our old friend Imam Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan, the principles behind the Ground Zero Mosque,both of whom have hard core Islamist views and backgrounds that could only be described dangerous.

You can access the details of what was said at the link, but to summarize, Pickering essentially agrees with Rauf and Zogby that Islamophobia is a mental disease that resides in a bunch of tea party rednecks and needs to be criminalized.

The choice of Pickering, a loyal Clintonista tells us that the cover up of what happened in Benghazi is going to be continued on an official level.

It also tells us how thoroughly Islamists and their appeasers have penetrated the Obama Administration.

Obama Agonistes: The Fiction Cracks On Benghazi

"The words of his mouth are trouble and deceit; he has ceased to act wisely and do good." - Psalms, 36:3

More and more of what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton farcically referred to as ' the fog of war' over the Benghazi debacle has dispersed...and what it reveals is sheer ugliness.

Even some of President Obama's loyal media lackeys aren't quite able to swallow what he's doling out, as this video clip from an MSNBC interview shows.

Here's a transcript, that mercifully leaves out the president's stammers, er-ahs and stutters:

MB: Why has it been so easy for critics to say the administration does not have its story straight on Benghazi?

BO: Well look, the fact of the matter is that this is a tragedy. There’s all kinds of legitimate questions to ask, because any time a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans who are serving our country get killed, you know, we’ve got to figure out what happened and fix it. And most importantly, we’ve got to bring those folks who carried that out to justice. That’s exactly what we’re going to do. But I do take offense, as I’ve said during one of the debates, with some suggestion that you know, in any way we haven’t tried to make sure that the American people knew as information was coming in what we believed happened. And…

JS: Was it the intel community giving you bad information early on, because that’s…the stories keep changing.

BO: Well, that’s what we’re going to find out from the investigation. But the truth is that you know, across the board, when this happened, my number one priority was secure Americans, figure out what happened, bring those folks to justice. We are in the process of doing that right now Congress has been getting the flow of information continuously from day one, and what my attitude on this is, is if we find out that there was a big breakdown and somebody didn’t do their job, they’ll be held accountable. Ultimately, as commander-in-chief, I’m responsible, and I don’t shy away from that responsibility. My number one responsibility is to go after folks who did this, and we’re going to make sure that we get them. I’ve got a pretty good track record in doing that.

Meanwhile, a number of members of Congress have been quite vocal over the fact that the administration hasn't told them anything or complied with even the most basic requests for information.

As Senator John McCain (R-AZ), the ranking Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee revealed today in an interview, not only are the recordings from the surveillance cameras that were all over the Benghazi compound now classified top secret so no one can view them, but repeated requests for information to James Clapper, the director of the National Intelligence, General Petraeus, the head of the CIA, or John Brennan, who is the White House head of counterterrorism.

I'll add to that by telling you that according to my sources, the videos sent from the drones overhead directly to the White House situation room in real time and the phone recordings of calls from the Benghazi consulate and the Benghazi CIA annex have suffered the same fate as the surveillance camera tapes. They're classified top secret so no one can get to them.A number of the e-mails that have been leaked were as well,but this president's wholesale blaming of the intelligence community for his own malfeasance has not gone without some blowback.

As for the information given to the American people, what we heard for days from this president, the Secretary of State, the White House spokesperson and our UN ambassador for days were outright lies about a video and a 'spontaneous protest' that got out of control. Because of the leaked e-mails, we know know that the State Department and the White House knew within hours that this was a planned terrorist attack by an al-Qaeda affiliate.

The other, unmistakeable fact that's leaked out is that there was no attempt made to save the trapped Americans in the consulate. When the men in the CIA annex in Benghazi, including two ex-Navy SEALS repeatedly asked for permission to put together an ad-hoc force to rescue the Ambassador and the other men trapped in the consulate, they were told to stand down three times.

There were helicopter gunships within easy range of the consulate, and F-18 fighters less than an hour away. One of those ex-Seals in the annex had a laser range finder and was actually radioing in coordinates of enemy targets. No U.S. aircraft were sent to attack.

There was even a Special OPs unit already deployed and ready to go at our airbase in Sigonella, Sicily, a little over a two-hour plane ride away from Benghazi.

This force, known as the Commander's In-extremis Force (CIF) is specifically designated and trained for exactly these kinds of missions, where Americans are endangered and quick, decisive action is called for. The CIF forces are designed to go in with a minimum of information and hit the ground running, and every military theater commander has access to one.

They never got the orders to move.

Instead, the fight was simply observed in real time for seven hours, by which time four Americans had been murdered - including the two heroic ex-SEALS who decided to disobey orders and do what their government lacked the stones to do, saddle up an ride out to try and save their fellow Americans.

Once all this intel leaked, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta had an astounding response to media inquiries on this. After accusing people who were justifiably angry at being lied to for weeks and were critical of the administration of 'Monday Morning quarterbacking', he said, on October 25th that this was somehow just business as usual.

“A basic principle,” he said, “is you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on — without having some real-time information about what’s taking place.”

Let's look at that. You have drones overhead showing you what's going on in real time, you have phone contact with the consulate, and you have a Navy SEAL feeding you precise coordinates on enemy targets from less than a mile away. And this excuse for a Secretary of Defense has the nerve and the contempt for people with far more combat experience than he'll ever have to try to lie his way out of this by saying they lacked sufficient information?

Those of you who've had combat experience, tell me - how many times have you been given a mission to perform with a lot less intel than that going in? It happens all the time. Even police officers often go in to hairy situations with nothing more than a message like 'shots fired' or 'burglary in progress' and an address.

Leon Panetta obviously was told to walk the plank with the media to try and defuse this. It's amazing that the media didn't excoriate him for such a cynical, dishonest statement.

And President Obama? All of sudden, his story has changed.

On the campaign trail in Denver on October 26, he said, “The minute I found out what was happening . . . I gave the directive,” he said, “to make sure we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to do. I guarantee you everybody in the CIA and military knew the number-one priority was making sure our people are safe.”

According to the White House calender, President Obama met with his entire security team on September 11th,2012 5 PM DC time,including Secretary Panetta. By then the Benghazi attack had been going on for just under an hour.

The decision to send in the CIF or indeed any military forces would have been referred to the president as commander-in-chief.If the president gave that order, as he says, than either somebody countermanded it without telling him or the president never gave the order in the first place and he's simply lying again. He needs to clear the record by releasing the directive publicly.

Someone gave the orders to the men in the CIA annex to stand down, and knowing our military as I do, somebody specifically instructed them not to deploy when they checked back in and requested permission to go in and save American lives.

Who was it?

If SecDef Panetta or Commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dempsey countermanded the president's direct orders, they would have informed him directly.General David Petraeus, the head of the CIA has stated unequivocally that no such orders to stand down came from him.

On the other hand, if the president is simply lying and he never gave any such 'directive' then they were simply carrying out his orders while he rested up for his campaign fundraiser and celeb appearances in Las Vegas.

What Benghazi became for this president and his administration ultimately was a political problem that had to be handled to cover up far deeper questions that might be asked about his entire handling of foreign policy...especially his intervention in Libya and his insistence that al-Qaeda was 'on the run' after bin-Laden's assassination. So they lied. Repeatedly.

And the president's belated insistence that he 'gave a directive' which would have been transmitted directly to AFRICOM, the Defense Department, the CIA, and the State Department is either true or false. If it's true, it's in his interest to release and declassify the directive, the video recordings and everything else connected with this debacle so we can find out who disobeyed his orders. The fact that he isn't doing so tells us a great deal.

And as a signal as to where this might be going, I note that General Ham, the theater commander of AFRICOM whose responsibilities included Libya has suddenly been relieved of command. Is he being set up as yet another possible fall guy? We'll see.

After all the lies and the heavy handed attempt at a coverup, here's what's certain. Four Americans were left to die when they could have been saved, and all of the nonsense by the President and Secretary Clinton about how close Ambassador Stevens was to them while they were attending his funeral was some of the most cynical and self serving horse manure it's ever been my misfortune to observe.The fact they that could know what they knew, say those things and face these men's families beggars the imagination.

Either this president is either guilty of gross incompetence or he willfully deceived the American people.There's no other way to see this.

You pick whichever one you want, but either one shows why this president is unworthy of serving in any position of public responsibility, let alone as commander-in-chief.

This is not going to go away, in spite of the efforts of the president's lackeys in the media to bury it.

Breaking - Hillary Clinton Says 'I Take Responsibility For Benghazi'

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fell on her sword and took responsibility for the Benghazi debacle, saying 'The buck stops with me':

"I take responsibility" for what happened on September 11, Clinton said in an interview with CNN's Elise Labott soon after arriving in Lima, Peru, for a visit. The interview, one of a series given to U.S. television networks Monday night, was the first she has given about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. 

 Clinton insisted President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are not involved in security decisions.   "I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha," she added, noting that it is close to the election. The attack killed Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other Americans at the consulate. The Obama administration has been heavily criticized after Vice President Joe Biden said during last week's vice presidential debate that the White House did not know of requests to enhance security at Benghazi, contradicting testimony by State Department employees that requests had been made and rejected.

 
Of course..."The decision about security aspects are made by security professionals."

In other words, it was some unnamed underling's fault to named later, as soon as we figure out who's expendable.

There are several possible reasons why she did this.

First,there was probably an appeal made to her on the basis of party loyalty to protect this president at all costs, especially three weeks before an election.

There may have been a substantial quid pro quo promised. Perhaps even an endorsement and some campaign cash if she runs in 2016. And anyone who's been following the cover up knows this wasn't Mrs. Clinton's fault,but the White House's. So very little mud will stick to her,and she gets kudos for being gutsy, and taking responsibility.Besides, it was th efault of an underling..just like Fast and Furious, no?

She may have decided that it's simply better, for reasons of her own, to get this off of the radar.She may have been more involved than it appears at first glance, and going public is theprice for keeping it hidden.

In any event,it'll be interesting to see if this takes the Benghazi scandal and coverup out of the headlines.I don't think it will.

The Benghazi Shuffle

We're seeing something absolutely fascinating going on, as the White House is blaming the State Department and Secretary Clinton for the Benghazi fiasco and coverup and the State Department is pushing back.

Just to recap the outright lies we've been told about this so far...

Originally, we were told this was a protest over a YouTube video that got out of hand. The administration pushed that for all it was worth, even though we now have conclusive evidence that the State department knew within 24 hours that this was a terrorist attack.



Even worse, we know now that the claim that there was no 'actionable intelligence' that came out of President Obama's own mouth was also a fairy tale.

There were intercepts of monitored communications during and after the attacks between members of the al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Sharia and a local al-Qaeda leader of al-Qaeda In The Maghreb(AQIM) which made it quite clear that the assault was a premeditated terrorist attack.

There was also plenty of chatter about using the Cairo attack on our embassy as a cover:

It’s unclear why the talking points said the attacks were spontaneous and why they didn’t mention the possibility of al Qaeda involvement, given the content of the intercepts and the organizations the speakers were affiliated with. One U.S. intelligence officer said the widely distributed assessment was an example of “cherry picking,” or choosing one piece of intelligence and ignoring other pieces, to support a preferred thesis.

“Even if you push out that one piece of intelligence,” said this intelligence officer, “it is still in the context of a conversation between a group with an affinity to al Qaeda and a manager of an al-Qaeda affiliate. Why were we only hearing about how the attack was inspired and not about that?”

'Cherry picking intelligence'....isn't that what the president and his fellow democrats used to accuse the Bush Administration of doing?

To answer the intelligence officer's question, we weren't hearing about that because that gives rise to other questions about why Ambassador Steven's own request for enhanced security were ignored and why two special forces security teams were pulled out of the country even though there had been many incidents in Benghazi, the anniversary of 9/11 was coming up and these intercepted communications pointed out that something was up.

Even Ambassador Steven's request for a barbed wire fence for the Benghazi consulate was turned down.

The White house and the Ste department have continued to scramble like rats to spin this.

So now we come to where we are today, with the Obama White House looking to throw the blame on two separate entities; aside from falsely criticizing the intelligence services for incorrectly reporting that the attack was a protest over the YouTube video, they're blaming the State Department for concealing intel from them.


Apparently Joe-Joe the Clown exacerbated what was already an acrimonious situation between State and the White House during his debate performance last Thursday.

Among his other many prevarications Biden claimed outright that the White House was never informed about the intel and that they were never told about Ambassaodr Stevens' request for more security.

This directly contradicted the testimony before Rep.Darrel Issa's investigative committee by Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Programs Charlene Lamb and Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary for management.

The Obama White House doubled down to back up Biden's statement. Ben Rhodes, President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser for communications, told Foreign Policy magazine October 11th that neither Biden nor President Barack Obama were aware of what was going on...but only Biden and the president.

“Biden speaks only for himself and the president and neither of them knew about the requests at the time,” Rhodes said.

Then there was spokesmouth Jay Carney, the day after the debate:

“These kinds of issues are handled in the State Department by security officials.” White House spokesman Jay Carney said during Friday’s press briefing.

Security matters “are decided at the State Department,” he said, amid tough questioning from Fox News Channel’s Ed Henry.

Of course, that throws Secretary Clinton under the bus in a huge way. She runs the State Department. Either she was incompetent, doesn't know what's going on in her own department and served the president poorly, or President Obama is obviously lying. Given what I know about how government works, there's absolutely no way the president wasn't fully informed by his Secretary of State.

For its part, the State Department fought back by releasing a transcript of a briefing that two high-ranking department officials gave to a number of reporters that directly contradicts the White House version of things.

Now, considering the many lies Mrs. Clinton has told during her political life, it would ordinarily strike me as poetic justice that she would be victimized by an even bigger liar than herself. But in this case, with an ambassador and three other Americans foully murdered in an intelligence and security lapse that never should have happened, the American people deserve to finally know the truth.

Apparently ex-President Bill Clinton is not exactly happy over this situation either, according to some sources. Considering how he bailed the president out at the last Democratic convention, I can hardly blame him.

This is more than what President Obama glibly called 'a bump in the road' before he flew off to a fundraiser in Vegas. This is beyond a doubt the most shameful and disgusting scandal in modern American politics.

No one died because of Watergate.

Obama Claims Executive Privilege Over Fast And Furious Docs

With a committee vote on a contempt of Congress citation looming, Attorney General Eric Holder brought in the heavy artillery and had President Obama exert executive privilege over the Fast and Furious docs Holder is refusing to provide in answer to subpoenas issued by the investigative committee chaired by Rep. Darrel Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley:

Rep. Darrell Issa pressed ahead with a committee vote Wednesday to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, despite an 11th-hour move by President Obama to exert executive privilege over the Fast and Furious documents at the heart of the dispute.

The announcement instantly touched off a caustic debate on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, as Democrats accused Issa of prosecuting a "political witch hunt" and Republicans stepped up their criticism of Holder's "stonewalling" over the Fast and Furious probe. Even for Washington, the tone at the hearing was decidedly bitter and accusatory.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was first informed of the president's decision to exert executive privilege in a letter Wednesday morning, shortly before the contempt vote was scheduled.

Issa said committee staff are evaluating the letter but described the move as too little, too late as he and other GOP lawmakers questioned the basis for the assertion.

"This untimely assertion by the Justice Department falls short of any reason to delay today's proceedings," Issa said.

Issa accused the Justice Department of trying to compel the committee to close its investigation in exchange for documents it hasn't yet seen. "I can't accept that deal. No other committee chairman would," he said.

Fast and Furious, you'll remember, involved the Department of Justice allowing thousands of illegally purchased weapons to 'walk' across the border for resale to Mexican drug cartels. The weapons had no tracking devices, most have never been recovered and over 300 murders have been attributed to them, including the murder of U.S. border patrol agent Brian Terry.

Since this came to light, there has been a major pattern of stonewalling, obfuscation and outright lies to the committee, headed by Representative Darrel Issa and Senator Chuck Grassley.

In fact, the documents President Obama just asserted executive privilege over relate to a February 11th, 2011, letter to Sen. Grassley claiming that the Department of Justice and AG Holder had only just found out about Fast and Furious. Holder and the DOJ later admitted the letter was 'in error' after an e-mail trail surfaced that proved they knew about Fast and Furious and had approved the operation long before, and what Grassley and Issa want to see is documents dated after from February 2011 and afterward relating to how Justice officials learned about the Fast and Furious investigation. Or in other words, who knew what and when did they know it.

Holder's final offer in his meeting with Issa was that he would brief Issa and the committee himself on what was in the documents rather than supplying the subpoenaed documents themselves..provided the committee agreed in advance that this would satisfy the subpoena! Such an offer only underlines how much contempt the attorney general has for the committee and for Congress.

I'm hardly surprised President Obama is asserting executive privilege here. It's been obvious to me for some time that this led straight to the White House. In fact, President Obama even allowed for $10 million in funding for the operation as part of his 'stimulus' program. It's in the stimulus bill itself.

As Senator Grassley said in a statement today, there's no reason for President Obama to assert executive privilege if there was no White House involvement:

"The assertion of executive privilege raises monumental questions. How can the President assert executive privilege if there was no White House involvement? How can the President exert executive privilege over documents he's supposedly never seen? Is something very big being hidden to go to this extreme? "

Of course this president knew about Fast and Furious, and a long tome before February 11 of 2011.There's a reason funds for Fast and Furious were in the Stimulus package President Obama is so proud of. I mean, look at all the jobs it provided for weapons traffickers and enforcers for the Mexican drug cartels!

If the majority of Democrats in Congress had any decency (of if the president did, for that matter) there would be a special prosecutor named immediately. Needless to say, they haven't and there won't be.