The American people deserve to know the truth
By Adm. James A. Lyons Sunday, October 28, 2012
There is an urgent need for full disclosure of what has become the “Benghazi Betrayal and Cover-up.” The Obama national security team, including CIA, DNI and the Pentagon, apparently watched and listened to the assault on the U.S. consulate and cries for help but did nothing.
If someone had described a fictional situation with a similar scenario and described our leadership ignoring the pleas for help, I would have said it was not realistic—not in my America – but I would have been proven wrong.
"We now know why Ambassador Christopher Stevens had to be in Benghazi the night of 9/11 to meet a Turkish representative, even though he feared for his safety. According to various reports, one of Stevens’ main missions in Libya was to facilitate the transfer of much of Gadhafi’s military equipment, including the deadly SA-7 – portable SAMs – to Islamists and other al Qaeda-affiliated groups fighting the Assad Regime in Syria. In an excellent article, Aaron Klein states that Stevens routinely used our Benghazi consulate (mission) to coordinate the Turkish, Saudi Arabian and Qatari governments’ support for insurgencies throughout the Middle East. Further, according to Egyptian security sources, Stevens played a “central role in recruiting Islamic jihadists to fight the Assad Regime in Syria.”Red Cell
In another excellent article, Clare Lopez at RadicalIslam.org noted that there were two large warehouse-type buildings associated with our Benghazi mission. During the terrorist attack, the warehouses were probably looted. We do not know what was there and if it was being administrated by our two former Navy SEALs and the CIA operatives who were in Benghazi. Nonetheless, the equipment was going to hardline jihadis.Once the attack commenced at 10:00 p.m. Libyan time (4:00 p.m. EST), we know the mission security staff immediately contacted Washington and our embassy in Tripoli. It now appears the White House, Pentagon, State Department, CIA, NDI, JCS and various other military commands monitored the entire battle in real time via frantic phone calls from our compound and video from an overhead drone. The cries for help and support went unanswered.
Our Benghazi mission personnel, including our two former Navy SEALs, fought for seven hours without any assistance other than help from our embassy in Tripoli, which launched within 30 minutes an aircraft carrying six Americans and 16 Libyan security guards. It is understood they were instrumental in helping 22 of our Benghazi mission personnel escape the attack.
Once the attack commenced, Stevens was taken to a “safe room” within the mission. It is not known whether his location was betrayed by the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, the local force providing security to the consulate, which had ties to the Ansar al-Sharia terrorist group conducting the attack, and to al Qaeda. Unbelievably, we still do not know how Ambassador Stevens died.
The Obama national security team, including CIA, DNI, State Department and the Pentagon, watched and listened to the assault but did nothing to answer repeated calls for assistance. It has been reported that President Obama met with Vice President Joseph R. Biden and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in the Oval Office, presumably to see what support could be provided. After all, we had very credible military resources within striking distance. At our military base in Sigonella, Sicily, which is slightly over 400 miles from Benghazi, we had a fully equipped Special Forces unit with both transport and jet strike aircraft prepositioned. Certainly this was a force much more capable than the 22-man force from our embassy in Tripoli.
I know those Special Forces personnel were ready to leap at the opportunity. There is no doubt in my mind they would have wiped out the terrorists attackers. Also I have no doubt that Admiral William McRaven, Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, would have had his local commander at Sigonella ready to launch; however, apparently he was countermanded—by whom? We need to know.[ADM James “Ace” Lyons, Jr. (USN Ret.), as Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, was the principal advisor on all Joint Chiefs of Staff matters and was the father of the Navy Red Cell, an anti-terrorism group comprised of Navy SEALs]
I also understand we had a C-130 gunship available, which would have quickly disposed of the terrorist attackers. This attack went on for seven hours. Our fighter jets could have been at our Benghazi mission within an hour. Our Special Forces out of Sigonella could have been there within a few hours. There is not any doubt that action on our part could have saved the lives of our two former Navy SEALs and possibly the ambassador.
Having been in a number of similar situations, I know you have to have the courage to do what’s right and take immediate action. Obviously, that courage was lacking for Benghazi. The safety of your personnel always remains paramount. With all the technology and military capability we had in theater, for our leadership to have deliberately ignored the pleas for assistance is not only in incomprehensible, it is un-American.
Somebody high up in the administration made the decision that no assistance (outside our Tripoli embassy) would be provided, and let our people be killed. The person who made that callous decision needs to be brought to light and held accountable. According to a CIA spokesperson, “No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need.” We also need to know whether the director of CIA and the director of National Intelligence were facilitators in the fabricated video lie and the overall cover-up. Their creditability is on the line. A congressional committee should be immediately formed to get the facts out to the American people. Nothing less is acceptable.
Retired Adm. James A. Lyons was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations.
LYONS: Obama needs to come clean on what happened in Benghazi - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/28/lyonsobama-needs-come-clean-what-happened-benghazi/#ixzz2Apr1Cnf0
Retired Admiral James A. Lyons, Former Pacific Fleet chief: We need full disclosure on Benghazi — now
October 30, 2012 by Ed Morrissey
Retired Admiral James A. Lyons likely pulled few punches as commander in chief of the US Pacific Fleet during his career … and he hasn’t started pulling punches now, either. In a blistering column at The Washington Times, the former commander blasts the lack of action from the US when the administration learned our consulate in Benghazi had come under attack, writing that “courage was lacking” that might have saved at least some of the four American lives lost on September 11. “Someone high up in the administration,” Lyons writes, “let our people get killed” — and he wants some answers immediately!
Lt. Gen. Mcinerney on Benghazi: Whoever gave the “stand down” order is responsible for killing ambassador
Lt. Gen. Tom Mcinerney asked “are we brain-dead?” and says that we should have had ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) assets over Libya before the 9/11 attacks ever happened, especially given the fact that radical Islamists were told by Al-Qaeda chief Zawahiri to take out Americans in retribution for our killing of Abu Yahya al-Libi over the summer.
But the most disturbing part of this he says is that during the 9/11 attacks we didn’t even try to save to save our people in Libya, that we didn’t do anything. In fact he goes on to say that whoever gave the “stand down” order to our forces at the annex in Benghazi is responsible for killing Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith because he believes it’s highly possible that the small force from the Annex could have disrupted the attack and likely saved our Stevens and Smith.
Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer: My sources tell me Obama was in the room watching Benghazi attack
Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer said tonight that his sources tell him that Obama was one of the people in the room watching the Benghazi attack go down and both he and Col. David Hunt agree it would have taken an order by the president to intervene. Further, Col. Hunt said that we were only 20 min away by jet and a couple of hours away by AC-130 gunships and special forces, and the decision not to intervene had to be political.
http://www.therightscoop.com/lt-col-tony-shaffer-my-sources-tell-me-obama-was-in-the-room-watching-benghazi-attack/
Benghazigate: We Know Now Who Gave the Order Not to Protect the Consulate
October 26, 2012 By
Carr: Colonel Hunt, thanks for being with us again today. What did you think when you heard Joseph Biden talking ragtime right out of the box last night? HUNT - The second time in my public career I get to call a public figure a liar --- that’s what I thought. Joseph Biden, right off the bat, lied. He said that what happened in Libya recently… The administration looked so inept is because of an intelligence failure. Howie, When Pakistan blew up an atomic bomb, and we didn’t know about it, that was an intelligence failure. When 9/11 happened, that was an intelligence failure. When India blew up an atomic bomb and we didn’t know about it, that was an intelligence failure. 
Colonel David Hunt has over 29 years of military experience including extensive operational experience in special operations, counter terrorism and intelligence operations.
When the Iraqi military lined up on the Kuwaiti border, and we didn't see it coming – didn’t know they were attacking until they did it, that’s an intelligence failure. This is a flat leadership problem. What happened is that a woman named Lamb, Undersecretary of State for DSS (Department of State Security), 2 days ago, told Issa's committee that she listened, was talking to, and recorded an almost six hour fight that resulted in the death of four Americans. She was at the State Department's Operations Center in Foggy Bottom in DC. When that happens, there are a bunch of people that get informed. President of the US gets found---- the embassy is being attacked---Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Director of CIA, and on and on. What also happens is that their command centers, National Command Center (CIA), White House Situation Room--- twelve [Command Centers] that I won't bore you with. At least twelve separate Command Centers are listening to the same conversation. It went on for six hours. The question I think, besides the fact that Biden is lying about it, is Why didn't we do anything? Why didn't the United States government react? Here we are, listening to an attack, and we didn't do a thing. We've got aircraft in Europe, aircraft in the in the Gulf, and we have the capability of doing something, and we did nothing. But for the Vice President...My point is everybody, from the moment the attack happened, in our government, and the decision-making capability, knew that it was an attack, that it was organized, that it was violent, and that it had nothing, nothing to do with a riot, an assembly of people, or a film. This was not even close to an intelligence failure. This was prescient, actionable information. And this woman testified to it, and everyone's giving everyone a pass. We sat by and watched the Embassy fall, and four Americans died. Carr: Who was on the radio in the consulate in Benghazi? HUNT: Department of State Security employee -- a DSS agent was at the operation center in Benghazi. They had a room with radios and cameras. And he makes the call; he punches the alert button. Does everything correct and calls his boss in DC. Then he describes the attack for the whole time, until that the command center is overcome. But when she [Lamb] gets the phone call…. Carr: He's killed. He's killed. He's at the radio when he gets killed. Is that right? HUNT: The radio stays open. It's still being recorded until it gets destroyed. Lamb, who is in DC listening to all of this--- Clinton gets called, the President gets called, the Joint Chiefs---everybody gets called about this. This is an embassy under attack. Period. It's an automatic phone call. And the fact that we have this recording, instantly. We know exactly the picture. By the way, he sent pictures back because he had cameras. So, the administration knew; they watched it, let it happen, and then for eight days lied about it. And then yesterday, last night, unfortunately, the Vice President of the US just lied. He knows it was not an intelligence failure. No one ever said that, by the way. This is a case where we have information and didn't act. It wasn't a case where we weren’t provided [info]. We had instant knowledge, accurate description, and just sat by and did nothing. Carr: You said there were a dozen posts listening to this play by play account. HUNT: Sure Carr: Just give me a few examples of what kind of agencies would have been involved in this listening or monitoring. HUNT: National Military Command Center in the Pentagon (that's the military head), the White House Situation Room, the CIA Operations Center, the Counterterrorism Center, EUCON (European Command). Africa Command, Special Operations Command, SOC-EUR [?] Special Operations Command Europe), Atlantic Command, NATO. Everybody. Once this call is made, and a button is pushed, saying, oh by the way, we have an attack going on, everybody listens in --- this is old tech, an old procedure that’s been going on for years. Anybody who has ever been on a watch listening in the military knows what I am talking about. And it is amazing to me that this is not even being discussed. It is the elephant in the living room for me. We knew this was going on and did nothing. Carr: Let's say, let's say there's the African Command and some sergeant is monitoring it, and you know, he's there and he listens to what's going on, and he says, captain come over and listen to this. And the captain listens to it, and I guess the captain would have to call his superior officer, right? And then at some point , wouldn't all these people be calling the Pentagon or the State Department in Foggy Bottom and say, Hey there's a problem in Benghazi. What are we gonna do? HUNT: Within minutes that happens. It's instantaneous notification of an entire chain of command. An embassy is under attack and falling. And oh, by the way, turn to channel 27, and here's the information. And then these separate places are asking for – some cases begging for--- guidance. What do you want us to do? Because the military guys, whether it's in Bahrain or Europe, or any place else, can't on their own just go in there, but we have the means available. The point is that nobody pushed the button to say "GO." Nobody had the guts. Nobody cared enough. Six hours, Howie [Carr]. The last time this happened was Mogadishu, when we stood by and watched a ten hour fire fight go on and did nothing. For ten hours that happened, during the Clinton administration. We watched this in Bosnia ....and other places, where an administration fails to act. But this one. To have the vice president this late in the game --- over four weeks since this has happened---to lie about it and to say it was an intelligence failure is outrageous. And nobody, nobody caught him, nobody backed him up. And it's hardly being mentioned at all, but it's, I think, very serious. And what you said yesterday I think is going to come to pass. This is going to turn out to be a Watergate-sized scandal. Carr: So you think you think some of these commands in the area or in Europe and elsewhere that they actually did go to the their civilian superiors in Washington or made contact with them and asked them what do you want us to do. And apparently there was no response? HUNT: Howie, there are digital and written logs that will be produced that will show that each one of these places, automatically---it is not a question of, Do you have a choice. Whoever is on the watch; whoever was in command center, when an incident like this happens, HAS to do certain things, inform certain people, and it's all logged in. It's a matter of record. So once Lamb testified that she's listening to this, what she just said was that our entire Government was listening, not just Lamb and the State Dept. What I realized when I read the testimony and heard it was that if this phone call actually happened, all of these other headquarters were involved, and a whole bunch of people said NO to wanting some kind of attack to help save Benghazi. That begins and ends at the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon. And there's logs, and hopefully Congress will say, We want people to testify. We want the watch officer. We want the senior guy in charge there. Bring you records, and tell us who you talked to. It’s all procedural… Carr: Is it the Pentagon's fault, or is it the State Department's fault? HUNT: No, no, no. State and the White House. The National Military Command Center would not have been able, allowed, to launch---I don't believe---an attack without political permission because they would be launching into a country. I don't think the NMCC could make that call on their own. And it wouldn't be State; it would be the White House. But again, Howie, during this attack, Clinton is informed---that is part of the procedure---and the President of the US is informed, as is the Vice President, as is the Chief of Staff, and on and on. A six hour firefight in Benghazi is not classified. It is not a secret. It's an event, and it's a serious event. And when the ambassador dies, when they know he has been captured, it even goes up higher. And we couldn't get an FBI team in there for three weeks. We had CNN reporters in there picking up the Ambassador's diary. This was ineptness, incompetence, and lying. I think Biden ought to be called on it, just like we did with Clinton when she said she was being shot at. People were there Mr. Vice President. You are lying. This was not an intelligence failure, and he knows that. Carr: Who should have made the call? Who should have ordered the troops? Who should have ordered some kind of scrambling? send in the jets, helicopters, Marines? HUNT: The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs could have easily called the Secretary of Defense. The Secretary of Defense could have done this, easily…Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff. Howie, they are never out of contact with each other. It's not like, Oh, go find Leon Panetta or where’s the President? Anyone in that chain, from the Secretary of State…could have asked or told the Dept of Defense, We need help in Benghazi now. What are the closest assets we have? That’s a simple phone call. Just simple operation military can do that, but they never would have done that on their own. There are incidents in our lifetime where we wish we would we had done it on our own. Bosnia is just one of them. Africa, remember the Congo, and a whole bunch of other places where we didn’t. But this is an example where we watched four Americans die and a consulate fall. We had 320 incidents leading up to this, and while the attack was going on for 6 hours, we watched it. Not just Ms Lamb, but the entire operational arm of the US government was watching and listening to this, and we did nothing. Carr: Where are the reporters? This is like Watergate. HUNT: Yes Carr: When Watergate broke, every newspaper in the country, every network in the country was all over this. Now, it Daryl Issa and Jason Chafetz, and a few Republican congressmen and staffers. Where are the reporters? Are they too busy looking for somebody Mitt Romney gave a haircut to when he was in prep school? HUNT: I can’t answer that, but for me, they are so in the bag. And, by the way, this is so obvious…this is such an obvious thing, that it is being missed. If the operational center at the State Dept is hearing this, all these other operational commands are hearing this as well. Carr: So there's got to be a lot of people reporters could talk to---there’s people who are assigned to the Pentagon---they haven't had that many cutbacks. There's got to be people who know what happened that could provide them with the documentation and the records, and it wouldn't take long to blow the story out of the water. HUNT: It should have been blown out two days ago. I’m not the only one who thinks this is crazy thinking about this. Any guy who’s ever pulled watch, any NCO, any enlisted officer---anybody who’s ever been in these Command Centers knows exactly what I’m talking about. And, Howie, this is after 911. Fifteen years ago we did this. And since 911, since we’ve been at war for eleven years, in Afghanistan, our communications is staggeringly quick. Look at the White House situation room during the killing of Bin Laden. Carr: And it's and it is the anniversary of 9/11 that this is all happening on. You’d think they'll be even more on their toes. HUNT: Yes. The communications is sophisticated and instantaneous. They had satellites looking at this. Carr: They had drones…there was a drone looking at this, right? HUNT: Thank you. And our reaction---three weeks…. We’ve got an ambassador dead, two retired Navy Seals, who weren’t even assigned there---they were assigned to a classified annex down the street--- and another man. And the place is decimated for six hours, and our response is zero. And then the Vice President gets on, and the first words out of his mouth is a lie --- Well, it’s an intelligence failure. No, it is not, Mr. Vice President. It’s not even close to an intelligence failure. This was inaction on the part of your administration who watched this guy die and did nothing. I don’t know what they are investigating, it’s so… My only concern is…Well, there’s too people, just too many people that were watching this. I honestly don’t see how they get to cover this up, unless the press doesn’t do its job. But I didn’t even hear Issa’s committee ask her [Lamb] the question. Maybe the people were in shock when Lamb made her statement, but that’s staggering. I can't believe that people don't know what I'm saying… that all these other…. Carr: This like something out of a movie, where some non-com says, “Colonel, colonel, our men are getting slaughtered there.” And no one has any interest in following it up. It seems like fiction; it doesn’t seem like it would happen in real life. HUNT: It's happened a lot in my time, unfortunately. Like I said, we saw it in the Congo: we saw it in Bosnia. We've seen a lot of incidents where an organization will not act. It’s frozen, and this is the case. And that sergeant you are talking about is actually a general. This is immediately communicated that this embassy is under attack violently, and generals are looking on their IPADS at the pictures, and that’s how good this stuff is. Those images are all over the place. And we knew this was bad, getting worse, and did nothing, and then lied about it for 8 days? Carr: So how many people do you know… HUNT: -- Rice’s statement now, along with the President’s, by the way, and the Secretary of State’s and everybody else, there’s a bunch of people lying. It’s not just Rice. She just got stuck on the Sunday news 5 times. And everybody, on top….[interrupted by Carr] Carr: How many people actually---give me a number of people who knew what was going on while it was happening, or all around the world. How many people would have known? HUNT: Oh, it’s in the hundreds---those staffs---anywhere---NMCC, maybe 60-70 people at one time; CIA Operations Center, about forty plus; the Terrorism Center could have 60-70 on duty at that moment: the White House situation room, 12. It goes on and on. I mean it's hundreds of people, Howie, that knew what was going on at the time---not later. It's to me such a huge thing that maybe it’s just so big and so obvious that people are just letting it go. I have no explanation for it. Except what I'm telling you is not a revelation. This is day-to-day operational information that this administration has been lying about for all this time. You don't need an investigation. There are straight up procedures that, I promise you. were followed. And in those procedures, people like the Sec of State, the Pres of the US---within minutes---within minutes are told, We have an embassy under attack. Carr: And yet Stephanie Cutter says that this is just a political issue that’s being blown out of proportion by the Romney/Ryan campaign. HUNT: I wish this was being blown out of proportion by the press. Romney was right when he said it. it's a very, very awkward defense. Cutter’s a PR person But the vice president---people have to call him out on this. He should, not should, he does know better. He’s just lying. It’s the second time I have had to call a public figure a liar…. It's outrageous. We had people dying. And, by the way Howie, it’s not just one phone call. During the six hours, all of these decision makers are being updated by their staffs. General, this just happened. General, we just found out this guy died. The fight’s still going on. There are now 60 people---these are constant. Video, written, digital, audio updates to the chain of command that did not function. It just seized up. That to me---Why did it seize up? Because there are a whole bunch of people need to go to jail….[Carr interrupts] Carr: Surely there was somebody --- surely there must have been several people trying to get something done, trying to get some relief to the these people that were in mortal peril, right? HUNT: Of course; there are really good people in these organizations. Why the decision was not made to, at least, attempt to do a flyover, to put jets in the air, Marines moving, something. I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for it. I’ve been in those rooms when decisions were not made, and they were always political, as to why they were not being done. But this, this one….Our capability to record things is so sophisticated, this will come out. I just…No news organization has---because I have talked to a couple of them --- has gone on this angle. They are still going on the Romney vs Obama, versus Biden laughing too much. Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. How about he lied--- in his opening remark. He flat lied. It was not an intelligence failure. That a lie, and he knows better. He knows it wasn’t an intelligence failure. He’s been in the government, what, for 40 years? Carr: Yea, 40 years. HUNT: Like I said, Pakistan blowing up a nuke, that was an intelligence failure. 911, big intelligence failure. What happened in Benghazi was an operational, leadership failure on an entire government chain of command. It did not act and had six hours to do so and did nothing. Carr: It certainly seems like it's gonna come out if they have the former head of the CIA and Michael Chertoff and these guys issuing statements today saying that Biden was way out of line, and he lied, and he knows better. These guys can point any reporter that’s interested in the right direction, who to talk to to get the information, I would think it. HUNT: It’s a huge…. Howie, standard operating procedures of how our government operates---There’s books, huge, huge books. And every one of these Commands I have mentioned was on that call, was listening, and followed their procedures, and were never given the words to go. It never happened. That’s all…It’s simple. It’s a very simple question and a very straightforward answer. I talked to this General: I talked to this Secretary. The Sec of Defense said this. The Chief of Staff at the WH said this. It’s not hard. This is all recorded. And somebody needs to explain why, for all this time---6 hours went by and Americans died---and all this time for the FBI to get there, and, oh by the way, Why is it that the heads of our government are lying about this. Can you imagine if you are a family member, if you are Steven’s family, or these Seals, or the kid from Winchester? And you are getting lied to like this? C’mon. I mean c’mon. Carr: I know. Well how about to know that they're listening all over the world for six hours while your son or husband could have been saved. HUNT: Yes, yes: that’s why I’m yelling about it. When Lamb said that, when the Undersecretary of Defense said that, I went, Oh my God! Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Where is the follow-up. Where is the New York Times banging on the door Carr: Exactly, exactly. Let’s take a call or two… [First caller not transcribed] Second and last caller: Adam you're next with Howie Carr and Colonel David Hunt. Go ahead Adam. Thanks so much for covering this. This is absolutely infuriating our guys are being treated this way. We don’t even give them the respect enough to---this is just disgusting. Somebody's gotta leak that tape. HUNT: Ok, the testimony is public. It’s on the Internet. Carr: We know the testimony, but Adam is saying [if we had the tape] we would know what the former Seal was saying five hours before he was brutally murdered. You know what I mean. HUNT: But that tape’s available. All of this---if people can get upset about this. If the press would simply do its job. To me it's so obvious… what these people’s jobs were and how much information they had, and the fact that they decided to do nothing, and then to lie about it on television for all these weeks---And the Vice President to start out with a lie like this and not get challenged, no push back. Carr: I know… He lied to forty million right out of the box last night. HUNT: Of course he did. This is not an opinion. I’m not giving you Colonel Hunt’s opinion. This is a fact. She [Lamb] said what she said [in her testimony] . It’s a matter or record. These Commands exist, and the procedure is as I have stated. There is nobody who is going to argue or push back that when an embassy in under attack, there in a ton, a pile, a truckload of headquarters that are listening and have operational plans to do something about it, and they were not allowed to do it. Our government knew exactly---Pearl Harbor was an intelligence failure. We didn’t see that one coming. This one, we not only saw it coming, we were watching it minute by minute. Carr: Have you talked to anybody in the Romney campaign about this? I mean, they should be ready to go with this next week. HUNT: I've got a couple calls in, and I'm trying to get a hold of Sununu and ??? and they are really busy. The answer is No, I haven’t talked to anybody. […..] I don't know why this is not being jumped on. There is no wiggle room here, Howie. This is Lamb’s testimony in State Department and everything else after that is facts. It’s not an opinion. CIA Operations Center was listening. The White House Situation Room was listening, and on and on and on. Carr: Did you hear the ombudsman of the New York Times, the public critic? She wrote on her blog yesterday, I don’t know why we aren’t covering this story. HUNT: (laughter) Carr: She did! I give her credit for saying it. And do you know what the editors came back and said. There were six better stories to cover in DC. HUNT: You're right: you were right this is going to be big. This is Watergate big because of the coverup and how many people were involved. Carr: This is the way the New York Times handled Watergate in the beginning. They tried to poo poo it---It’s just a police story you know. And they got their butts kicked. And someone's gonna kick their butts on this story too.
Colonel David Hunt has over 29 years of military experience including extensive operational experience in special operations, counter terrorism and intelligence operations.
When the Iraqi military lined up on the Kuwaiti border, and we didn't see it coming – didn’t know they were attacking until they did it, that’s an intelligence failure. This is a flat leadership problem. What happened is that a woman named Lamb, Undersecretary of State for DSS (Department of State Security), 2 days ago, told Issa's committee that she listened, was talking to, and recorded an almost six hour fight that resulted in the death of four Americans. She was at the State Department's Operations Center in Foggy Bottom in DC. When that happens, there are a bunch of people that get informed. President of the US gets found---- the embassy is being attacked---Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Director of CIA, and on and on. What also happens is that their command centers, National Command Center (CIA), White House Situation Room--- twelve [Command Centers] that I won't bore you with. At least twelve separate Command Centers are listening to the same conversation. It went on for six hours. The question I think, besides the fact that Biden is lying about it, is Why didn't we do anything? Why didn't the United States government react? Here we are, listening to an attack, and we didn't do a thing. We've got aircraft in Europe, aircraft in the in the Gulf, and we have the capability of doing something, and we did nothing. But for the Vice President...My point is everybody, from the moment the attack happened, in our government, and the decision-making capability, knew that it was an attack, that it was organized, that it was violent, and that it had nothing, nothing to do with a riot, an assembly of people, or a film. This was not even close to an intelligence failure. This was prescient, actionable information. And this woman testified to it, and everyone's giving everyone a pass. We sat by and watched the Embassy fall, and four Americans died. Carr: Who was on the radio in the consulate in Benghazi? HUNT: Department of State Security employee -- a DSS agent was at the operation center in Benghazi. They had a room with radios and cameras. And he makes the call; he punches the alert button. Does everything correct and calls his boss in DC. Then he describes the attack for the whole time, until that the command center is overcome. But when she [Lamb] gets the phone call…. Carr: He's killed. He's killed. He's at the radio when he gets killed. Is that right? HUNT: The radio stays open. It's still being recorded until it gets destroyed. Lamb, who is in DC listening to all of this--- Clinton gets called, the President gets called, the Joint Chiefs---everybody gets called about this. This is an embassy under attack. Period. It's an automatic phone call. And the fact that we have this recording, instantly. We know exactly the picture. By the way, he sent pictures back because he had cameras. So, the administration knew; they watched it, let it happen, and then for eight days lied about it. And then yesterday, last night, unfortunately, the Vice President of the US just lied. He knows it was not an intelligence failure. No one ever said that, by the way. This is a case where we have information and didn't act. It wasn't a case where we weren’t provided [info]. We had instant knowledge, accurate description, and just sat by and did nothing. Carr: You said there were a dozen posts listening to this play by play account. HUNT: Sure Carr: Just give me a few examples of what kind of agencies would have been involved in this listening or monitoring. HUNT: National Military Command Center in the Pentagon (that's the military head), the White House Situation Room, the CIA Operations Center, the Counterterrorism Center, EUCON (European Command). Africa Command, Special Operations Command, SOC-EUR [?] Special Operations Command Europe), Atlantic Command, NATO. Everybody. Once this call is made, and a button is pushed, saying, oh by the way, we have an attack going on, everybody listens in --- this is old tech, an old procedure that’s been going on for years. Anybody who has ever been on a watch listening in the military knows what I am talking about. And it is amazing to me that this is not even being discussed. It is the elephant in the living room for me. We knew this was going on and did nothing. Carr: Let's say, let's say there's the African Command and some sergeant is monitoring it, and you know, he's there and he listens to what's going on, and he says, captain come over and listen to this. And the captain listens to it, and I guess the captain would have to call his superior officer, right? And then at some point , wouldn't all these people be calling the Pentagon or the State Department in Foggy Bottom and say, Hey there's a problem in Benghazi. What are we gonna do? HUNT: Within minutes that happens. It's instantaneous notification of an entire chain of command. An embassy is under attack and falling. And oh, by the way, turn to channel 27, and here's the information. And then these separate places are asking for – some cases begging for--- guidance. What do you want us to do? Because the military guys, whether it's in Bahrain or Europe, or any place else, can't on their own just go in there, but we have the means available. The point is that nobody pushed the button to say "GO." Nobody had the guts. Nobody cared enough. Six hours, Howie [Carr]. The last time this happened was Mogadishu, when we stood by and watched a ten hour fire fight go on and did nothing. For ten hours that happened, during the Clinton administration. We watched this in Bosnia ....and other places, where an administration fails to act. But this one. To have the vice president this late in the game --- over four weeks since this has happened---to lie about it and to say it was an intelligence failure is outrageous. And nobody, nobody caught him, nobody backed him up. And it's hardly being mentioned at all, but it's, I think, very serious. And what you said yesterday I think is going to come to pass. This is going to turn out to be a Watergate-sized scandal. Carr: So you think you think some of these commands in the area or in Europe and elsewhere that they actually did go to the their civilian superiors in Washington or made contact with them and asked them what do you want us to do. And apparently there was no response? HUNT: Howie, there are digital and written logs that will be produced that will show that each one of these places, automatically---it is not a question of, Do you have a choice. Whoever is on the watch; whoever was in command center, when an incident like this happens, HAS to do certain things, inform certain people, and it's all logged in. It's a matter of record. So once Lamb testified that she's listening to this, what she just said was that our entire Government was listening, not just Lamb and the State Dept. What I realized when I read the testimony and heard it was that if this phone call actually happened, all of these other headquarters were involved, and a whole bunch of people said NO to wanting some kind of attack to help save Benghazi. That begins and ends at the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon. And there's logs, and hopefully Congress will say, We want people to testify. We want the watch officer. We want the senior guy in charge there. Bring you records, and tell us who you talked to. It’s all procedural… Carr: Is it the Pentagon's fault, or is it the State Department's fault? HUNT: No, no, no. State and the White House. The National Military Command Center would not have been able, allowed, to launch---I don't believe---an attack without political permission because they would be launching into a country. I don't think the NMCC could make that call on their own. And it wouldn't be State; it would be the White House. But again, Howie, during this attack, Clinton is informed---that is part of the procedure---and the President of the US is informed, as is the Vice President, as is the Chief of Staff, and on and on. A six hour firefight in Benghazi is not classified. It is not a secret. It's an event, and it's a serious event. And when the ambassador dies, when they know he has been captured, it even goes up higher. And we couldn't get an FBI team in there for three weeks. We had CNN reporters in there picking up the Ambassador's diary. This was ineptness, incompetence, and lying. I think Biden ought to be called on it, just like we did with Clinton when she said she was being shot at. People were there Mr. Vice President. You are lying. This was not an intelligence failure, and he knows that. Carr: Who should have made the call? Who should have ordered the troops? Who should have ordered some kind of scrambling? send in the jets, helicopters, Marines? HUNT: The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs could have easily called the Secretary of Defense. The Secretary of Defense could have done this, easily…Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff. Howie, they are never out of contact with each other. It's not like, Oh, go find Leon Panetta or where’s the President? Anyone in that chain, from the Secretary of State…could have asked or told the Dept of Defense, We need help in Benghazi now. What are the closest assets we have? That’s a simple phone call. Just simple operation military can do that, but they never would have done that on their own. There are incidents in our lifetime where we wish we would we had done it on our own. Bosnia is just one of them. Africa, remember the Congo, and a whole bunch of other places where we didn’t. But this is an example where we watched four Americans die and a consulate fall. We had 320 incidents leading up to this, and while the attack was going on for 6 hours, we watched it. Not just Ms Lamb, but the entire operational arm of the US government was watching and listening to this, and we did nothing. Carr: Where are the reporters? This is like Watergate. HUNT: Yes Carr: When Watergate broke, every newspaper in the country, every network in the country was all over this. Now, it Daryl Issa and Jason Chafetz, and a few Republican congressmen and staffers. Where are the reporters? Are they too busy looking for somebody Mitt Romney gave a haircut to when he was in prep school? HUNT: I can’t answer that, but for me, they are so in the bag. And, by the way, this is so obvious…this is such an obvious thing, that it is being missed. If the operational center at the State Dept is hearing this, all these other operational commands are hearing this as well. Carr: So there's got to be a lot of people reporters could talk to---there’s people who are assigned to the Pentagon---they haven't had that many cutbacks. There's got to be people who know what happened that could provide them with the documentation and the records, and it wouldn't take long to blow the story out of the water. HUNT: It should have been blown out two days ago. I’m not the only one who thinks this is crazy thinking about this. Any guy who’s ever pulled watch, any NCO, any enlisted officer---anybody who’s ever been in these Command Centers knows exactly what I’m talking about. And, Howie, this is after 911. Fifteen years ago we did this. And since 911, since we’ve been at war for eleven years, in Afghanistan, our communications is staggeringly quick. Look at the White House situation room during the killing of Bin Laden. Carr: And it's and it is the anniversary of 9/11 that this is all happening on. You’d think they'll be even more on their toes. HUNT: Yes. The communications is sophisticated and instantaneous. They had satellites looking at this. Carr: They had drones…there was a drone looking at this, right? HUNT: Thank you. And our reaction---three weeks…. We’ve got an ambassador dead, two retired Navy Seals, who weren’t even assigned there---they were assigned to a classified annex down the street--- and another man. And the place is decimated for six hours, and our response is zero. And then the Vice President gets on, and the first words out of his mouth is a lie --- Well, it’s an intelligence failure. No, it is not, Mr. Vice President. It’s not even close to an intelligence failure. This was inaction on the part of your administration who watched this guy die and did nothing. I don’t know what they are investigating, it’s so… My only concern is…Well, there’s too people, just too many people that were watching this. I honestly don’t see how they get to cover this up, unless the press doesn’t do its job. But I didn’t even hear Issa’s committee ask her [Lamb] the question. Maybe the people were in shock when Lamb made her statement, but that’s staggering. I can't believe that people don't know what I'm saying… that all these other…. Carr: This like something out of a movie, where some non-com says, “Colonel, colonel, our men are getting slaughtered there.” And no one has any interest in following it up. It seems like fiction; it doesn’t seem like it would happen in real life. HUNT: It's happened a lot in my time, unfortunately. Like I said, we saw it in the Congo: we saw it in Bosnia. We've seen a lot of incidents where an organization will not act. It’s frozen, and this is the case. And that sergeant you are talking about is actually a general. This is immediately communicated that this embassy is under attack violently, and generals are looking on their IPADS at the pictures, and that’s how good this stuff is. Those images are all over the place. And we knew this was bad, getting worse, and did nothing, and then lied about it for 8 days? Carr: So how many people do you know… HUNT: -- Rice’s statement now, along with the President’s, by the way, and the Secretary of State’s and everybody else, there’s a bunch of people lying. It’s not just Rice. She just got stuck on the Sunday news 5 times. And everybody, on top….[interrupted by Carr] Carr: How many people actually---give me a number of people who knew what was going on while it was happening, or all around the world. How many people would have known? HUNT: Oh, it’s in the hundreds---those staffs---anywhere---NMCC, maybe 60-70 people at one time; CIA Operations Center, about forty plus; the Terrorism Center could have 60-70 on duty at that moment: the White House situation room, 12. It goes on and on. I mean it's hundreds of people, Howie, that knew what was going on at the time---not later. It's to me such a huge thing that maybe it’s just so big and so obvious that people are just letting it go. I have no explanation for it. Except what I'm telling you is not a revelation. This is day-to-day operational information that this administration has been lying about for all this time. You don't need an investigation. There are straight up procedures that, I promise you. were followed. And in those procedures, people like the Sec of State, the Pres of the US---within minutes---within minutes are told, We have an embassy under attack. Carr: And yet Stephanie Cutter says that this is just a political issue that’s being blown out of proportion by the Romney/Ryan campaign. HUNT: I wish this was being blown out of proportion by the press. Romney was right when he said it. it's a very, very awkward defense. Cutter’s a PR person But the vice president---people have to call him out on this. He should, not should, he does know better. He’s just lying. It’s the second time I have had to call a public figure a liar…. It's outrageous. We had people dying. And, by the way Howie, it’s not just one phone call. During the six hours, all of these decision makers are being updated by their staffs. General, this just happened. General, we just found out this guy died. The fight’s still going on. There are now 60 people---these are constant. Video, written, digital, audio updates to the chain of command that did not function. It just seized up. That to me---Why did it seize up? Because there are a whole bunch of people need to go to jail….[Carr interrupts] Carr: Surely there was somebody --- surely there must have been several people trying to get something done, trying to get some relief to the these people that were in mortal peril, right? HUNT: Of course; there are really good people in these organizations. Why the decision was not made to, at least, attempt to do a flyover, to put jets in the air, Marines moving, something. I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for it. I’ve been in those rooms when decisions were not made, and they were always political, as to why they were not being done. But this, this one….Our capability to record things is so sophisticated, this will come out. I just…No news organization has---because I have talked to a couple of them --- has gone on this angle. They are still going on the Romney vs Obama, versus Biden laughing too much. Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. How about he lied--- in his opening remark. He flat lied. It was not an intelligence failure. That a lie, and he knows better. He knows it wasn’t an intelligence failure. He’s been in the government, what, for 40 years? Carr: Yea, 40 years. HUNT: Like I said, Pakistan blowing up a nuke, that was an intelligence failure. 911, big intelligence failure. What happened in Benghazi was an operational, leadership failure on an entire government chain of command. It did not act and had six hours to do so and did nothing. Carr: It certainly seems like it's gonna come out if they have the former head of the CIA and Michael Chertoff and these guys issuing statements today saying that Biden was way out of line, and he lied, and he knows better. These guys can point any reporter that’s interested in the right direction, who to talk to to get the information, I would think it. HUNT: It’s a huge…. Howie, standard operating procedures of how our government operates---There’s books, huge, huge books. And every one of these Commands I have mentioned was on that call, was listening, and followed their procedures, and were never given the words to go. It never happened. That’s all…It’s simple. It’s a very simple question and a very straightforward answer. I talked to this General: I talked to this Secretary. The Sec of Defense said this. The Chief of Staff at the WH said this. It’s not hard. This is all recorded. And somebody needs to explain why, for all this time---6 hours went by and Americans died---and all this time for the FBI to get there, and, oh by the way, Why is it that the heads of our government are lying about this. Can you imagine if you are a family member, if you are Steven’s family, or these Seals, or the kid from Winchester? And you are getting lied to like this? C’mon. I mean c’mon. Carr: I know. Well how about to know that they're listening all over the world for six hours while your son or husband could have been saved. HUNT: Yes, yes: that’s why I’m yelling about it. When Lamb said that, when the Undersecretary of Defense said that, I went, Oh my God! Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Where is the follow-up. Where is the New York Times banging on the door Carr: Exactly, exactly. Let’s take a call or two… [First caller not transcribed] Second and last caller: Adam you're next with Howie Carr and Colonel David Hunt. Go ahead Adam. Thanks so much for covering this. This is absolutely infuriating our guys are being treated this way. We don’t even give them the respect enough to---this is just disgusting. Somebody's gotta leak that tape. HUNT: Ok, the testimony is public. It’s on the Internet. Carr: We know the testimony, but Adam is saying [if we had the tape] we would know what the former Seal was saying five hours before he was brutally murdered. You know what I mean. HUNT: But that tape’s available. All of this---if people can get upset about this. If the press would simply do its job. To me it's so obvious… what these people’s jobs were and how much information they had, and the fact that they decided to do nothing, and then to lie about it on television for all these weeks---And the Vice President to start out with a lie like this and not get challenged, no push back. Carr: I know… He lied to forty million right out of the box last night. HUNT: Of course he did. This is not an opinion. I’m not giving you Colonel Hunt’s opinion. This is a fact. She [Lamb] said what she said [in her testimony] . It’s a matter or record. These Commands exist, and the procedure is as I have stated. There is nobody who is going to argue or push back that when an embassy in under attack, there in a ton, a pile, a truckload of headquarters that are listening and have operational plans to do something about it, and they were not allowed to do it. Our government knew exactly---Pearl Harbor was an intelligence failure. We didn’t see that one coming. This one, we not only saw it coming, we were watching it minute by minute. Carr: Have you talked to anybody in the Romney campaign about this? I mean, they should be ready to go with this next week. HUNT: I've got a couple calls in, and I'm trying to get a hold of Sununu and ??? and they are really busy. The answer is No, I haven’t talked to anybody. […..] I don't know why this is not being jumped on. There is no wiggle room here, Howie. This is Lamb’s testimony in State Department and everything else after that is facts. It’s not an opinion. CIA Operations Center was listening. The White House Situation Room was listening, and on and on and on. Carr: Did you hear the ombudsman of the New York Times, the public critic? She wrote on her blog yesterday, I don’t know why we aren’t covering this story. HUNT: (laughter) Carr: She did! I give her credit for saying it. And do you know what the editors came back and said. There were six better stories to cover in DC. HUNT: You're right: you were right this is going to be big. This is Watergate big because of the coverup and how many people were involved. Carr: This is the way the New York Times handled Watergate in the beginning. They tried to poo poo it---It’s just a police story you know. And they got their butts kicked. And someone's gonna kick their butts on this story too.
Oct 29, 2012 Pat DollardVideo by The Right Scoop:
This is from a call into the Rush Limbaugh show today…Barack Obama: Guilty of Negligent Homicide.
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now to the phones since it’s Open Line Friday. Doug in San Antonio. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks. I wanted to speak to the question of when the president knew and why Secretary Panetta refused to support the CIA annex request either to move to the consulate or to reinforce. Within a few minutes of the consulate being under attack — I’m a retired lieutenant colonel special operations planner for 15 years — the personal security detail for the ambassador notified the communications room in Tripoli who then, on the top secret side, sent a message to the White House Situation Room that the ambassador was in peril, okay? And they did that by code word and it would have been within minutes of the attack commencing.
The White House Situation Room has a list of what’s called Essential Elements of Friendly Information. That’s the military’s acronym for it, but they would have a similar thing, a critical information list. Certain things go right to the person that’s standing next to the president, both military and civilian leadership. So he would have known within minutes or it’s supposed to be informed within minutes because an ambassador is a four-star equivalent, very high, very important person, you know, represents the president and essentially is the president’s — you know, is the surrogate of the president in that country. So the White House cannot deny that the president knew immediately.
RUSH: They are. They are.
CALLER: Well, it’s a bald-faced lie, you know. I’m giving you some inside baseball information –
RUSH: Look, I believe you. You’re talking about watch desks. That tells me you know what you’re talking about.
CALLER: Well, it’s even a little more frustrating than that. So when that message, that code word goes out, flash traffic, that an ambassador is in peril, okay, the –
RUSH: We have heard this. In our parlance, the way we heard this, Doug, was essentially the panic button was hit. That’s how this was explained to me the first time. Somebody who knew what they were talking about referenced this as a panic button essentially was hit, and that once that happens, everybody that receives it knows what’s going on. There’s no doubt about it. So that’s pretty much true, right?
CALLER: Right. But it’s even more detailed than that, Rush. What it means is when a code word goes out, there’s standard operating procedures. The geographic combatant commander that’s responsible for Libya would have been part of that message traffic, and his CINC’s In-Extremis Force, which is, you know, a Special Forces unit –
RUSH: Okay, let me stop you there for another question, because what a lot of people have been told, the excuse that has been offered, in fact, from Condoleezza Rice on Greta Van Susteren a couple nights ago, the impression is, “Well, there’s so much traffic coming in, there’s so many e-mails, so many cables, so many memos, it would take somebody hours to sift through it.” What you’re telling me is that there are systems designed to penetrate all that in a real emergency?
CALLER: Well, there’s three networks, Rush. The e-mails that have been released are unclassified e-mails. On the top secret side, a flash traffic message from the embassy Tripoli to the White House Situation Room, it’s like an IM. I mean, it’s immediately responded to. You have to acknowledge receipt of it.Okay? So it’s immediate. It gets to the person, the watch officer sitting there, boom, flashes on his screen, he has to acknowledge receipt. And then there’s a protocol for who he then sends it to. He physically turns to someone, the senior guy on watch, “This is a critical element of information. POTUS needs to hear this,” and that’s what would have happened.
So no one in the White House can deny that — well, they can deny it, but the fact is the protocol says someone marched their happy little ass up to the senior guy standing next to POTUS and said, “Sir, ambassador in Libya is in peril.” And if he was missing, that is even a higher precedence. And then the chain would have also gone out automatically to the geographic combatant commander, AFRICOM, and he would have then turned to his special operations commander and said, “I want the In-Extremis Force, you know, strip ready in five minutes.” And evidently they were strip ready in Sigonella and they would have the assets to penetrate the airspace, you know, an MC-130 papa, which is a C-130 specially equipped with electronic countermeasures. They didn’t need permission to enter Libyan airspace, okay?
I’m giving you a lot of Inside Baseball stuff, and maybe putting myself in a little peril by doing it, but the In-Extremis Force, they would have been chomping at the bit to do this. It was turned down, POTUS, at his five p.m. Eastern time meeting with the principals, that’s when he put the kibosh on everything. It was a conscious act. It has to be because, you know, the In-Extremis Force is required to be prepared to do In-Extremis non-combatant evacuation operations for its geographic responsibility, the entire continent of Africa. So there’s always somebody ready to go, and the aircraft are always prepared to go.
It’s maddening to say that there was not intelligence. An intelligence guy is not a decision-maker. He’s just some analyst dude that tells the decision-makers this is what we know. Well, the decision-makers who are so risk-averse now need perfect intelligence. They would have had to have, you know, in the calculus of this, to know that, whatever the attacking force was, if I put 15 or 50 or a hundred operators on the ground, you know, they’ll have success. No one knows that. In soft planning, you plan to fail half the time.
RUSH: What about the story we’ve been told that not only was there so much traffic coming in that it was impossible to find the right stuff, which you’ve now explained, but they’re also telling us that the president wasn’t told for a while, and even now, as recently as today, they’re saying that the three most recent e-mails — it sounds like we’re talking about — flash traffic’s not e-mails, right?
CALLER: Flash traffic is digital from station to station.
RUSH: Right. So they’re misleading us left and right. They’re trying to say, “Well, the president –” They will not explain. They will not tell us what happened to the three e-mails and why he didn’t get them or why he wasn’t told or when he knew or what. They’re basically portraying the president as removed from all this.
CALLER: Well, the bottom line is a flash traffic saying that the ambassador is in peril, or, worse, missing, you know, the protocol is for someone to physically contact with a person in the chain that’s supposed to determine what happens next. Now, I wasn’t in the Oval Office so I can’t –
RUSH: Let me ask you, the question came up yesterday that I couldn’t answer, and I need to ask you, just from what you’re saying. This is unreal, but let’s assume they can’t find POTUS, let’s assume he’s just not engaged. Who has trigger authority on a response to something like that? I mean, you say we don’t need permission to send a C-130 in there to disrupt. Who orders it in there, in a situation like this? Who has the authority to order the C-130s wherever they are, Italy, wherever they are, to take action? If you can’t find the president — is the president the only guy that can give that order?
CALLER: No, sir. Okay? Basically in the absence of permissions, okay, you have standing orders. And one of the standing orders to geographic combatant commander is to observe life of American citizens –
RUSH: Exactly. Precisely.
CALLER: And he’s a four-star, you know, he’s in Germany. AFRICOM headquarters is in Germany, and their op-center would have been monitoring this in real time, ’cause it’s part of their geographic responsibility. And they would have been going through the different permutations of courses of action of who can get there the quickest. Now, in their geographic area they have Combined Joint Task Force, Horn of Africa, which is in Djibouti. I served there when it was the Joint Special Operations Task Force Crisis Response Element, and we have responsibility for all of CENTCOM and AFRICOM in Africa because at the time there was no AFRICOM. And we had the capacity to get from where we were in Djibouti to Benghazi in about three hours, four hours, depending on what we wanted to take. Now, if we wanted to go in there with a lot of operators, and at the time we had about a hundred operators, it would have taken us probably five hours.
RUSH: Okay, Doug, you’re sitting out here, you obviously are intimately familiar with all this. So what’s going through your mind, A, in real time when you hear about this, and then in subsequent days when you hear the excuses or explanations that have been offered for why no action was taken? I mean, I may be putting you on spot and you can’t share that with us, but I gotta ask you.
CALLER: It stems from Desert One, Rush, it stems from the failure of Desert One during the Iranian hostage rescue. And what commander wants to repeat that, you know. Now, at the lieutenant colonel level, at the colonel level of the In-Extremis Force of all these different headquarters, State Department, everybody was saying, “Let’s go! Let’s get boots on the ground and kick these people’s asses and get our people.” But who makes those decisions? It’s POTUS, V POTUS, State, and Def. And they had a five o’clock Eastern time meeting, and they said no. You know, we’re willing to have the consulate overruled and the embassy overrun — (phone connection goes bad)
RUSH: The fact that they’re afraid of replicating Carter’s boondoggle, that’s not gonna fly with a lot of people.
CALLER: Well, sir, I hate to break it to you, but the people that are-four-stars right now, okay, were young officers, and they saw what happened to the leadership, okay? I’m not saying on the Special Ops side. You know, Special Ops guys –
RUSH: But I mean there are alternate explanations. There are political campaign explanations that people have conjured up to explain why Obama would not want any military activity taking place there in order to make sure that an image is created for his campaign: We’re defeating Al-Qaeda. They’re on the run. We got bin Laden.
CALLER: All those memes, you know, are probably in play, but mostly it’s just incompetence and not understanding the principal of you don’t leave anybody behind, okay?
RUSH: Doug, look, I know you’ve stuck your neck out here and you obviously know your stuff intimately well and I really appreciate your call. It’s fabulous to get your input and knowledge on this. Somewhere, somebody refused to make a gutsy call.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Doug in San Antonio, Texas, kind of blows Leon Panetta out of the water, and Leon Panetta, we had a sound bite earlier, he said, “Well, we didn’t have enough intel. We didn’t know enough going on.” My guess is that we knew everything, we knew it all. That’s what he was basically telling us. We probably had those C-130s — and we talked about these yesterday, these C-130 Hercules equipped to go in and disperse crowds, buzz low, disperse crowds. They’re an hour away in Italy. It’s a seven-hour operation. They probably are able to get the video feed in the cockpit knowing what’s going on.
Leon Panetta has “blocked” four senior military officers from answering questions on the Benghazi
October 22nd, 2012
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta
Photo Credit: DOD
The news keeps getting worse. The Washington Free Beacon reports today that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has “blocked” four senior military officers from answering questions on the Benghazi attack posed by Congressman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC).
McKeon asked the officers to provide answers to questions about security threats by the close of business Friday…Said a HASC aide:
McKeon asked each of the four officers in separate letters whether prior to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi anyone under their command had notified the State Department or other agencies about growing dangers in Libya.
He also wants to know if there were any requests to increase security in Libya for U.S. personnel. … [T]he letters to the four officers asked whether any military officers under their command had recommended “deployment of additional U.S. military forces to Libya due to the threat environment.
Other questions focused on determining if the officers were aware that officers under their command recommended increasing security in Libya prior to the deadly attack.
To your knowledge, has the Department of State or any other federal agency requested additional U.S. military forces to augment security for U.S. personnel in Libya?” McKeon asked.
It is nearly unprecedented that the office of the secretary of defense would prohibit a member of the uniformed military from answering direct questions posed by the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.Indeed. But what, if anything, about the Benghazi incident does have a precedent – outside of the other actions of the Obama administration, such as Fast & Furious? We have reached the point at which the cynical behavior of this administration can’t be reinterpreted or spun. There is no honest purpose for refusing to answer these questions from the House. If the Obama executive is running an actual investigation, we’re at day 39 now after the 9/11/12 attack, and it’s past time to have answers. There is no excuse for the administration’s behavior.
Why would Panetta and the White House use the stonewalling tactic with the House? Presumably because the Democrat-held Senate has given them until after the election to answer its questions. The calculating character of this reprieve from the Senate is obvious.
Many readers probably saw Bret Baier’s Fox News special Friday night on the Benghazi attack and its aftermath (video linked here). For those who missed Lt. Col. Andrew Wood in the recent Congressional hearing – Wood, deployed through the National Guard, led a special security team for the US missions in Libya, until the team was withdrawn earlier this year by a State Department functionary (video of his testimony here) – Baier’s interview with him brings out clearly that State decided to cut the already-inadequate security force in Libya. Wood advocated keeping his team in place, but State decided against it – even though the Defense Department was actually paying for it.
So McKeon’s questions to the Department of Defense are right on point, and the American people are owed the answers. There is a certain pragmatism at work on both sides of the aisle right now; Democrats want to get through the election, and Republicans are likely to take a more perfunctory approach to the Benghazi issue if Mitt Romney wins on the 6th. The public appetite for details – at least, any details we still don’t know this point – will probably wane once the people know the Obama administration is on the way out.
The gingerly treatment of the Obama administration by the MSM on this matter is a timely reminder that the MSM are not peopled with objective journalists. If a Republican administration were backing and filling after the Benghazi fiasco, it would find no rest anywhere. The attacks on it would be relentless. We may say, “And rightly so!” – but the MSM seem incapable of calibration here: either they are in a frenetic feeding frenzy, hammering their own narratives as they “cover” the activities of a Republican administration, or they are declining to cover stories that obviously matter about a Democratic administration. Too seldom anymore do we see from them the middle ground of sober, fair-minded, carefully assembled reporting.
But the most important take-away from the Benghazi fiasco is the nakedly cynical, self-serving behavior of the Obama administration. Four Americans were killed, in a terrorist attack on a facility that should have been protected better, but – because of decisions made by Obama’s appointees – was not. Instead of manning up to what happened and providing the answers that are owed to the people, the administration first built a specious narrative about why the attack was launched, as if that was what mattered, and then spent weeks claiming that it was too early to answer questions on almost any aspect of the topic.
Now the administration has directed senior military officers not to answer questions from Congress. There is no conceivable reason for this, other than to stymie progress on the House’s inquiry.
Originally published at the Optimistic Conservative.
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