In late December, 2013 The New York Times whitewashed the Benghazi Islamist terrorist attack, claiming that based “on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault.”
The Times was refuted less than a month later on January 15, 2014 when the Senate Select Committee’s Benghazi Report Finding #1 referenced a June, 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report’s finding that “growing ties between (AQ) regional nodes and Libya-based terrorists…and (the DIA) expect expect more anti-U.S. terrorist attacks in eastern Libya.”
Simple logic figured that the Times was attempting to preserve the Obama/Clinton narrative that AQ was “dead” and protecting Hillary from Benghazi criticism for 2016.
Perhaps Hilary can no longer depend on Benghazi cover from the Grey Lady?
On Monday, the NYT published a devastating piece by Washington correspondent Michael Schmidt titled “In Clinton Emails on Benghazi, a Rare Glimpse at Her Concerns.” Schmidt’s investigative work provides a crucial revelation:
300 emails from Mrs. Clinton’s private (email) account that were turned over last month to a House committee investigating the attack showed the secretary and her aides closely monitoring the fallout from the tragedy, which threatened to damage her image and reflect poorly on the State Department…(which) show that Mrs. Clinton’s top aides at times corresponded with her about State Department matters from their personal email accounts, raising questions about her recent assertions that she made it her practice to email aides at their government addresses so the messages would be preserved, in compliance with federal record-keeping regulations [emphasis added].
The Clinton private server email was first revealed by Schmidt on March 2 with the meme “Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email Account at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules.” After Hilary’s disastrous UN press conference, where she was caught lying about Bill’s email practice and refused to turn over the server, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed 46% of Democrats supporting “an independent review of all of Clinton’s emails to ensure she turned over everything that is work-related.”
It is also no coincidence that the day before the New York Times piece, the Boston Globe ran an editorial titled “Democrats need Elizabeth Warren’s voice in 2016 presidential race,” which lead “(democrats) could be making a big mistake if they let Hillary Clinton coast to the presidential nomination without real opposition(.)”
The Times piece also coincided with Rep. Trey Gowdy, chair of the Benghazi House Select Committee, sending a letter to Hilary’s lawyer requesting that Clinton “relinquish” the server to a “neutral, detached and independent third-party” for review.
Gowdy has publicly acknowledged that “huge gaps” exist in the emails which Hilary has turned over related to Benghazi. It is axiomatic that none of Hilary’s emails reference the lack of military security at the Benghazi consulate. Had the military been guarding the consulate, the 9/11 attack would have been repealed according to the Report.
The lack of security at Benghazi is central to the 9/11 attack. Sen. Ron Johnson has stated “”the State Department not only failed to honor repeated requests for additional security, but instead actually reduced security in Libya” which Politifact has ruled as ‘True.’ The Report’s Finding #2 requests for increased security were denied. Fox News reported an internal State Department memo which Clinton’s Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy signed off on an action memo “that green-lighted the Benghazi operation” with the caveat that the Mission be “exempted… from mandatory physical security standards” of a Consulate.
Hilary also has two contradictory explanations for the security denial. In HRC by Jonathan Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, which the Clintonistas coordinated, the Benghazi incompetence is washed away as Hillary’s “bias for action” according to an unnamed source. Yet the same introduction quotes Hillary telling Kennedy, “the undersecretary who oversaw diplomatic operations, that “she want(s) to see…her team” briefed on the April 5, 2010 assault on an American compound in Peshawar. That would be twenty months before Kennedy signed the deadly Benghazi action memo.
Schmidt’s NYT piece also sheds light on what Hillary believed the true cause of the Benghazi attack. Two weeks after Susan Rice’s infamous Sunday talk show circuit where Rice repeatedly made the assertion that the attack was a spontaneous reaction to a videotape, which was quickly debunked, Hillary’s adviser Jake Sullivan “reassure(d) (Hillary) that she had avoided the problems Ms. Rice was confronting. He told Mrs. Clinton that he had reviewed her public remarks since the attack and that she had avoided the language that had landed Ms. Rice in trouble.”
In typical Clintonista fashion following the private email disclosure, attack dogs James Carville and David Brock were quick to defend Hillary and attack the public for having the nerve to be concerned that Hillary conducted government business on her private email. Both made Hillary out to be the victim, an absurdity.
Now, just as Richard Nixon argued that the White House tapes were his personal property and that he was the arbiter of what should be released and what should be redacted, Hillary claims the email server she used is her property and she should decide what the public can see. The Supreme Court ruled that, although the tapes were Nixon’s property, he had recorded them in his capacity as President and thus the public was entitled to hear them. Hillary clearly sent and received e-mails on her personal server but did so in her capacity as Secretary of State. The Supreme Court precedent is clear. She must intimately hand everything over.
The real victim in this latest Clinton scandal is the public. If Hillary wants to run for president based on her record as Secretary of State, then the American people deserve access to all her emails.
Lastly, questions still surround Benghazi. What did Hillary know and when did she know it? And yes Madam Secretary, it does matter