Only a few days after CBS News’ intrepid investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson detailed a comprehensive list of questions the White House has refused to answer regarding the terrorist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, the network had the opportunity to finally get some of those answers from Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama as they both sat with Steve Kroft for an exclusive interview on 60 Minutes.
We imagine Ms. Attkisson might have thrown a handful of popcorn at her television as she watched the segment Sunday night when her colleague gently broached the Benghazi subject: (emphasis added)
Steve Kroft: You said during the hearings, I mean, you’ve accepted responsibility. You’ve accepted the very critical findings of Admiral Mullen and Ambassador Pickering. As the New York Times put it, you accepted responsibility, but not blame. Do you feel guilty in any way, in– at a personal level? Do you blame yourself that you didn’t know or that you should have known?
That’s it. That was the entire line of questioning over the Benghazi attacks. Steve Kroft asked Clinton the journalistic equivalent of “If you were a Libyan tree, what kind of tree would you be?”
60 Minutes even held this question for the final segment of the interview and teased it going into a commercial break. Kroft lied to his audience with this: “When we come back, the president and Secretary Clinton discuss the disaster in Benghazi…” No, Steve, they did not discuss the tragedy in Benghazi, they discussed their feelings about it, because you asked the softest of all softballs: “Do you blame yourself?”
If CBS News really wanted to make news, they should have turned the interview over to Attkisson, or White House correspondent Major Garret. If Obama and Clinton refused unless their boyfriend Kroft helmed the segment, then CBS news would have had a story on their hands. Actual news, rather than the puff piece they ended up with.
No wonder Kroft is Obama’s “Go-To Interview.”