Whistleblowers to testify

[Minskaya]

On Wednesday, the US House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hear testimony from at least three witnesses with intimate knowledge of the Benghazi attack and its aftermath. They will testify that the State Department (specifically former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy) scrubbed all references to al Qaeda from an initial CIA report on the attack. The version offered to the American people by UN Ambassador Susan Rice was purposefully revised and totally inaccurate. The implication is that the deletion of all references to al Qaeda was done for domestic political reasons. Two of the witnesses have retained counsel and have sought legal protection under the Federal Whistleblower Act. They claim their government careers have been threatened should they testify.

[Officer of Engineers]

They claim their government careers have been threatened should they testify.

Can some explain this to me? Under the Act, there should be no penalties to testify. Ok, you won't lose your job but the chances of promotions are shot to hell ... unless you can find a sympathetic boss who will back you ... in which case, the Act did nothing.

[dalem]

Interesting that no one's posting about this.

-dale

[zraver]

Nothing really new came out for those of us who followed it in the beginning. Terrorists attacked our embassy and Rice, Clinton and the President all contorted like pretzels trying to deny it and cover up their failure to act and so damage our relationship with Libya that the Libyans basically told us to kiss off. It wont be important until Clinton runs for office in 16.

[Doktor]

She will?

[zraver]

Probably, those who crave power don't give up easily.

[Parihaka]

Revision and re-revision of the CIA's talking points
http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politic...20Timeline.pdf

And the ABC's interpretation
Exclusive: Benghazi Talking Points Underwent 12 Revisions, Scrubbed of Terror Reference

[Minskaya]

The testimony and documentation clearly demonstrates that the CIA Benghazi assessments were revised by the White House and State Department. As I interpret the revisions it appears that this was done not to correct inaccuracies, but to insulate the principles from any fallout attached to the distinct lack of security rigor which I personally view as bordering on criminal negligence. There are also possible political elements - removing al-Qaeda references would (by omission) reinforce the administration's message to the American public that AQ was severely crippled and eviscerated. The future political prospects of Hillary Clinton could have been another possible consideration.

Members of Congress are considering issuing subpoena's for all relevant White House/State Department/CIA/FBI e-mails.

Edit: Benghazi E-Mails Put White House on the Defensive

[Doktor]

Subpoenas for whom?

[Minskaya]

Subpoenas for whom?

Regarding the Benghazi e-mails, probably to the legal departments of the relevant government bureaucracies. I assume there would be date parameters.

[astralis]

damn right it's cartoonish. would that we had more Republicans like Gates, but they're of a disappeared old school now.

----

Gates: Some Benghazi critics have "cartoonish" view of military capability - CBS News

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates forcefully defended the Obama administration on Sunday against charges that it did not do enough to prevent the tragedy in Benghazi, telling CBS' "Face the Nation" that some critics of the administration have a "cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces."

Gates, a Republican who was appointed by then-President George W. Bush in 2006 and agreed to stay through more than two years of President Obama's first term, repeatedly declined to criticize the policymakers who devised a response to the September 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.

"Frankly, had I been in the job at the time, I think my decisions would have been just as theirs were," said Gates, now the chancellor of the College of William and Mary.

"We don't have a ready force standing by in the Middle East, and so getting somebody there in a timely way would have been very difficult, if not impossible." he explained.

Suggestions that we could have flown a fighter jet over the attackers to "scare them with the noise or something," Gates said, ignored the "number of surface to air missiles that have disappeared from [former Libyan leader] Qaddafi's arsenals."

"I would not have approved sending an aircraft, a single aircraft, over Benghazi under those circumstances," he said.

Another suggestion posed by some critics of the administration, to, as Gates said, "send some small number of special forces or other troops in without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually going on on the ground, would have been very dangerous."

"It's sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces," he said. "The one thing that our forces are noted for is planning and preparation before we send people in harm's way, and there just wasn't time to do that."

[Doktor]

No one wants another Black Hawk Down movie.

[DOR]

.
David Brooks take on the Benghazi hearings—

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/op...f=opinion&_r=0

The conclusion: “Did Victoria Nuland scrub the talking points to serve Clinton or President Obama? That charge is completely unsupported by the evidence. She was caught in a brutal interagency turf war, and she defended her department. The accusations against her are bogus.”

[Parihaka]

The Damning Dozen: Twelve Revelations from the Benghazi Hearings - Guy Benson

Hmm. Neatly discounts the statements made by Gates and others that nothing could be done so nothing was done.
No one had any idea how long the attacks would last, so taking no action was simply throwing the fates of the then surviving 30-odd Americans to the winds of chance.
Fortunately for those Americans, they were able to fight their own way out.