Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

Hillary’s Flimsy ‘Colin Powell’ Excuse Won’t Save Her from Email Scandal

One of the main arguments Hillary Clinton and her supporters are using to dispute a damning new State Department Inspector General report on her use of a private email server for official business when Clinton was Secretary of State is claiming the report indicates Colin Powell essentially did the same thing when he headed the State Department.

Although this argument has become a Democratic talking point, it is false and extremely unfair to former Secretary Powell.

The IG report makes clear there is no comparison between Clinton’s and Powell’s email practices. Powell did use personal email for some official business, but not nearly to the extent Clinton did nor did he use a private server. Although a handful of Powell’s emails were found to be classified at a low level, according to a May 27, 2016 New York Timesarticle, 2,028 of the Clinton’s work-related emails were classified “confidential” and 65 were classified “secret.” 22 other Clinton emails were classified “top secret” or higher and are so sensitive that they will not be released even in redacted form.

Fox News anchor Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday chided Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) last weekend for using the “Colin Powell excuse” to deflect the Clinton email scandal by pointing out that State Department security rules concerning the use of personal email for official business were entirely different when Clinton was Secretary. Wallace also counseled Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, that his use of the Powell argument was a red herring and said, “I expect better of you.”  Schiff also had no clear answer on why Clinton and her aides refused to cooperate with the State IG’s investigation.

Wallace was right. The new IG report says the State Department’s rules on the use of unclassified email for official business significantly evolved between 2001 and 2009 and provides charts showing how these rules changed over time. The report also noted that State Department employees first acquired desktop access to the Internet under Powell.

According to the IG report, Powell “installed a laptop computer on a private line” in his State Department office for unclassified email access and he used this laptop to send email via his personal email account to his “principal assistants, individual ambassadors, and foreign minister colleagues.” This was permissible in 2001, but would never be allowed today, since the Secretary’s office is a “Secure Compartmented Information Facility” from which personal electronics are banned. State officials also are now required to use the State system to access the Internet; they are not permitted to set up their own official accounts through commercial services.

Aside from the evolution of the rules on private and unclassified emails between Powell’s tenure and Clinton’s, there are other stark differences between the email practices of these two officials.

Concerning Powell, the State Department IT staff (the Office of Information and Resource Management or IRM) would have been aware of the laptop in his office that he used for internet access since they maintained his work electronics and probably installed this computer. The State Department’s Diplomatic Security bureau also would have been aware of Powell’s laptop, since it does periodic security sweeps of all Department offices. The IRM office also probably coordinated with Diplomatic Security on the installation of this laptop.

On the other hand, although Clinton has claimed she used her private email server with the permission of IRM and Diplomatic Security, the IG says it “found no evidence that the Secretary requested or obtained guidance or approval to conduct official business via a personal email account on her private server.” The report also said that State Diplomatic Security and IRM officials informed the IG that they “did not and would not” approve Clinton’s exclusive reliance on a personal email account to conduct Department business” because of the restrictions in State Department regulations and the security risks in doing so.”

According to the State IG report, this story gets much, much worse.

  • Although Clinton’s staff and an aide to former President Clinton discovered evidence of cyber attacks against the private email server, the IG found no evidence that these incidents were ever reported to Diplomatic Security even though State Department regulations require this.
  • Concerning the security of the private server, the IG report noted that Clinton presidential campaign claims “robust protections were put in place and additional upgrades and techniques employed over time as they became available, including consulting and employing third party experts.” However, the IG report says Diplomatic Security and IRM staff told the IG that Clinton never demonstrated to them that her private server or mobile device met minimum information security requirements specified by State Department regulations.
  • In October 2012, after Clinton’s private email server went down due to Hurricane Sandy, Clinton’s staff asked the IRM staff whether the Department could provide support for the server. An IRM official informed the IG that his office declined to provide support because this was a private server.
  • The IG report also revealed that a State Department IRM employee [Brian Pagliano] secretly maintained Mrs. Clinton’s private server without telling his supervisors and was compensated for his services “by check or wire transfer in varying amounts and various times between 2009 and 2013.” This employee’s supervisors told the State IG “that they questioned whether he could support a private client during work hours, given his capacity as a full-time government employee.” Pagliano was given immunity by the Justice Department in March for its investigation into the Clinton email scandal. He took the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify to the Benghazi Committee last fall and is refusing to testify to Senate committees. Pagliano recently said he will take the Fifth if forced to testify in a deposition in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch.
  • The IG report says two IRM officers raised concerns in 2010 that Clinton’s private email server did not comply with laws and regulations on the retention of official records. One of the IRM officers was told by the IRM director that “the Secretary’s personal system had been reviewed and approved by Department legal staff and that the matter was not to be discussed any further.” The IG could find no evidence that State Department attorneys approved Clinton’s private email server. The other IRM officer was told that IRM’s mission “is to support the Secretary and instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again.”

This adds up to a scheme by Hillary Clinton to use a private email system to evade federal laws and regulations on the retention of official records and the Freedom of Information Act. The private email system wasn’t set up by accident. It is impossible to believe that Clinton and her staff were unaware of laws and regulations concerning official records and personal email. It is not a coincidence that a State employee was paid off the books to secretly maintain the private server and IRM officers were ordered not to discuss the server.  It is likely that Clinton’s private server led to the compromise of sensitive classified information.

This is a scandal that represents serious criminal activity by Secretary Clinton and her staff, for which they should be indicted.

It is outrageous that Clinton and her supporters have tried to explain away her crooked email scheme by trying to drag in and smear former Secretary Colin Powell. Chris Wallace was right: there is absolutely no comparison between Powell’s innocent use of personal email for official business and Clinton’s email practices. That the Clinton team would try to turn the tables by casting blame on Powell is a sign of Mrs. Clinton’s craven lack of ethics and the scandal-ridden administration she will lead if elected president this fall.

Hillary Clinton’s Muslim Brotherhood Problem

On March 24th, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton put in an appearance in Los Angeles that perfectly captured one of the most problematic facets of her checkered public service. Seated next to a prominent Islamic supremacist with longstanding ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, she nodded like a bobbing-head doll as he dissembled about Islam, fraudulently professed a commitment to “partnership” with law enforcement to prevent radicalization, and criticized those who know better.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Clinton has all-too-often been an enthusiastic supporter of those likeMuslim Public Affairs Council president Salam al-Marayati as they seek to dominate their fellow Muslims (notably in places like Egypt, Libya and Syria) and subvert the United States and the rest of the Free World with what the Brothers call “civilization jihad.”

This serious betrayal of U.S. national interests has surely been encouraged by Clinton’s association with and reliance upon Huma Abedin, a woman with her own, well-documented personal and family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Huma’s involvement as a chief lieutenant to Mrs. Clinton going back to Hillary’s days as First Lady has undoubtedly contributed to the latter’s affinity for the organization.

The following are illustrative examples of how that affinity translated into action during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State – a period in which she and President Obama sought serially to embrace, legitimate and empower the Muslim Brotherhood:

  • Hillary Clinton also personally approved the policy of formally engaging with the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • Clinton played a leading role in developing and executing Obama administration initiatives aimed at bringing the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria.
  • Hillary Clinton was personally involved in advancing the Muslim Brotherhood/Organization of Islamic Cooperation agenda aimed at prohibiting “defamation of Islam/religion.” On her watch, the United States supported the approval of a UN Human Rights Council Resolution for that purpose: UNHC Res. 16/18.
  • Clinton also subsequently launched and presided over the “Istanbul Process” to advance the implementation of Res. 16/18’s call for the criminalization of such defamation. In July 2011, she pledged that, in the United States, we would use “some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t feel they have the support to do what we abhor” – an unmistakable threat to freedom of expression.
  • That objective of restricting speech that “offends” Muslims was also explicitly served by the fraudulent meme that Clinton, among other administration officials, promoted concerning Benghazi: a “hateful” online video caused the riot that resulted in the murderous attack on U.S. facilities there on September 11, 2012. Publicly disclosed emails have revealed that Huma Abedin, and Rashad Hussein, the special envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, were tasked with impressing upon the OIC that they were countering the dissemination of offensive materials.
  • Hillary Clinton’s State Department was involved in shutting down an investigation into the personnel and activities of Tablighi Jamaat – the Deobandi “missionary” group out of Pakistan, two of whose followers were responsible for the jihadist attack in San Bernardino in December 2015. The chief investigator, Philip Haney,believes that, had that inquiry not been terminated and all of its data purged, those murders may well have been prevented.

Al-Marayati and his organization have also been closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and its “civilization jihad” aimed at promoting sharia in the United States. MPAC was founded by two top Brothers, Hassan and Maher Hathout, and it has worked closely ever since with the Hamas-tied Council on American Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America and other Brotherhood fronts.

In the course of the roundtable with Mrs. Clinton and LA’s mayor, al-Marayati demonstrated his true, Islamic supremacist colors by engaging in classic taqiyya – the Islamists’ well-honed practice of dissembling for the faith. For example, he selectively quoted from the Quran to differentiate between the teachings of Islam and the practices of the Islamic State. He also promoted such favorite Brotherhood themes as “the mosques are not the centers of radicalization” and that “violent extremism” is the threat, not Islam’s jihadism.

For her part, Hillary Clinton used the roundtable to propound the myth that Muslims like al-Marayati are not given enough “platforms” to disavow jihadism. The real problem, though, is that organizations like MPAC and their spokesmen are given plenty of outlets – by the government and the U.S. media – but choose not to use them for the purpose of disassociating their community from those who faithfully adhere to sharia and seek to impose it on the rest of us.

Of course, given their true purpose – Islamic supremacism – the al-Marayatis and MPACs cannot authentically do that. After all, like Islamists the world over, they actually share that agenda and are working, albeit through stealthy, “civilization jihadist” means, to secure its triumph here. No Commander-in-Chief, actual or prospective, should be “partnering” with those advancing such a purpose.

Latest Hillary Clinton Email Dump Reveals Suggested Push For Palestinian Protests

Hillary Clinton’s personal email server continues to yield a treasure trove of information. Most recently, a series of emails suggest Clinton had considered a plan to incite Palestinian protests against Israel.

The email, surfacing thanks to the dogged efforts of Judicial Watch, is an 18 December 2011 message from former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Pickering in which he suggests that then-Secretary of State Clinton should consider a plan to re-energize the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks by inciting Palestinians to ‘non-violent’ demonstrations and protests against Israel.

Pickering, who serves on the Board of Advisors to the notorious National Iranian American Council (NIAC – widely viewed as a lobbying front for the Iranian regime), described a clandestine campaign by the U.S. to whip up anti-Israel sentiment intended to cudgel our Israeli allies into re-engaging in negotiations with the Palestinians. Of course, he emphasized that Clinton should keep confidential the whole nefarious idea as, clearly, they did not want Israel to learn of it:

“Most of all the United States, in my view, cannot be seen to have stimulated, encouraged or be the power behind it for reasons you will understand better than anyone,” he wrote, suggesting that the government enlist liberal non-profit groups in Israel. “I believe third parties and a number NGOs [non-government organizations] on both sides would help.”

Instead of dismissing out of hand the very idea of such a shameful plot—not to mention immediately distancing herself from the one who proposed it—Secretary Clinton instead requested an aide to make a print-out of the email for her.

Nor was this Pickering’s first foray into plotting with America’s enemies—and Israel’s. Just weeks after President Obama’s June 4, 2009 Cairo speech had green-lighted the Islamic Uprising to come, Clinton’s aide, Cheryl Mills, forwarded to her a Washington Post article dated July 16, 2009 that reported on a secret meeting that Pickering had held in Zurich, Switzerland with two senior HAMAS officials. While U.S. officials predictably tried to distance the Obama administration from the talks, the terrorist organization itself (the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood) characterized them in what were likely more accurate terms, as a potential opening with the Obama White House.

In fact, it had been clear since days of the Obama team’s 2008 presidential campaign that he intended to turn established U.S. policy vis-à-vis Islamic jihadist groups like HAMAS and the Muslim Brotherhood upside down by embracing instead of countering them. One of the Obama campaign’s informal advisors, Robert Malley, a long-time advocate for the HAMAS terror group then with the George Soros-funded International Crisis Group (where Pickering is Board Co-Chairman), was compelled to resign from the campaign after reports revealed that he had held meetings with HAMAS. Malley next accompanied Pickering to the June 2009 gathering in Zurich with HAMAS foreign minister, Mahmud Zahar and Osama Hamdan, the Brotherhood affiliate’s top official in Lebanon. It was all an effort to “understand what HAMAS’s views are,” according to Malley (who apparently has not yet had the chance to read the HAMAS Covenant, where the group’s annihilationist intent toward Israel is quite clearly stated).

Malley had to wait several long years before the Obama White House rehabilitated him in April 2015, where he served until recently as the National Security Council (NSC) Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. Given how well U.S. policy in that region has gone of late, Malley was promoted on 30 November 2015 to serve as Senior Advisor to the President for the Counter-ISIL Campaign in Iraq and Syria, where his skills at reaching out to the jihadist enemy can really be put to the test.

As Michael Bay’s new blockbuster film, 13 Hours: the Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, premiers around the country this week, it is a good time to consider the wholesale chaos that a policy of alienating (and sometimes deposing) our allies and embracing our enemies has wrought. The story of six American heroes who selflessly charged to the sound of the guns to save dozens of lives contrasts rather starkly with the record of the Obama team, which included Hillary Clinton, Thomas Pickering, and Robert Malley, who continue to charge instead headlong into the embrace of our jihadist enemies.

Benghazi: The Cover-Up Timeline

 #WhyWasntAnythingDone

1990s-2010: Libyan Muslim Brotherhood & Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an Al-Qa’eda affiliate struggled unsuccessfully to oust Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, even with extensive UK MI 6 backing

2008-2010: Tripoli Embassy DCM Christopher Stevens & USG pressured Qaddafi to release jihadis from prison, who then organized to launch revolution against him

17 Feb 2011: Libyan revolt began w/US, EU, NATO backing

March 2011: Despite repeated Qaddafi efforts to negotiate abdication & exile, Obama White House & Clinton State Dept. insisted on official support to Libyan Muslim Brotherhood & al-Qa’eda militias; a Presidential Intelligence Finding authorized covert assistance & Chris Stevens managed the weapons flow from Qatar to Libyan al-Qa’eda militias

20 Oct 2011: Qaddafi was killed, the Libya MB-led Transitional National Council took over & soon black flag of jihad was seen flying over Benghazi courthouse

Jan-Sep 2012: Security conditions in Benghazi deteriorated drastically, Ansar al-Sharia formed from earlier AQ-MB-linked militias & attacked Western interests, including the US mission

Jan-Sep 2012: AMEMB Tripoli repeatedly requested more security but all requests were denied even after specific intelligence warning of “imminent” attack was received ca. late Aug 2012

Nov 2011-Dec 2012: Kristi Rogers, wife of HPSCI Chm. Mike Rogers & President/CEO of Aegis Defense Services LLC, won large global security contract from DOS under which Welsh Blue Mt. firm was hired in Benghazi, which then sub-contracted w/17 Feb Martyrs Brigade to defend the Special Mission Compound (SMC)

Jan-Sep 2012: CIA Base of Operations Benghazi (Annex) tasked w/recovery of Qaddafi’s looted weapons, especially SAMs; CIA managed weapons collection/shipment on Libyan ships from Benghazi to Turkish ports for overland delivery to AQ-and-MB-dominated Syrian rebels

22 May 2012: J. Christopher Stevens named Ambassador to Libya

July-Sep 2012: “Innocence of Muslims” YouTube film posted to Internet w/few views until producer got Egyptian TV host to play clips on 9 Sep 2012, sparking widespread Muslim outrage

10 Sep 2012: AQ chief Ayman al-Zawahiri posted Libya attack video on jihadi websites

10 Sep 2012: Amb. Stevens traveled from Tripoli to Benghazi w/only 5 DSS officers; Sean Smith, NSA officer, arrived Benghazi from The Hague

11 Sep 2012: Anti-YouTube film protests turned violent vs AMEMB Cairo, elsewhere

11 Sep 2012 (NLT 2000): Ansar al-Shariah set up blockade cordon around SMC neighborhood

11 Sep 2012 (1930-2030): Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin dinner meeting w/Amb. Stevens at SMC but sent no warning as he departed through gathering militia forces

11 Sep 2012 (ca 2100): Amb. Stevens & Sean Smith retired for evening; one DSS officer manned the TOC, w/others elsewhere on compound, but w/o their gear or weapons per DOS orders those be kept in separate bldg.

11 Sep 2012 (2123): Dozens of attackers armed w/ARs & RPGs stormed SMC & Alec Henderson, DOS communication officer, contacted Annex, where GRS team immediately grabbed gear, weapons & asked COB permission to go to aid of Amb. Stevens & SMC; COB denied permission, told them “Stand Down” while he tried to reach 17 Feb Martyrs Brigade for help

11 Sep 2012 (2142 BT): Amb. Stevens phoned DCM Greg Hicks at USEMB Tripoli to tell him “We’re being attacked”

11 Sep 2012 (2145 BT): Henderson called Annex again, requested help but COB refused to allow GRS team to go ¾ mi. to SMC; 10 min. later, Henderson called again, said building on fire and if no help arrives, “we’re all gonna die” – but COB refused for 3rd time to allow GRS team to go

11 Sep 2012 (2205 BT): Ty Woods & 5 other GRS members, Libyan national translator decided to ignore COB orders, piled into two Level 7 armored vehicles & drove to the SMC

11 Sep 2012 (shortly after attack began): DSS guard Scott Strickland w/Amb. Stevens, Sean Smith inside safe room, escaped through barred window, but car kept per SOP beneath window for E & E was not there; Stevens & Smith did not follow out window

11 Sep 2012 (1600 EST/2200 LT): Unarmed Predator drone diverted from Derna mission to Benghazi by AFRICOM J-3, Director of Operations

11 Sep 2012 (by 1622EST/2222 BT): DoS Ops Center, SecDef Panetta, Chm JCS Gen. Dempsey, all combatant commands including AFRICOM CMDR Ham all were informed that US mission in Benghazi was under attack by scores of armed men; Panetta, Dempsey met w/Pres. Obama as UnderSecState Patrick Kennedy refused request to send FEST to Libya while SecState Clinton phoned CIA Director David Petraeus to coordinate

11 Sep 2012 (2200+ BT): GRS team cleared SMC of attackers, located & removed Sean Smith’s body from inside one building still on fire. Also located & escorted out 6 persons including DSS guards found hiding in safe rooms. Unable to locate Stevens. DSS guards told them 17 February Martyrs Brigade guards opened SMC gates to attackers, then either fled or joined in attack.

11 Sep 2012 (2350 BT): CIA GRS arrived back at Annex under heavy fire, took up positions on rooftops, repelled multiple waves of attackers while remaining in constant secure communication over emergency channels w/WDC

11 Sep 2012 (2330 TT): Former Navy SEAL Glenn Doherty, 2 members SST, 2 USMC departed Tripoli in leased C-130, arriving Benghazi airport ca 0130 on 12 Sep 2012, where they were delayed by Libya Shield jihadis for 3 hrs. before getting to the Annex

11 Sep 2012 (1915 EST/0115 BT): U.S. DOD Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash sent email to DOS leadership, immediately offering “forces that could move to Benghazi” – “we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.” F-16 jets at Aviano AFB, 130-man USMC team at Sigonella AFB, 10th Group SF in Croatia all available, ready to go, never given “Go” order, possibly told to Stand Down, an order that could only come from Commander-In-Chief.

11 Sep 2012, (0200 TT/ca 2000 EST): DCM Greg Hicks spoke by phone w/SecState Clinton & advisors, told them it was terrorist attack, video a “non-event” in Libya but SecState Clinton next on phone w/President, then issued DOS press release blaming YouTube video for attack; she withheld cross-border authority for rescue

12 Sep 2012 (0100 BT): Amb. Stevens’ body found at SMC by Libyan casuals/looters, taken to Benghazi Medical Center where doctor tried to revive him, to no avail

12 Sep 2012 (0430 BT): Tripoli rescue team arrived CIA Annex, joined fight; Doherty took up position on one Annex building rooftop while others stayed below.

12 Sep 2012 (0500 BT): Final Ansar al-Shariah attack w/mortar; Ty Woods, Glenn Doherty killed on roof; DSS agent David Ubbin, GRS Mark Geist (“Oz”) gravely injured

12 Sep 2012 (ca. 0530 BT): Libyan rescue team arrived, attack ended, survivors plus bodies of Stevens & Smith departed Benghazi on a Libyan C-130 plus the leased C-130 from Tripoli; no official US forces ever sent, no official USG help ever arrived at Benghazi entire night

That very day, the official White House/State Department/CIA cover-up began & continues to this day. Multiple Congressional investigations, the State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB), and Rep. Trey Gowdy’s Select Committee on Benghazi all have failed to explain why the U.S. supported Libyan al-Qa’eda & Muslim Brotherhood to overthrow Qaddafi at a time when he was an ally against AQ in N Africa, why the U.S. facilitated gun-running to al-Qa’eda in both Libya (2011) and Syria (2012), why the Special Mission Compound in Benghazi was stripped of desperately-needed security, why the Obama administration failed to pre-position forces even in the face of multiple warnings, and why the Obama White House to this day leads an official cover-up about the true cause of the attacks against the U.S. mission in Benghazi as well as its failure to even attempt a rescue of beleaguered mission personnel there that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, the loss of the mission, and the descent of Libya into an utterly chaotic failed state that now threatens the entire region and even Europe.

  • 4 Sep 12: Film producer, ex-pat Egyptian Coptic Christian (Morris Sadek?) phoned al Youm al Sabaa (Seventh Day) daily newspaper in WDC area & emailed copy of film trailer
  • 6 Sep 12: Gamel Girgis wrote 3-para article, calling movie ‘shocking’
  • 8 Sep 12: ‘other newspapers’ began running the story & al Youm al Sabaa ran a follow-up
  • 8 Sep 12: Gama’at al-Islamiyya & EIJ jointly issued statement threatening to burn down Embassy unless Blind Sheikh released
  • 9 Sep 12: Arabic-language forum posted statement inciting Egyptians [O, sons of Egypt!] to target the U.S. Embassy, indicating “U.S. Embassy shouldn’t remain in Egypt” until Blind Sheikh released
  • 9 Sep 12: al-Nas Egyptian TV host Khaled Abdullah aired clip of “Innocence of Muslims”, invited outrage
  • 9 Sep 12: al-Azhar Mufti condemned clip for ‘insulting the prophet’
  • Facebook pages appeared, calling for 9/11 protests; callers asked US Emb, which was clueless about video
  • 11 Sep 12 : CNN Nic Robertson outside Cairo Embassy interviewing protesters who want Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman (Blind Sheikh) released – including one-on-one with Mohamed al-Zawahiri – violence broke out immediately afterwards
  • CNN began to push false film narrative
  • 11 Sep 12 : Protests break out ( > 3 dozen countries 13-29 Sep – YouTube clip eventually > 17m hits)
  • Cairo : Embassy perimeter breached, US flag torn down, burned, black flag of jihad raised in its place
  • Cairo Embassy tweeted its apologies
    • “We condemn the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims”
  • 13 Sep 12: Obama phoned Morsi about protests, need to protect US Embassy Cairo
  • 11 Sep 12: Military assault on Benghazi base began 2140 (Annex security team says it was 2123) that night – there was no demonstration or protest
  • Staff, guards knew something up since morning
  • Ran out of phone cards by 0920
  • PAO Smith blogged “if we don’t die tonight”
  • Letters to Libyan FoMin, Benghazi police chief
  • Ansar al-Shariah setting up outside hours before
  • Stevens oblivious? Dinner mtng. w/Turkish ConGen, then on phone w/US MD for next am mtng.
  • Phone calls, cables, aerial drone all live time
  • Tripoli CIA rescue team couldn’t get to Benghazi hospital due to AAS outside

 

USG OFFICIAL & MB VIDEO NARRATIVE

  • 11 Sep 12 (2200+ ET): SecState Clinton spoke by phone w/President Obama
  • 11 Sep 12 (2208 ET): SecState Clinton issued a statement saying, “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet.”
  • 11 Sep 12 (2312 ET): SecState Clinton sent email (Subject line: ‘Re: I’m in my office’) to daughter Chelsea that said “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al-Qaeda-like group…”
  • 12 Sep 12 (1250 ET): Sid Blumenthal sent SecState Clinton a briefing that stated “a senior security officer told Libyan president el-Magariaf that the attacks on that day were inspired by what many devout Libyan viewed as a sacrilegious internet video on the prophet Mohammed originating in America.”
  • 12 Sep 12 (1300 ET): Unknown sender sent email to SecState Clinton. It contained a link to a Max Blumenthal (son of Sid Blumenthal) blog post about Steve Klein connecting the YouTube video to right-wing extremists, including “Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, and Daniel Pipes.” Post no longer online because Maxblumenthal.com was taken down, but can also be viewed here. Bethany Stotts (AIM) has PDF copy of it if that one is also taken down. Sender’s digital signature same as on October 15, 2012 Sidney Blumenthal It states, “Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE DROID.”
  • 12 Sep 12 (1411 ET): SecState Clinton requested this blog entry be printed
  • 12 Sep 12: Obama in Rose Garden: “no act of terror…”
  • 12 Sep 12 (1806 EST): Beth Jones, acting assistant secretary of state for Near East, sentemail to top State Department official: “[T]he group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al-Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic extremists.”
  • 12 Sep 12 (1816 ET): Note sourced to Tyler Drumheller, w/sender redacted, forwarded to SecState Clinton. Comes from same email signature & claims that Libyan government blaming Cairo video & that “immediate events were set in motion by a statement made by a Muslim Cleric in Egypt saying that the internet film was going to be shown across the United States on September 11 in an effort to insult Muslims on the anniversary of the attacks on the New York World Trade Center in 2001.”

o    Examination of Blumenthal’s emails, as leaked by hacker Guccifer, shows that reports sent by Blumenthal were gathered by Drumheller.

  • 12 Sep 12 (2326 ET): SecState Clinton wrote to Jake Sullivan “We should get this [Drumheller note] around asap.”
  • 12 Sep 12 (2330 ET): Clinton forwarded to top aide Jake Sullivan email briefing rec’d that morning from Sid Blumenthal about report to Libyan president el-Magariaf that blamed YouTube video, with the words, “More info.”
  • 13 Sep 12: Jay Carney: “”The protests we’re seeing around the region are in reaction to this movie…”
  • September 13, 2012, Hillary Clinton metwith Moroccan Foreign Minister Saad-Eddine Al-Othmani. She condemned what she called the “disgusting and reprehensible” anti-Muslim video and the violence that it triggered.
  • 14 Sep 12 (0930 ET): SecState Clinton held meeting w/Susan Rice
  • 14 Sep 12: Jay Carney “protests were in reaction to a video”
  • 14 Sep 12 (1415 ET): SecState Clinton attended transfer of remains ceremony. She told Tyrone Woods’ father, Charles Woods,“We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video.”
  • 14 Sep 12 (1832 ET): Sidney Blumenthal sent SecState Clinton memo which states, “In addition, he stated in private that Morsi and al-Katany spoke with Libyan President Mohammed Yussef el Magariaf, and they had all agreed that military and security officials in Egypt and Libya will cooperate in an effort to track links between the violence in Cairo and Benghazi.” (SecState Clinton response that it should be printed dated 23 Sep 12)
  • 14 Sep 12 (1833 ET): DoS Victoria Nuland notified re CIA talking points
  • 14 Sep 12 (NLT 1739 ET): Jake Sullivan included in process
  • 14 Sep 12 (2124 ET): Nuland refers to “issues” the “building leadership” has with the talking points. Sends email to Sullivan at same time
  • 14 Sep 12 (2125 ET): Sullivan indicates he spoke w/Tommy Vietor & talking points would be addressed next day.
  • 15 Sep 12: CIA Acting Director Michael Morell made massive edits to talking points. Sullivan’s name appears on the page
  • Per Judicial Watch email: at Secure Video Teleconference (SVTS), “Morell noted that these points were not good and he had taken a heavy editing hand to them. He noted that he would be happy to work with Jake Sullivan and Rhodes to develop appropriate talking points. McDonough, on Rhode’s behalf, deferred to Sullivan. It was agreed that Jake would work closely with the intelligence community (within a small group) to finalize points on Saturday that could be shared with HPSCI.”
  • 15 Sep 12: Jake Sullivan worked w/UN Amb. Susan Rice to prep her for next day Sunday talk shows. From Judicial Watch: “I spoke to Jake immediately after the SVTS andnoted that you were doing the Sunday morning shows and would need to be aware of the final posture that these points took. He committed to ensure that we were updated in advance of the Sunday  I specifically mentioned Erin Pelton as the one coordinating your preparations for the shows and also strongly encouraged him to loop in Rexon during the process.”
  • 16 Sep 12: Libyan President Mohamed Magariaf told Bob Shieffer on “Face the Nation”: “…this leaves us with no doubt that this was preplanned, determined—pre-meditated months ago, and they were planning this criminal act since their arrival”
  • 16 Sep 12: Amb. Susan Rice on 5 Sunday talk shows, including “Face the Nation,” directly after Libyan president
  • “we do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned”
  • “What happened in Cairo, in Benghazi, in many other parts of the region was a result – a direct result of a heinous and offensive video”
  • 16 Sep 12:  Sullivan monitored Susan Rice’s appearances.
  • 16 Sep 12 (1221 ET): Email states, “But she did make clear our view that this started spontaneously and then evolved. The only troubling sentence relates to the investigation, specifically: ‘And we’ll see when the investigation unfolds whether what was — what transpired in Benghazi might have unfolded differently in different circumstances.’”
  • Rice’s comments: “In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated. We believe that folks in Benghazi, a small number of people came to the embassy to — or to the consulate, rather, to replicate the sort of challenge that was posed in Cairo. And then as that unfolded, it seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons, weapons that as you know in — in the wake of the revolution in Libya are — are quite common and accessible. And it then evolved from there.”
  • 16 Sep 12 (1439): SecState Clinton’s response to Meet the Press transcript of Susan Rice’s appearance has been redacted by State Department
  • 18 Sep 12: Jay Carney “…it was the video that caused the unrest in Cairo, and the video and the unrest in Cairo that helped — that precipitated some of the unrest in Benghazi…”
  • 19 Sep 12: Jay Carney “do not yet have indication that it was pre-planned”
  • 19 Sep 12: Matt Olson, NCTC to Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joe Lieberman on whether the attack was a terrorist attack: “They were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy.”
  • 20 Sep 12: Jay Carney admits terrorism
  • 20 Sep 12: Obama at Univision town hall meeting “”What we do know is that the natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the video were used as an excuse by extremists to see if they can also directly harm U.S. interests.”
  • 21 Sep 12: SecState Clinton admits terror and after that, post-UN speech, video narrative was abandoned
  • 28 Sep 12: Film producer Mark Basseley Youssef arrested, sentenced to 1 yr. in jail for “probation violations”

 

US MB Responses

  • 12 Sep 12: Emails obtained by Judicial Watch in late June 2015 show communication between SecState Clinton’s Chief of Staff Huma Abedin (Muslim Brotherhood connections) and Rashad Hussain about an article discussing how “American Muslim leaders” (MB) were tying the YouTube video to the Benghazi attack.
  • 17 Sep 12: The American Muslim website – Tariq Ramadan

http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/an-appeal-to-the-conscience-of-muslims

  • “…After the Danish cartoons, the Dutch video Fitna and several low-grade irritants, a short, crudely executed — and scrupulously insulting — film has inflamed deep-seated resentment. Several hundreds of furious demonstrators gathered in front of the American Embassy in Cairo and the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. In the confusion and violence, a US Ambassador and three diplomats were killed.’
  • ‘The violent reactions to the insults uttered against the Prophet [PBUH] have driven many Muslims to behaviours far removed from the principles of Islam.’
  • ‘But behind the celebration of freedom of speech hides the arrogance of ideologists and well-fed racists who feed off the multiform humiliation of Muslims and to demonstrate the clear “superiority” of their civilisation or the validity of their resistance to the “cancer” of retrograde Islam. In criticising this ideological stance there can be no compromise either.’
  • ISNA statement condemning ‘depicting Prophet Muhammad….in a very profane manner’
  • ‘condemn the creation of such a hateful video, and we also call for an end to support for such mechanisms of hatred and bigotry’
  • “…nothing justifies violent acts…”
  • MPAC condemns attacks on US Embs Cairo, Benghazi
  • ‘The attacks come after a low-budget movie on YouTube called “Muhammad” incited anger by depicting Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in a demeaning and degrading manner.’
  • CAIR issued a video aimed at demonstrators in Nigeria “It is clear that the motive behind the film is to enrage Muslims and to display a hatred of Islam’ appealing for calm
  • ICNA appealed for calm and added: “We also appeal to the larger American public to be wary of such attempts by individuals and groups, who in most cases have foreign ties, engaging in such hateful projects that not only endanger American and others’ lives overseas, but also incite hate attacks against minorities in America as well.”
  • Also to speak 19 Oct 12 – UW-Madison – MSA event on “Islamophobia”

 

UN Speeches

  • 25 September 2012: Obama’s UN speech cited YouTube film multiple x
  • US president bowed to Islamic Law on slander: “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam”
  • “Voices of tolerance that rally vs….blasphemy” – !!
  • 25 September 2012: Pakistani PM Ali Zardari
  • “The international community must not become silent observers and should criminalize such acts that destroy the peace of the world and endanger world security by misusing freedom of expression”
  • 26 September 2012 : Morsi’s UN speech explicitly rejected free speech, implied speech causes violence, emphasized UN responsibility to ‘address’ speech that causes violence
  • “UNGA as well as UNSC has the principle responsibility in addressing this phenomenon that is starting to have implications that clearly affect international peace & security”
  • “Egypt respects freedom of expression” but “one that is not used to incite hatred against anyone. One that is not directed toward one specific religion…”
  • “The obscenities that I have referred to that were recently released as part of an organized campaign against Islamic sanctities are unacceptable” (YouTube video)
  • “We reject this. We cannot accept it,” Morsi said, his voice thin with anger. “We will not allow anyone to do this by word or deed.”
  • “We have a responsibility in this international gathering to study how we can protect the world from instability and hatred”
  • 28 September 2012: Turkish FoMin Ahmet Davutoglu
  • “Unfortunately, Islamophobia has also become a new form of racism like anti-Semitism. It can no longer be tolerated under the guise of freedom of expression. Freedom does not mean anarchy”
  • 29 September 2012: OIC SecGen Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu spoke to OIC FoMins at UN Hqs
  • Annual Coordination meeting of OIC FoMins held on sidelines of UNGA session in NYC adopted declaration condemning the sacrilegious act of releasing the defamatory video
  • Mtng had been postponed from June – to follow orchestrated events of the summer?
  • Blamed Benghazi attack on film: ‘…serious consequences of abusing the principle of freedom of expression…’
  • Called for ‘adopting measures to criminalize incitement to imminent violence based on religion or belief’
  • 29 Sep 12 AP Interview spoke even more directly, Issued thinly-veiled threats
  • Issued thinly-veiled threats:

“If the Western world fails to understand the sensitivity of the Muslim world, then we are in trouble…Such provocations pose “a threat to international peace and security and the sanctity of life.”

“You have to see that there is a provocation. You should understand the psychology of people who revere their prophet and don’t want people to insult him.”

 

USG – OIC Relationship Continues

  • 18 Nov 12: OIC website posted notice about Mon 19 Nov 12 OIC Symposium, ‘Defamation Acts vs Islam: Conflict Dimensions & Perspectives of Co-existence between Islam and the West’ – to be attended by Anne Casper, US ConGen Jeddah
  • Report from Symposium: Casper said best antidote to offensive speech is more speech

http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentid=20121120143418

  • 18 Nov 12: Screen save/report: Patrick Poole, PJ Media – OIC removed ref to Casper attending
  • 28 Nov 12: Egyptian Judge Salif al Nasr Soliman handed down death sentences
  • FL pastor Terri Jones & 7 expat Egyptian Coptic Christians for involvement with film
  • Charges: Insulting the Islamic religion
  • USG, president, SecState all silent

The ISIS Threat Represents a Clash of Civilizations, and Hillary Won’t Admit It

Has Hillary Clinton separated herself from President Obama by taking a tougher and more realistic position on the threat from ISIS? That’s what many in the news media are saying based on some of her recent foreign-policy statements, such as her remarks in a November 19 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations:

ISIS operates across three mutually reinforcing dimensions: a physical enclave in Iraq and Syria; an international terrorist network that includes affiliates across the region and beyond; and an ideological movement of radical jihadism. We have to target and defeat all three, and time is of the essence.

This portrayal of the ISIS threat sounds like an improvement over the awkward rhetoric used by President Obama to discuss what he insists on calling ISIL or Daesh, and his refusal to use words such as “jihad” and “jihadism.” But Hillary’s rhetorical improvements were offset by caveats indicating that she actually has not moved very far from the president and has a worldview that is just as incoherent.

For example, Clinton criticized “the obsession in some quarters [meaning Republicans] with a clash of civilizations.” Clinton also echoed Obama’s frequent claims that the United States is not at war with Islam when she said, “I don’t think we’re at war with all Muslims. I think we’re at war with jihadists.”

Clinton’s dismissal that the threat from jihadist groups represents a clash of civilizations is troubling because it indicates that while she says ISIS is motivated by a radical ideology, she does not understand what this ideology is. Its adherents — including many authorities of Islam — believe in sharia, which amounts to a global operating system for jihad, a holy war with infidel societies explicitly seeking to impose, by violent or stealthy means, an Islamic caliphate worldwide.

Clinton also apparently does not realize that the clash-of-civilizations concept is not a Republican talking point but a well-known theory developed by two giants in the history of the Middle East and political science, Drs. Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington.

This term, first used by Lewis in a 1990 Atlantic Monthly article and then by Huntington in a famous 1993 Foreign Affairs article, exactly describes sharia ideology. Believing that this ideology is a war being waged against the West by Islamic fundamentalists in retaliation for purported efforts to undermine Islam and the Muslim world through secularism and modernity, Lewis concluded that:

We are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies of governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations — the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both.

Huntington discussed several coming clashes of civilizations in his Foreign Affairs article but highlighted a potential clash between the West and the Muslim world as the most serious. According to Huntington:

The centuries-old military interaction between the West and Islam is unlikely to decline. It could become more virulent.

President Obama’s approach to the threat posed by ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other jihadist groups — including the Muslim Brotherhood — is doomed to fail to protect this country and its interests insofar as it refuses to recognize that they are all based on a global ideology at war with Western civilization.

Clinton’s dismissal of the clash-of-civilizations concept indicates she is also adhering to Obama’s erroneous view and that her reference to an “ideological movement of radical jihadism” is as meaningless as “violent extremism,” the euphemism the president uses to lump together perceived threats from veterans, Constitutionalists, Tea Party members, anti-abortion activists, conservatives, and foreign or domestic Islamist terrorists.

Clinton’s statement, “I don’t think we’re at war with all Muslims. I think we’re at war with jihadists,” is similar to President Obama’s claims that global jihadist groups and their ideologies have very little support in the Muslim world. Last week, the president said 99.9 percent of Muslims reject terrorism.

Obviously the U.S. is not at war with all Muslims. But by making this false argument, Obama and Clinton are ignoring the reality that the global jihad movement is such a difficult threat to counter because it has the support of more than a small minority of the world’s Muslims.

Josh Gelernter addressed this in an excellent November 21, 2015, National Review article in which he debunked President Obama’s “99.9 percent” claim. Citing Pew Research polling figures, Gelernter wrote:

In surveys of the Muslim populations of nine majority-Muslim countries, plus Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank, an average of 57 percent have an unfavorable view of al-Qaeda, not 99.9 percent. Thirteen percent have a favorable view of al-Qaeda, not 0.1 percent.

There also are disturbingly high levels of support for the global jihadist ideology among Muslims in the United States. According to a June 2015 online survey conducted by The Polling Company and sponsored by my organization, the Center for Security Policy, a majority (51 percent) agreed that “Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to shariah” and nearly a quarter believe “it is legitimate to use violence to punish those who give offense to Islam by, for example, portraying the prophet Mohammed.” The survey also found that 25 percent agreed fully or in part that “violence against Americans here in the United States can be justified as part of the global jihad.”

By claiming the United States is at war only with jihadists, Clinton is making the same mistake as President Obama by ignoring the sizeable number of the world’s Muslims who sympathize with them and their ideology. They are ignoring how this reality is a clash of civilizations and that the real war is an ideological one.

To win the war against the global jihad movement, the United States needs to combine military, diplomatic, and intelligence measures with aggressive efforts to challenge and discredit the jihadist ideology worldwide. This must include embracing and empowering Muslim moderates who want to reform Islam, such as Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, and Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sissi as well as Muslims and former Muslims who have been persecuted by jihadists such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

It is outrageous that President Obama has never invited President Sissi, Dr. Jasser, or Ms. Hirsi Ali to the White House to discuss the threat from ISIS and the global jihad movement. Instead, he relies on counsel from American Muslim Brotherhood front groups such as the Islamic Society of North America and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization with connections to Hamas that has, according to Daniel Pipes, a “malign, terroristic quality.”

At the last Democratic presidential debate and in recent foreign-policy speeches, Clinton defended her decision not to use the term “radical Islam” because she does not want to offend Muslim societies or make it appear the United States is at war with Islam. This was the wrong answer, since defeating ISIS and the jihadist ideology requires risking offending some in the Muslim world by pressing for reform of Islam and promoting Muslim reformers.

Moreover, given that this is a problem within Islam, it’s absurd to avoid using terms that label it as such, a point Senator Marco Rubio made in this brilliant retort to Clinton:

That would be like saying we weren’t at war with the Nazis, because we were afraid to offend some Germans who may have been members of the Nazi party but weren’t violent themselves.

Repairing the damage done to international security and America’s global security interests by President Obama’s feckless “leading from behind” foreign policy will take a new president with leadership, vision, and an understanding of global threats. Defeating ISIS will require a new president who will acknowledge that ISIS is simply one manifestation of the larger problem we face from Islamic supremacism, a sharia-driven movement that is very much at war with Western civilization, and who will fight it on that basis.

Hillary Clinton’s recent statements about the ISIS threat fall far short of these requirements and suggest that, although Clinton wants to sound tough on how she would deal with ISIS, her approach would be just as dangerously ineffective as President Obama’s.

Hillary Joins the Counter Jihad

President Obama has ridiculously refused to call out our enemies by name, even going so far as to say, “ISIL is not Islamic”. There has been an ongoing struggle to get him, and others who use euphemisms like “violent extremists” to describe them, to admit the blisteringly obvious origin of their violence. This is even more absurd in after cries of “Allahu Akbar” during the Paris attacks. We may have had an accidental breakthrough in the Democrat debate Saturday night when Hillary Clinton said, “I don’t think we’re at war with all Muslims. I think we’re at war with jihadists”.

I don’t say this often, but you are exactly right Hillary and I acknowledged this on <href=”#sp=show-clips”>Fox and Friends Sunday. We are not at war with all Muslims, and you could argue about whether we are even actively at war with the jihadists, but the jihadists are certainly at war with us. But, in her attempt to skirt the moderator’s question about whether our enemy is radical Islam, Hillary may have inadvertently given a much more accurate answer than she intended.

She was likely trying to minimize the size of the actual threat by using “jihadists” to refer to only those who have taken up the gun and sword in violent jihad. Even that is a horrifying number worldwide, as the world is awash in the blood of their victims. The real number of jihadists includes not just those savages, but also all who support their actions and their ambition to impose shariah law and a global Caliphate. That is a staggering number and they have a plan.

Jihad is a core tenet of Islam, and while one explanation says it refers only to a peaceful inner struggle, it is widely understood as an armed struggle against infidels. An authoritative text on Sunni Islamic law, Reliance of the Traveller, opens the chapter on the subject this way: “Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word mujahada, signifying warfare to establish the religion.” (Page 617)

Many share this view and a Pew International poll of Muslims worldwide shows approximately one-third of them support violence against enemies of Islam. That is around half a billion people who think it is OK for suicide bombers to blow up innocents to further the cause.

The Muslim Brotherhood is the largest proponent and exporter of Islamist Supremacy doctrine and action in the world. They are active all over the Muslim world working to place an iron sandal on the necks of billions. They are also deeply entrenched in the U.S. through a number of front groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations. A fortuitous law enforcement action gave us an insight into their blood chilling plans. This is a quote from documents seized in a search of the Brotherhood’s archivist here in Fairfax, Virginia.

“The process of settlement is a ‘civilization-jihadist process’ with all the word means…

The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers…”

Our enemies are actively engaged in both violent and civilization jihad against us. You cannot fight an enemy you refuse to properly name. So let’s call our enemies by the name they have chosen—jihadists—and let’s acknowledge where their evil ideology comes from—authoritative, traditional and mainstream Islam. Jihad is the method; shariah law is the goal; and Islam is the source. The greatest authority on Islam is al Azhar University in Egypt and even they agree that for all its evil acts, ISIS is, indeed, Islamic.

We need to state the facts simply to focus our minds on the long war ahead. Doing so also allows Muslims who abhor the use of violence to join us in opposing the jihadists, and gives them the chance to bring a new dawn to an old religion. The fight is for the future of the free world. We must prevail.

Ezra Levant Takes Down Hillary Clinton on Her Lies About the Benghazi Terrorist Attack

If you believe the mainstream media, Hillary Clinton “won” last month’s marathon Benghazi Committee hands down with a masterful performance that showed her to be a leader who is calm under pressure. Given the media’s extremely biased coverage of the hearing, it’s no surprise that Clinton’s poll numbers rose after the hearing.

Canadian journalist Ezra Levant takes a different view than most of the American press. He explains in the below video that three emails sent by Clinton on the night of the Benghazi attack to her daughter, the Libyan president and the Egyptian foreign minister clearly show Clinton knew this violence was a terrorist attack from the start. Here is one of these emails cited by Levant that Clinton sent to her daughter Chelsea (who was using the pen name “Diane Reynolds.”) on the night of the attack:

clinton email

Levant is blunt in his assessment that Clinton was part of a deliberate campaign by the Obama administration to mislead the American people about the Benghazi terrorist attack so it would not undermine Mr Obama’s reelection chances. Levant explains that Clinton obviously knew from the start that the claim this attack was in response to an anti-Muslim video was a lie.

Levant says while most politicians lie, few lie with blood of four men on their hands. His video below is a “must watch” for all Americans concerned about our nation’s security and the integrity of our leaders.

How Benghazi Hearing Could Hurt Hillary’s Presidential Run

According to congressional Democrats, the mainstream media and even some conservative journalists, Hillary Clinton “won” last week’s marathon Benghazi Committee hands down with a masterful performance that showed her to be a leader who is calm under pressure. But is this what most Americans saw at the hearing?

Clinton’s defenders claim she was cool and made no mistakes. She was helped by the committee’s Democratic members who stuck to a script of bashing the Benghazi investigation as a witch hunt to damage Clinton’s presidential bid and repeatedly claiming the committee has spent millions on an investigation that has accomplished nothing.

But despite furious efforts to spin the hearing as a win for Clinton by Democrats and their media allies, many Americans saw something else.

Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy’s questioning of Clinton about her friend and advisor Sidney Blumenthal is a good example of this.

When Clinton was asked if she knew where Blumenthal worked, she said, “I think he had a number of consulting contracts with different entities.”

When pressed, Clinton said, “I think he did some work for my husband.” Clinton later admitted Blumenthal worked for her family foundation — the Clinton Foundation.

When asked if Blumenthal worked for the left wing group Media Matters or the Clinton advocacy group “Correct the Record,” she twice gave the evasive response, “I’m sure he did.”

Even Clinton’s supporters must have seen these as dishonest and evasive answers.

Then there were emails and documents revealed by Republicans at the hearing proving that Clinton told her daughter and the Egyptian prime minister hours after the Benghazi violence that it was a terrorist attack by an al-Qaida-like group.

This contradicted what Clinton said at Andrews Air Force Base three days later when she claimed in a speech and in private comments to Charles Woods, father of Tyrone Woods, a retired Navy Seal killed in the attack, that the attacks were due to outrage over an anti-Muslim video.

Many Republicans have long claimed Clinton lied about the nature of the Benghazi terrorist attacks as part of an Obama administration effort to mislead the American people so this tragedy would not hurt Mr. Obama’s reelection chances. The hearing conclusively proved this claim to any objective observer.

There were other damaging revelations at the hearing. These include dismissing State Department employees who did not work for her personal staff as “not on my staff.”

It was noteworthy that Clinton had no email or phone contacts with Ambassador Stevens but exchanged hundreds of emails with Blumenthal. Multiple requests for enhanced security from Stevens never reached Clinton’s desk.

There also were unseemly emails from Clinton’s staff to Stevens on how to put political spin on earlier terrorist attacks in Libya.

Clinton’s supporters and the mainstream media are trying to define in the minds of Americans that last week’s Benghazi hearing was a great injustice when a courageous American withstood 11 hours of questioning by partisan Republicans trying to detail her presidential campaign.

I believe many Americans — especially independents and those who live in the heartland — saw something else. They saw a slippery and calculating politician giving evasive and dishonest answers. They saw obvious mismanagement and lack of accountability. They saw a former U.S. official blame her failures on others.

Clinton will get away with this if Republicans let her. Clinton’s mendacity at the Benghazi hearing should be a central issue for all GOP presidential candidates.

Instead of attacking each other, they need to explain to the American people what really happened at the Benghazi hearing, especially concerning the lies Clinton told that an anti-Muslim video was the cause of the Benghazi attacks.

Hillary Clinton’s performance at the Benghazi Committee hearing was a preview of the dissembling and lack of accountability that would constitute her presidency.

Republicans need to fight back against Democratic and mainstream media narrative of the Benghazi hearing to make sure the American people realize this.

The “Stand Up” Order That Never Happened in Benghazi

Before Hillary Clinton opens her mouth to spout her first lie about Benghazi to the Select Committee, she is already guilty of gross dereliction of duty for two major failures: first, she failed to respond to repeated requests for security from our Ambassador in Libya and second, once an entirely predictable assault occurred, she failed to send any assistance to protect Americans in harm’s way.

Repeatedly, the media and Clinton’s cheerleaders—redundant, I know—try to pass off the former Secretary’s culpability by emphasizing that, the administration did not issue a stand down order to troops attempting to respond to the attack.

But the absence of a stand-down order shows that they’re looking at this completely backwards. In a crisis situation, like an attack on a US Consulate, the first thing you do is find all of the nearest military units and you tell them to pack and launch.

That would be a stand up order and, due to gross negligence, it was never issued for the hours-long duration of the attack.

Based on evidence revealed by investigations so far, not a single US asset was alerted or even told to prepare—let alone told to move toward the sound of gunfire. And let’s be clear, there were multiple units available that could have gotten there before the end of the fight and possibly in time to save the lives of Ambassador Stevens and the others.

There were Special Ops troops in country who were not sent. There was the 10th Special Forces Group door-kickers, a mere hours away in Croatia. In this situation, any armed US military presence would have been appropriate to send. At a bare minimum, they could have done overflights by US aircraft to give the attackers the idea they were about to get some hellfire raining down on them. But the phone never rang at any of those units.

That is a command failure that Hillary owns as the State Department’s top executive. There should have been flurries of communications going to anyone she thought could possibly assist, but there is no record of her asking anyone for any help at all for the people she put in harm’s way. If she’d done her duty, she would be showering the Benghazi Committee with copies of all these requests. But there weren’t any.

She should have been relieved for cause as soon as this was determined. But her boss, President Obama, seems to have been even more conspicuously absent. There are no records of him talking to anyone about anything, no phone calls, no messages. He deserves the same level of scrutiny but, thus far, a compliant media has allowed him to escape the consequences of his inaction.

Part of the problem may have been the nature of the actions happening in Benghazi. They were related to gathering weapons from the now defunct Qaddafi regime and shipping them off to the friendly and helpful rebels in Syria. It is one thing to divert attention from these secret (if completely misguided) types of covert operations. But that is completely different from failing to take a single step to save the US personnel you sent on that mission when the enemy is lobbing mortar rounds into their compound. That is disgraceful and unforgivable.

So she is guilty on both counts of gross dereliction of duty: one for failing to give the Ambassador the security he asked for and so obviously needed, and second for abandoning our people on the field of battle. She left them undefended and failed to call for a stand up order to rescue them. Nothing she says changes those two indisputable facts. Those alone render her absolutely unfit to serve as president, let alone as Commander in Chief of our military.

Self-Serving and Illegal

Judicial Watch’s Chris Farrell discussed newly-released documents showing proof that Hillary Clinton sent classified emails over her private server on today’s Secure Freedom Radio. The full audio can be listened to here.

Frank Gaffney: What do you make of the latest trove that you managed to extricate from the administration–I guess through court order at the moment, is that right?

Chris Farrell: That’s correct; by court order because we’ve had to file lawsuits to compel the State Department and the administration generally to produce the records to us they’ve been hiding now for years. And they know they have been hiding them, because there is evidence documented now of Hillary’s email and her separate, unlawful account that she established two days after she was actually confirmed as Secretary of State. They knew going into office that she was going to lie and try to obscure and withhold these records from public accountability. So now, years later, a federal judge is ordering them to be produced.

What this shows is an orchestrated White House political operation aimed at not only protecting Hillary and her objective, but also the administration’s failure in Benghazi. This is all documented in an additional 3,000 pages of emails, and it shows them synchronizing their strategy; it’s not one of trying to preserve national security, it’s one of trying to preserve political legacy. It’s very clear.

FG: This requires not only some intrepid investigative work on your part to get access to this particular batch of emails and the others that you’re also trying to secure, but Chris Farrell, you’re forced to make sense of what has been redacted from these documents as well, is that right?

CF: Yeah, and what’s most interesting is that there are redactions now claiming that it is classified information, which runs 180 degrees opposite of what Hillary Clinton claimed when she released some pages of her emails, saying that she never—the use of the word ‘never’ is important here—that she never sent any classified information via the email that we’re now examining which is in fact classified, or at least the administration claims that it is. Now the question there is, is it legitimately classified? Or is it classified for political purposes to continue to perpetuate the cover-up they’re involved in?

FG: Let me just digress for a second; by training you were a military intelligence officer, Chris, in a previous life. We’ve discussed this before, but in light of what you just said, the administration is now on record in front of a federal judge, indicating that Hillary Clinton had on her private server in her home unsecured, classified information. Am I getting that right?

CF: That is correct. In fact there is a National Security Agency, NSA, directive on what they refer to as spillage, which has to do with ‘Gee, oops, I didn’t mean to send that classified email on my unclassified network. What do I do now?’ It happens. It legitimately legitimately happens. People make errors. And so there is an NSA directive from a committee at the NSA which deals with national security systems which says that if there is any doubt that there is some mistake, some error, that all—all—of the email from that particular address through your server should be treated as classified and should be reviewed. Not what Hillary has done, which is this sort of self-serving, self-selective, ‘Oh we’re going to release some. Oh my attorney said we’re not going to release these.’ She does not enjoy that privilege. She’s operating outside the law and has been for years.

FG: Well this is really the crux of the matter and at Judicial Watch, you are all about the law. You are working closely with federal courts to try to ensure compliance with the law. Not just the Freedom of Information Act law, but others that you uncover wrongdoing concerning in the course of your FOIA efforts. And Chris Farrell, let me just again put this to you: We’re told that Huma Abedin—a rather colorful character to say the least, a woman who has been associated by among others, our own organization Center for Security Policy, Andy McCarthy, National Review Online, and so on, with the Muslim Brotherhood—was evidently among those responsible for selecting which of these emails Hillary Clinton gave over to the federal government, some of which you’re now getting access to, and some of which were simply destroyed. Again, Chris, does this constitute in your estimation illegal activity?

CF: It does. Huma Abedin has major, major unresolved counterintelligence issues pertaining to her familial connections, [and] her work arrangements, where she was essentially crescent lighting, or moonlighting, in a very particular special employee arrangement where she left government service as a straight-up employee and became what they call a ‘special’ government employee where there are outside consulting arrangements—while serving as deputy chief of staff for the Secretary of State. This is mindboggling that you would have anybody with these family connections and these outside business interests in the inner circle of the Secretary’s office. I can’t imagine a more conflicted counterintelligence issue with respect to her personally and professionally. It’s a nightmare.

FG: And again, this is an area in which you’ve specialized in the United States military, so your professional assessment of this I think has considerable weight. Huma Abedin features in the email traffic that you have just uncovered in connection with the Benghazi damage control operation. There seems to be two pieces to this as best I can tell. One is in cahoots with Ben Rhodes, the Deputy National Security Advisor to the President, trying to conceal the policy failures–you said earlier in connection with Benghazi, but it’s actually policy failures with respect to Libya, and for that matter the Muslim Brotherhood and a lot more besides.

But Chris, there’s also this meme that the Huma Abedins and the Rashad Hussains, the President’s Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, were engaged in as well that seems to have as its core focus trying to suppress our freedom of expression. Talk about that if you would please.