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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (678266)

10/10/2012 3:53:32 PM

From: joseffy

Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 1572630

WashPost Frets 'Deadly Benghazi Attack Could Mar Clinton Legacy'

By Ken Shepherd | October 10, 2012 |

A A

Four Americans are dead from a September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and it's becoming abundantly clear that security at the compound had been incredibly lax and that the Obama administration may have actively attempted to deceive the public about the terroristic nature of the strike in the first few days subsequent to it. A House committee is holding a hear as I write this to get to the bottom of things.

So how did the Post cover the story in the Wednesday, October 10 paper? By worrying about the political impact on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Here's how staff writer Anne Gearan opened her page A1 story headlined "Deadly Benghazi attack could mar Clinton legacy":

The fatal attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya last month has become a test of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s leadership and a threat to her much-admired legacy as America’s top diplomat just a few months before she plans to step down.

Clinton was among the first Obama administration officials to publicly condemn the attack and mourn the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. But as the State Department has weathered Republican-led criticism that it misread warning signs before the Sept. 11 attack, Clinton has been far less visible.

Clinton will not appear at a Wednesday oversight hearing on the Libya attack, where House Republicans have said they will question the State Department’s security preparations and the administration’s account of the attack. The State Department will instead send a trusted career diplomat along with three security officials.

Of course, as long as we're talking about political consequences, surely Gearan weighed the impact the Benghazi fiasco has on President Obama, who faces the voters in a mere 27 days, right? She did, very briefly, four paragraphs later:

A month before the presidential election, with Mitt Romney surging in the polls, Republicans increasingly see the Libya attack as a political vulnerability for President Obama. Republicans accuse Obama and top administration officials of overlooking warning signs before the attack and trying to deflect questions about terrorism afterward.

But after that her focus returned to Clinton and lower-level Obama administration officials, such as Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who "initially said that the attacks were apparently the result of anti-American protests that spun out of control."

Yet as was reported yesterday by Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy, the State Department now says there was, in fact, no such protest against the "Innocents of Muslims" YouTube video outside the consulate on September 11 (emphases mine):

Prior to the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi late in the evening on Sept. 11, there was no protest outside the compound, a senior State Department official confirmed today, contradicting initial administration statements suggesting that the attack was an opportunistic reaction to unrest caused by an anti-Islam video.

In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, two senior State Department officials gave a detailed accounting of the events that lead to the death of Amb. Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The officials said that prior to the massive attack on the Benghazi compound by dozens of militants carrying heavy weaponry, there was no unrest outside the walls of the compound and no protest that anyone inside the compound was aware of.

Although Rogin's piece cited above was published at 6:35 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, nothing about the State Department's admission made it into Gearan's piece, which noted the following (emphasis mine):

Still, Issa sent a stern letter to Clinton last week, asking why additional security had been denied to diplomats at the lightly defended mission in Benghazi where Stevens died. The letter questioned the administration’s early public claim that the attack was part of a spontaneous public protest over an anti-Muslim Internet video.

The State Department has said that a review panel, led by retired diplomat Thomas Pickering, is working to answer such questions.

“Our posture is to be as cooperative as we possibly can,” Victoria Nuland, a State Department spokeswoman, said Tuesday.

Her comments came as the Republican-led oversight committee released the State Department’s compilation of more than 200 security-related threats in Libya since June 2011.

We at NewsBusters have documented the Post's spotty coverage of the aftermath of the Benghazi terrorist attack. You can read more about it here and here.

Read more: newsbusters.org

To: longnshort who wrote (678266)	10/10/2012 4:01:37 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1572630

U.S. security in Benghazi "a struggle": ex-security officer By Susan Cornwell and Tabassum Zakaria WASHINGTON \| Wed Oct 10, 2012 reuters.com (Reuters) - Diplomatic security for the U.S. mission in Benghazi was "a struggle" and security teams in Libya were drawn down ahead of last month's fatal attack, the former head of a U.S. security team in Libya told lawmakers on Wednesday. "The security in Benghazi was a struggle and remained a struggle throughout my time there," Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wood told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee during Congress' first hearing on the assault that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. "The situation remained uncertain and reports from some Libyans indicated it was getting worse. Diplomatic security remained weak. In April there was only one U.S. diplomatic security agent stationed there," he said. Wood said that when he arrived in Libya in February there were three U.S. diplomatic special security teams in the country, but by August they had been withdrawn. Republican charges that the United States was caught unprepared for the September 11 attack have put the administration of President Barack Obama, a Democrat, on the defensive ahead of the November 6 presidential election. Partisan tension quickly spilled out at the hearing, with Republicans accusing the State Department of not being fully cooperative in providing information on security decisions before the attack. Democrats accused the majority Republicans of conducting a one-sided probe that excluded them. Republicans continued their line of attack that the administration initially issued misleading comments saying the assault was a spontaneous event that sprang from a protest against an anti-Islam video. Administration officials said those initial comments, including by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, resulted from the best information at that time. "If any administration official including any career official were on television on Sunday, September 16, they would have said what Ambassador Rice said," Patrick Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management, told the hearing. "The information she had at that point from the intelligence community is the same that I had at that point." However, Reuters reported last week that within hours of the attack, the Obama administration received about a dozen intelligence reports suggesting militants connected to al Qaeda were involved. U.S. intelligence officials were the first to publicly say it was a terrorist attack that struck the compound. 'REASONABLY PREDICTABLE' In a briefing for reporters on Tuesday, State Department officials backed away from earlier assertions that the anti-Islam film had a role in the violence. "We know that the tragedy in Benghazi ended as it did," Republican committee Chairman Darrell Issa said. "We now know that, in fact, it was caused by a terrorist attack that was reasonably predictable to eventually happen somewhere in the world, especially on September 11." He said the safe-haven area of the compound where Stevens was found could not have been expected to offer adequate protection. "The safe haven within the compound, which some State Department officials seem to think could protect the Benghazi compound's inhabitants, did not work and, in retrospect, could not be expected to work," Issa said. In more partisan rancor, an argument erupted early in the hearing with Republicans objecting to a photograph displayed by the State Department of what appeared to be an aerial view of the Benghazi compound and the nearby area, saying it might reveal classified information. A State Department official said the information was for public dissemination, and a Democratic lawmaker said: "You can Google it." State Department officials testifying at the hearing defended security arrangements in Benghazi and said the compound was struck by what Charlene Lamb, a top official in the department's Diplomatic Security bureau, called "a full-scale assault that was unprecedented in size and intensity." "We had the correct number of assets in Benghazi at the time of 9/11 for what had been agreed upon," Lamb told lawmakers. Another former U.S. security officer in Libya, Eric Nordstrom, who testified at the hearing had earlier told the committee in a private interview that Lamb, deputy assistant secretary of state for international programs, wanted to keep the number of security personnel in Benghazi "artificially low." Wood, who served as the Site Security Team commander in Libya from February 12 to August 14, said he came forward to the congressional committee after Stevens and the three other Americans were killed in the assault. "The killing of a U.S. ambassador is a rare and extraordinary thing and requires our attention as a people," he said. "As a citizen I made the determination that this outweighs all other interests and will risk whatever circumstances may result from my testimony."

To: longnshort who wrote (678266)	10/10/2012 4:17:04 PM
From: joseffy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572630

U.S. Security Official in Libya Tells Congressional Investigators About ‘Inappropriately Low’ Security at B STR/AFP/GettyImages Oct 10, 2012 abcnews.go.com ABC News has learned that Eric Nordstrom, the former Regional Security Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Libya, has told congressional investigators that security at the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, was “inappropriately low” – and believed that State Department officials stood in the way of his attempts to change that. Nordstrom and the commander of a 16-member Security Support Team, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wood, heard that foreign fighters were flowing across the Egyptian border and were making their way across the border to the Libyan city of Derna – which is to the east of Benghazi — and from there were making their way to Benghazi. But State Department officials seemed oblivious to their Benghazi post’s vulnerability. Nordstrom was worried -he did not know how much the Americans could rely on members of a local Libyan militia in Benghazi that provided security — the “17th of February Martyrs Brigade.” Mostly merchants and shopkeepers before the war, they seemed eager, but they hadn’t much experience and other than a daily $30 stipend for food from the U.S. Embassy, they hadn’t been paid in months. Nordstrom had “no idea if they would respond to an attack,” he told investigators. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., will hold hearings on what went wrong today at noon ET. Nordstrom will testify at that hearing. Nordstrom twice wrote to the State Department – in March and July 2012 — to beef up the presence of American security officers in Benghazi, but neither time was there a response. At no point from December 2011 through July 2012, when he left Libya, were more than three Diplomatic Security Service agents permanently and simultaneously stationed at the Benghazi post. Nordstrom wanted at least five personnel to be stationed at Benghazi, but the State Department would not allow it. There were American security officers, however, at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, including three Mobile Security Detachments, which were part of the DSS, and a 16-member Security Support Team detailed from Special Operations Command AFRICOM, commanded by Wood. But the State Department would not give him permission to deploy them to be stationed at Benghazi. Deputy Assistant Secretary for international programs Charlene Lamb, in Nordstrom’s view, wanted to keep the number of U.S. security personnel in Benghazi “artificially low,” according to a memo for Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. Wood, a former Green Beret, told ABC News that he and other members of the Security Support Team wanted to remain in Libya past their deployment was scheduled to end in August, and that Ambassador Stevens wanted them to remain as well. Nordstrom has said that Lamb told him not to request for the Security Support Team to be extended again. (Its deployment had been previously extended in February 2012.) Lamb will testify before the House committee later today. “I do recall one conversation with her where she (Lamb) said that since we now had a residential safe haven in Benghazi that she didn’t seem to have a problem with having no agents on the compound because if something happened then personnel could simply go to that residential safe haven,” Nordstrom told investigators. That safe haven proved a deathtrap. Situated inside the main residence in Benghazi, consisting of three bedrooms and a bathroom set aside from the rest of the building by metal grillwork and several locks, the safe haven is where Stevens and information officer Sean Smith suffered severe smoke inhalation after the attackers set the house on fire. On Tuesday afternoon, State Department officials acknowledged that despite earlier explanations from the Obama administration, there was no protest outside the Benghazi compound at all. Only an hour before gunmen methodically and deliberately stormed the post, the streets were empty and everything seemed calm. Obama administration officials originally claimed the trouble began with demonstrations against an anti-Muslim video, a protest that, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told ABC News’ THIS WEEK on the Sunday after the attack, “seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists.” Rice and White House officials now say those initial accounts were based on early intelligence, since corrected. State Department officials now call the attack unprecedented given the number of gunman, weapons and lethal force used. -Jake Tapper