Oh, it's still on.

There’s been some concern[-trolling] that Republicans might be pushing their luck with the extent to which they are focusing on Scandalmania and especially the ongoing Benghazi debacle, but a CNN poll earlier this week confirmed that a healthy majority of 59 percent of Americans approve of the way Republicans have been handling the investigation, with [...]

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“The overall goal is to restore my honor.”

For the second time today (or third?), the word “Kafkaesque” seems appropriate. Subpoena this man. “I had no involvement to any degree with decisions on security and the funding of security at our diplomatic mission in Benghazi,” [Raymond Maxwell] said… The State Department declined to comment on the reasons that Maxwell and the other officials [...]

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The fallback defense.

Sharyl Attkisson hinted last night on Twitter that she would have something “interesting” on Benghazi today.  The CBS reporter didn’t disappoint.  Although it’s not exactly a blockbuster revelation, the change in tone in White House trial balloons in its defense of the Benghazi debacle is stunning: Obama administration officials who were in key positions on Sept. [...]

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"I have to go back 40 years to Watergate when Nixon put out his edited transcripts to the conversations, and he personally went through them and said, 'Oh, let's not tell this, let's not show this.'"

We heard from one half of the Watergate-exposing journalistic duo this week on the AP scandal, and now the other half weighs in on the supposedly waning Benghazi debate.  The White House released 100 pages of e-mails that went around the administration on 9/14 — but oddly not on 9/12 or 9/13 — less than [...]

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"FBI says AQ (not AQIM) was involved and they are pursuing that theory.”

The White House finally released the e-mail string that led to the creation of the talking points for the Benghazi terrorist attack that somehow completely missed the fact that it was a terrorist attack.  Did that succeed in having the Obama administration’s argument that it reflected the best intelligence at the time?  Not if you read [...]

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Discovery.

Jake Tapper has all of them in PDF form. Click the link and let’s start crowdsourcing. This one’s the standout so far: “FBI says AQ (not AQIM) was involved and they are pursuing that theory.” AQIM is “Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” a.k.a. the group’s north African offshoot. The FBI evidently had reason to [...]

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How convenient.

The Obama administration has repeatedly assured the public that they were just a hop, skip, and a jump away from making a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, seeing as how its gone through years of environmental impact reviews from various sources and gotten a green light every time (which should hardly come as a [...]

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How ... meta.

In order to understand just how badly the White House may have fumbled this ball, let’s go back to last week.  Stephen Hayes at the Weekly Standard reported from Congressional sources on a White House-State Department e-mail string that made clear that the administration wanted the talking points on Benghazi massaged to protect sources and [...]

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Patterns.

Want to know why State Department whistleblower Eric Nordstrom called the Accountability Review Board a whitewash designed to protect the highest ranks at Foggy Bottom?  Take a listen to the man who ran the ARB.  CBS News’ Bob Schieffer asked Thomas Pickering why the supposedly independent panel didn’t bother to depose the Secretary of State [...]

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"I would just as soon not use them, but it's their call."

One of the mysteries in the Benghazi scandal has been the role of David Petraeus, who was then the Director of the CIA but was forced to resign in a personal scandal shortly thereafter.  While the White House and State Department tried to cobble together talking points to explain away the terrorist attack that took [...]

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Distractions.

Via NRO, here’s what the White House has been reduced to in order to downplay a scoop that even some liberal mags are now grudgingly admitting isn’t nothing. This wasn’t the lowlight of the briefing either. The lowlight was Carney mumbling about the White House having made “stylistic” changes to the CIA’s talking points when [...]

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Ramirez: Who moved my cheese?

With the lid coming off of what very clearly looks like an attempt to cover up the nature of the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Obama administration apologists have stepped up their efforts to flood the debate with paraphrases of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s attempt to shut down discussion of the White [...]

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US issues a curious warning on Libya travel.

How well has that Western intervention worked out in Libya? Starting well over a year ago, Western nations all pulled out of Benghazi — the city the intervention was supposed to protect — after it became clear to all but the US that radical Islamist “militias” had seized control of the city and region.  The [...]

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Did Jay Carney lie, or was he deceived?

Following on the heels of blockbuster testimony from three whistleblowers regarding the Benghazi terrorist attack, ABC’s Jonathan Karl did some digging into the evolution of the talking points used afterward to paint the attack as a spontaneous demonstration gone wild.  The White House claims that the talking points reflected the CIA’s assessment of the situation, [...]

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Fallout.

On the heels of a dramatic hearing where three whistle-blowers testified, Fox News has learned that former Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday, on the Hill for a meeting with House Republicans, also told lawmakers: “I think Hillary (Clinton) should be subpoenaed if necessary.” The comments and developments signal that Republicans will continue to press [...]

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"Glaring."

How significant? Well, we don’t know that precisely, because Sen. Tom Coburn can’t tell the Morning Joe crew what got omitted.  Suffice it to say, Coburn explains, that the omission from State on what happened in Benghazi was significant and will cause big problems for the Obama administration … if it ever gets declassified: Sen. Tom [...]

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Oversight.

One question left mainly unaddressed by yesterday’s hearing on Benghazi — and by others, as well — is the lack of preparation by the Obama administration and the US military for the potential for attack in Benghazi.  After all, terrorist attacks had been increasing steadily since the fall of the Qaddafi regime in 2011.  Other [...]

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Just about everything.

Not much, if you listen to apologists for the White House and State Department, even after the testimony of two previously-excluded whistleblowers yesterday at a House Oversight Committee hearing on the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans.  Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post fact-checker, says that while some of what was said has already come out [...]

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Whitewash.

Partisan politics loomed over a House hearing Wednesday on the deadly September 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, as Republicans and Democrats clashed over the meaning of testimony from three witnesses who had little new to add to the story… The three State Department officials, one of whom had testified before, [...]

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What difference at that point did it make?

In the previous post, I noted that Darrell Issa’s witnesses in the House Oversight hearings on Benghazi would make life difficult for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.  Fox News reported late yesterday that one witness in particular will testify that Hillary purposefully cut out of the loop the State Department’s bureau for counter-terrorism as [...]

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"My jaw hit the floor as I watched this..."

“There is new information raising questions,” Bob Schieffer told a Face the Nation audience yesterdat, “of whether there was a cover-up by the State Department to deflect criticism that it had ignored requests for more security for its people in Libya.”  Schieffer and CBS should get kudos for airing the reports of this evidence, but strictly speaking, [...]

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...Oops?

Last December, the Accountability Review Board report on the happenings surrounding the terror attack in Benghazi concluded that “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels” (but still below then-Secretary Hillary Clinton) and “inadequate” security measures were to blame for the lack of preparedness, the muddled response, and the deaths of four Americans [...]

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Tier 3 strikes again.

The DHS has opened an “ongoing” investigation of human trafficking at a McLean, Virginia location that has a notable owner — the King of Saudi Arabia. Police responded to a call on Tuesday to the diplomatic residence and “rescued” two women, NBC reported yesterday afternoon — and touched off a major diplomatic headache (via Katie [...]

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I'm just sure I don't know what you mean...

President Obama really strained credulity in his presser Tuesday morning when he claimed total ignorance of the Fox News report in which former deputy assistant attorney general Victoria Toensing, representing a State Department official who wants to testify about Benghazi, alleged that the Obama administration is deliberately obfuscating the process and has even threatened the [...]

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