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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Yet another IG bombshell.

The good news for the White House?  Thanks to the current scandals, this may not even get noticed.  Jake Tapper has the scoop from yet another IG bombshell: The U.S. Marshal Service has been “unable to locate” two former participants in the federal Witness Security Program “identified as known or suspected terrorists,” states the public summary [...]

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"I would call it a cover-up."

It’s a cliché, of course, but it really is true: in Washington, every scandal has a crime and a coverup. The ongoing debate about the attack on the United States facility in Benghazi where four Americans were killed, and the Obama Administration’s response to it, is no exception. For a long time, it seemed like [...]

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Fog.

Before Wednesday’s hearing on the attack in Benghazi, Libya, Republicans in Congress promised explosive new details about the administration’s mishandling of the episode. Instead, the hearing showed, yet again, that sober fact-finding is not their mission. Common sense and good judgment have long given way to conspiracy-mongering and a relentless effort to discredit President Obama [...]

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Stovepipe Central.

Yesterday, the Boston Chief of Police told the House Homeland Security Committee that the FBI and DHS never warned them about Tamerlan Tsarnaev or informed him of his six-month sojourn to Dagestan, where radical Islamist networks operate. When asked if that information would have been useful, Chief Davis responded affirmatively. The FBI responded by pointing [...]

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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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FBI looking more closely at 6-month trip to Dagestan.

“Why are we still having problems connecting the dots?” asked House Homeland Security chair Michael McCaul, and he asked one of the right people.  In a hearing this morning, McCaul invited DHS co-creator and former Senator Joe Lieberman to analyze the issues of stovepiping that the 2002 consolidation was supposed to address, in the context [...]

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Narratives.

How is the White House going to respond to the incoming revelations coming out of today’s Congressional hearing on the terrorist attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi? …Exactly the way they have been, if today’s press briefing is any indication. Republicans are on a partisan tear, we’ve already covered all of this, no Obama [...]

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This guy's not convinced.

Allahpundit already covered the Syria-related aspects of Monday’s White House press briefing, but here’s another key bit that could prove mighty tricky for the Obama administration as the week progresses. Sounds like they’re sticking to their guns on the Accountability Review Board report from last December, to which they’ve ever since been referring questions; and [...]

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The Great Scatsby.

You have to feel a little sorry for Robert Redford, don’t you?  He just released a feature film asking audiences to reconsider their harsh feelings about the Weather Underground, which set off bombs, killed police officers, and robbed banks for more than a decade of domestic terrorism, but who were just misunderstood people acting on their [...]

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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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Leverage.

The missing laptop in the Boston Marathon bombing has been found, according to CBS and WTOP. Authorities hope that the laptop might provide clues to any other accomplices, or at the least to the pattern of radicalization that led to the bombing: Investigators found the bag last week in a New Bedford landfill,CBS News’ Elaine [...]

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Ancient history.

Via the Free Beacon, here’s Carney doing his own version of Hillary’s “What difference, at this point, does it make?” wave-off of an attack that killed a U.S. ambassador and three others. By “a long time,” he means seven and a half months. The Newtown murders happened four and a half months ago; the Aurora [...]

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"They shouldn’t have let him in. Bells should have gone off.”

Proof of innocent intent in disposing of Tsarnaev’s “materials”? Just think: This guy was months away from being amnestized by Schumer/McCain/Rubio, and now he’s gone and thrown it all away. Expect Lindsey Graham to be on TV within the hour arguing simultaneously that (1) no one should use this new revelation to politicize the new [...]

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Hmmm.

Nothing more than a tweet from the Boston Police Department;s official account, but that’s spreading like wildfire on Twitter — for understandable reasons: Three additional suspects taken into custody in Marathon bombing case. Details to follow. — Boston Police Dept. (@Boston_Police) May 1, 2013 Boston Police say three additional suspects taken into custody in Boston [...]

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Hmmm.

So says the Daily Mail, based on an interview with an unnamed Saudi “senior government official” with direct knowledge of the letter sent to the US.  According to the official, Tamerlan Tsarnaev applied in December 2011 to enter Saudi Arabia to visit Mecca, but the Saudis got suspicious of his actual intent and denied the [...]

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More hearings on the way.

For months now, Republican lawmakers have been wondering about the status of the survivors of last September’s terrorist attack in Benghazi that resulted in the death of four Americans, and why it is that Congress has not been afforded more access to them. In March, Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested that the Obama administration was engaged [...]

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Er...?

Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, for one, is not giving up on the quest for more gun control measures, and is convinced that further gun legislation “will pass eventually” — but she drew a few rather dubious conclusions in the process. As it stands right now, Tamerlan, as we know now, was on the terrorist watch [...]

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Suspicions.

Is this a reference to mystery-man “Misha”? To Tsarnaev’s wife, who allegedly seemed not as surprised by what happened as she should have been? To some as-yet unnamed figure who showed these two degenerates how to build something a little more advanced than Al Qaeda’s magazine described? Or to someone else? Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) [...]

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Suspicions

I love a good mystery, though I usually stick to old Nero Wolfe novels. Erika wrote about this story last night, but I didn’t get to pay much attention to it until this morning. The object in question turned up in a tiny, 18 inch gap between two buildings in New York City at 51 [...]

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Plus: Mom wonders if blood at the marathon could have been ... paint.

So this is what Dzhokhar meant when he said they were headed to Manhattan to “party.” The surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect has told investigators that he and his brother discussed detonating the rest of their explosives in Times Square, senior law enforcement officials told NBC News on Thursday. The surviving suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, initially [...]

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WaPo: Is the FBI focused enough on the real bad guys?

CBS News reported last night that investigators believe that the unemployed Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have financed his terrorist plot through the sale of marijuana — an interesting occupation for a fanatical Muslim.  The composition of the bomb has come into clearer focus as well.  The triggering device came from a remote-control car, and the fed [...]

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Minus the gunpowder.

How did the Tsarnaevs build the bombs that killed three and injured hundreds? Overnight, investigators may have found a key stash of evidence dumped in a Boston suburb — fireworks tossed out with their gunpowder removed: US News | Entertainment News | ABC News Videos Overnight, federal agents and police discovered what could be fresh [...]

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