POLITICS - Latest GOP Benghazi Report

aka "A Primer on How to Waste Taxpayer Money"

"Two years, $7 million, 800 pages later, GOP Benghazi report lands with a thud" PBS NewsHour 6/28/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton loomed large in the House Republican probe of the deaths of the U.S. ambassador to Libya in the Benghazi attack.  Hauled before a GOP panel, she was grilled for eight hours.  On Tuesday, an 800-page report landed and House Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC), denied the probe was ever about Clinton.  Political director Lisa Desjardins joins Gwen Ifill.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  After years of investigations, interviews, and hearings, the House special committee looking into the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, released 800 pages of findings today.

The assault, which resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, slams the Obama administration for lax security and a sluggish response, but it doesn’t lay blame at then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s doorstep.

Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy, the panel’s chairman, said Clinton, now the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee, was never the focus of the inquiry.

REP. TREY GOWDY (R), Chairman, House Select Committee on Benghazi:  Speaker Boehner asked me to find out what happened to four of our fellow citizens, and I believe that is what I have done.

You are welcome to read that report.  I hope you will.  I know you will.  If you at the end of reading that report can conclude that it is about one person, instead of about four people, I will be shocked.  I think the American people ought to look at it.  They ought to look at it because fellow Americans died and fellow Americans were injured and fellow Americans went to heroic lengths to save other Americans.  What conclusions they draw after reading it is up to them.

GWEN IFILL:  The White House, and Clinton herself, said the investigation was always politically motivated.  She weighed in during a campaign stop today in Denver.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), Former Secretary of State:  After more than two years and $7 million spent by the Benghazi committee out of taxpayer funds, it had to today report that it had found nothing, nothing to contradict the conclusions of the independent accountability board or the conclusions of the prior multiple earlier investigations.

I will leave it to others to characterize this report, but I think it’s pretty clear it’s time to move on.

GWEN IFILL:  Lisa Desjardins (NewsHour) has been reading into the report and its findings.  She joins me now.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 10/23/2015

"Shields and Brooks on Clinton’s Benghazi testimony, Paul Ryan’s speaker potential" PBS NewsHour 10/23/2015

Excerpts

SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including Hillary Clinton’s testimony on Benghazi, Vice President Joe Biden’s decision not to run in 2016, Rep. Paul Ryan stepping into the race for Speaker of the House, and new higher poll numbers for Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson in Iowa.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  So, Benghazi hearings, David, they went — I don’t know that it was 11, but it was eight or nine hours of testimony.

DAVID BROOKS, New York Times:  Right.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  What have we learned?  What was accomplished at this hearing?

DAVID BROOKS:  Nothing was learned.

We learned that the Republicans can’t stump Hillary Clinton.  She was composed, gave a lot of the same testimony she’s given before.  This thing has been going on forever.  And so nothing happened, really.  And so that’s good news for her.

She — her composure was excellent. Congressmen do what congressmen do.  And so it was a big nothing burger.  And why the Republicans remain obsessed with this, at a time when the nation of Iraq has ceased to exist, Syria barely exists, there’s turmoil spreading throughout the Middle East — if you want to attack Hillary Clinton, it seems to me she was secretary of state at a time of deterioration in actual substantive grounds.  Maybe that would be a good subject.

But there is a certain psychosis that goes through people’s minds, especially about scandals, but Clinton scandals, where they — where something smells, and they think there must be something big, and they imagine there is about to be some big revelation that will destroy their careers.  But, since 1991, that has never happened, and the critics have always overshot the mark and ended up helping the candidate.  And that’s what happened.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  They have survived some challenges in the past, the Clintons, but, Mark, nothing burger, is that what it adds up to?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated columnist:  I would feel better if it were just the Clintons with the Republicans. I think this has been — for the past seven years of the Obama administration, it has been an obsession that — to prove not simply that the administration is not capable or efficient or effective, but that somehow it’s evil, maybe even criminal.

And that’s what was driving this Benghazi hearing, that somehow that there was some evil plot or evil scheme or diabolical whatever.  The emphasis on Sid Blumenthal, who was a…

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Her longtime friend.

MARK SHIELDS:  Yes, longtime friend, controversial, a conspiracy buff, an apparatchik, whatever else he is, but, I mean, hardly somebody of Rasputin dimensions that they wanted to elevate him to.

And in doing so, they were forced to go public with this hearing, which they didn’t want to do.  They looked bad.  They had…

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Meaning the Republicans.

MARK SHIELDS:  The Republicans looked bad.

Hillary Clinton looked disciplined.  She showed remarkable stamina.  She showed thorough preparation.  And she never went for the bait.  The bait was to get her to do what she had done in the previous hearing, to show exasperation, to display temper.

And she just — she came off it, to use an adjective, presidential.  And I just think — I just think that the Republicans ought to drop this and move on, but I think it is — I think it is symptomatic of a party that is incapable of accepting its governing responsibility.
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MARK SHIELDS:  Well, I was surprised (Joe Biden not running), because I didn’t know.

Everybody who said they knew who was talking didn’t know, and everybody who apparently knew wasn’t talking.  But I didn’t know that he wasn’t going to run.

I will say this about Joe Biden.  His absence means that the happy warrior will be missing from the Democratic battle this year.  That’s what Joe — Joe Biden has personally at least 35 percent of the world’s known reserve of authenticity.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS:  And we’re looking for the authentic.

Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, who is himself a presidential candidate and an active partisan, said of Joe Biden, if you don’t like Joe Biden, you ought take a serious look at yourself, because there is something wrong with you.

He is the nicest person I have ever met.  God never made a better man than Joe Biden.  This was before Joe Biden pulled out.  This was just in an interview in Iowa a couple — a month or so ago.  So I just think it takes a lot of courage to run.  It takes a lot more courage to pull out.  And I just — I will miss him and his presence in this race.

FACT CHECK - Benghazi Spin

"Partisan Spin on Benghazi" by Eugene Kiely, FactCheck.org 10/22/2015

The Republican chairman and ranking Democrat on the House Benghazi committee each distorted the facts during TV appearances to discuss the committee’s work:

• GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy was asked what “new facts” his committee discovered that seven other committees did not. Referring to the many other investigations into the attacks that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, Gowdy asked “how did they miss Ambassador Stevens’ e-mails?”  But other committees did obtain some of Stevens’ emails – including a June 7, 2012, email that Gowdy cited in the interview.
• Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings praised former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for giving the State Department thousands of work-related emails that she sent and received from her personal email account.  Cummings added that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did not turn over “one page” of her emails.  But Rice had none to turn over; she didn’t use a personal email account for government business.

Gowdy, chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, and Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the committee, appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Oct. 18 — four days before Hillary Clinton’s scheduled Oct. 22 appearance before the committee.

Stevens’ Emails

Four Americans, including Stevens, were killed during Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on a temporary diplomatic facility and a CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya.  The House authorized the creation of the special Benghazi committee in a May 8, 2014, vote, although by that time seven other congressional committees had investigated the attacks.

John Dickerson, the host of “Face the Nation,” asked Gowdy what “new facts” his committee has uncovered that the others did not.

Dickerson, Oct. 18:  Tell us about the new facts.  One of the charges against your committee is there have been seven hearings — seven investigations in Congress already.  Why have another one.  What new facts have you got that rebuts that charge?

Gowdy:  You know, John, I do hear that there have been seven, which makes me smile because I wonder, how did they miss Ambassador Stevens’ e-mails?  None of the seven previous committees bothered to access the e-mails of our ambassador.

So, if you want a window into Libya and what was happening in the weeks and months before these four were killed, why would you not look at the ambassador’s e-mails?  He was a prolific e-mailer.  I will give you a one-week time period in June.  He’s just been put in place as the ambassador, just accepted, on June the 7th.  And he is already asking for more security.  He knows that there’s an uptick in violence and he’s asking for more security.

On almost exactly that day, John, he is asked to read and respond to an e-mail from [Clinton friend and former adviser] Sidney Blumenthal, who knows nothing about Libya.  So, he’s asking for security.  And [former deputy chief of staff and director of policy planning] Jake Sullivan in Washington is asking our ambassador the day after our facility was attacked with an IED to read and respond to an e-mail from Sidney Blumenthal.

The other committees did not “miss” Stevens’ emails.  During the course of their investigations, other committees did have access to at least some emails and cables sent and received by Stevens — who became ambassador on May 22, 2012, and served in that capacity for less than four months.

In fact, the June 7, 2012, email cited by Gowdy on “Face the Nation” was discussed during Clinton’s testimony on Jan. 23, 2013, before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.  That email also appears in a Benghazi timeline released by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in January 2014.

The intelligence committee timeline shows that Stevens on June 7, 2012, exchanged emails with a State Department official (identified in another House report as John Moretti) about the security situation in Libya. In the email, Stevens requests to retain the services of two Mobile Security Deployments (MSD) around the time of the July 7, 2012, Libyan elections:

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Ambassador Stevens made a personal plea for an increase in security.  In a June 2012 email, he told a Department official that with national elections in July and August, the Mission “would feel much safer if we could keep two MSD teams with us through this period [to support] our staff and [personal detail] for me and the [Deputy Chief of Mission] and any VIP visitors.”  The Department official replied that due to other commitments and limited resources, “unfortunately, MSD cannot support the request.”

There were other emails and cables from Stevens, too.  A House intelligence committee report dated Jan. 15, 2014, said the committee reviewed “thousands of intelligence reports and internal documents (including e-mails, cables, etc.) which were provided by the IC, the State Department, and DoD.”  That report discusses an Aug. 16, 2012, cable sent by Stevens regarding the security situation in Libya.

Republican Rep. Tom Cole in an October 2012 press release refers to cables he said were sent by Stevens on June 25, 2012, and Aug. 8, 2012.  Cole also refers to a cable that was approved by Stevens on the day of the attack, Sept. 11, 2012.

As Cole notes, the documents were obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform — of which Gowdy is a member:

Cole, Oct. 29, 2012:  Documents released by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform show growing concern on the part of Ambassador Stevens and his staff regarding the worsening security situation.  In a cable from June 25 titled “Libya’s Fragile Security Deteriorates,” Ambassador Stevens wrote, “From April to June, Libya also witnesses an increase in attacks targeting international organizations and foreign interests.”  Stevens goes on to list six of the multiple attacks that had already occurred, including an attack on a U.N. official in Benghazi, an IED explosion at the consulate compound, and a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the British ambassador’s convoy.  Stevens stated that his contacts in the area informed him that “Islamic extremism appears to be on the rise in eastern Libya and that the Al-Qaeda flag has been spotted several times flying over government buildings and training facilities.”


Another cable from August 8 mentions “a series of violent incidents” and warns that the local security forces the Obama administration was to rely on to protect our diplomats “has not coalesced into a stabilizing force and provides little deterrence.”  On the day of his murder, Stevens reiterated the warning, citing a commander with Benghazi’s Supreme Security Council who “expressed growing frustration with police and security forces (who were too weak to keep the country secure).”

Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the Benghazi committee, issued a press release recently that listed six other emails and cables, to which other committees had access, that were sent or received by Stevens, including some prior to Stevens’ appointment as ambassador.

Jamal Ware, a spokesman for Gowdy and the Republican majority members on the Benghazi committee, told us that Gowdy did not say that the other committees did not have any of Stevens’ emails.  “Chairman Gowdy said the committee was the first to ‘access’ them,” Ware said, adding that the committee asked for all of Stevens’ emails from March 2011 to Sept. 11, 2012, the day of the attack.

Ware is splitting hairs.  Although other committees did not ask specifically for Stevens’ emails, they did ask the State Department for documents related to the Benghazi attacks, which would include emails and cables sent and received by Stevens.

“Prior committees investigating the attacks in Benghazi had long had access to a significant volume of emails and documents to and from Ambassador Stevens,” Alec Gerlach, a spokesman for the State Department, told us in an email.  Although typically, Gerlach said, the congressional requests were made by “specific subject matter, and not to specific current or former Department employees.”

Also, Gowdy’s claim wasn’t simply that his committee was the only one to specifically ask for Stevens’ emails.  He said the other committees missed Stevens’ emails and hadn’t “bothered to access” them.  Clearly, they had access to key emails and cables sent or approved by Stevens regarding the security situation in Libya prior to the attacks.

Clinton and Rice

For his part, Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the Benghazi committee, made an apples-to-oranges comparison when praising Clinton for cooperating with the committee investigation.  He noted, correctly, that Clinton turned over “tens of thousands” of work-related emails to the State Department — emails that Clinton had sent and received from her personal email account and stored on a private server.  But then he claimed that Condoleezza Rice hadn’t “turned in one page.”

Cummings, Oct. 18:  Well, keep in mind, keep in mind that Hillary Clinton has turned in tens of thousands of pages of e-mails, more than any other secretary in the history of our country, secretary of state in the history of country.  And keep in mind Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice have not turned in one page.

That’s a distortion.  Unlike Powell and Clinton, Rice did not use a personal email account for government business, so she had no emails to give to the State Department, according to the State Department.

At a March 10 press briefing, then-State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that the department requested work-related emails from four previous secretaries of state: Clinton, Powell, Rice and Madeleine Albright.  She then discussed the responses the department received from Rice, Powell and Albright.

Psaki, March 10:  Former Secretary Rice – I’m just going to go through all of them if that’s okay – responded to the Department’s letter and informed us that she did not use personal email for official business.  Early in March of this year, General Powell advised – and I think he’s spoken to this publicly as well – that he used a personal email account during his tenure as secretary of state.  He did not take any hard copies of emails with him when he left office and has no record of the emails, with the account he used having been closed for a number of years.  Former Secretary Albright advised that she did not use email as secretary and has no records in her possession.

We should also note that although Powell did use a personal email account, rather than the government email system, he did not store his emails on a private server.  Powell, who was secretary of state from January 2001 to January 2005, said he did not have any emails to turn over.

POLITICS - Benghazi Saga

(aka "Republican 3 Year Attack Syndrome")

"Here’s what you should know about the deadly attack in Benghazi" PBS NewsHour 10/21/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton goes before a congressional committee Thursday to offer testimony on the attacks that killed four people at the U.S. consulate and CIA compound in Benghazi, Libya.  Chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner reviews the details of the attack and the subsequent investigations.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  The 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate and CIA compound in Benghazi, Libya, has sparked a firestorm of recrimination and accusation, touching on policy and politics.

As former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton prepares to testify before a congressional committee about the attacks tomorrow, chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner catches us up on the facts of the case.

MARGARET WARNER (NewsHour):  This fiery scene at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, took place three years ago, but it sparked a political war of words that’s still being fought.

Thirteen months after the fall of dictator Moammar Gadhafi, Benghazi was lawless and awash with guns.  The U.S. mission was protected by one local militia and unarmed contractor guards.  On the anniversary of 9/11, around 9:40 p.m., heavily armed men stormed the compound, opening fire and torching some of its buildings.

Hours later, a CIA annex less than a mile away came under mortar attack. U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens died in the main compound, along with Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, apparently of smoke inhalation.  Two contractors, ex-Navy SEALS Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, died at the annex.

Then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said U.S. commanders had no intelligence that an attack was coming on the Benghazi mission, and U.S. forces were too far away to help when it did.

LEON PANETTA, Former Secretary of Defense:  Frankly, without an adequate warning, there wasn’t enough time, given the speed of the attack, for armed military assets to respond.

MARGARET WARNER:  In the aftermath, the military did deploy elite teams of U.S. Marines from Rota, Spain, one to Benghazi to evacuate personnel, the other to fortify the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli.

The Benghazi assault followed anti-U.S. protests that day in a half-dozen Islamic countries.  In Cairo, a mob breached the walls of the heavily-fortified U.S. Embassy, tearing down the U.S. flag.  No Americans were harmed.

All those protests were against an American citizen’s online movie mocking the Prophet Mohammed.  Five days later, on the Sunday talk shows, then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice pointed to a linkage.

SUSAN RICE, National Security Adviser:  What this began as was a spontaneous, not a premeditated, response to what had transpired in Cairo.

MARGARET WARNER:  But Republicans charged the White House knew almost immediately Benghazi was a terror attack, and concealed it to protect President Obama’s reelection campaign.

The administration insisted Ambassador Rice was speaking from the best information available at the time.  Four months later, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took on Senate Republicans at a hearing.

"Did we learn anything new from Clinton’s Benghazi testimony?" PBS NewsHour 10/22/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  House Republicans grilled former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the U.S. embassy attack in Benghazi, Libya.  Political director Lisa Desjardins recaps the sometimes tense and emotional hearing.  Judy Woodruff gets reaction from Yochi Dreazen of Foreign Policy Magazine and Anne Gearan of The Washington Post.

YOCHI DREAZEN, Foreign Policy:  So, some of the numbers just on the hearings, it’s astounding.  This is the 21st hearing on Benghazi.  By comparison, there were 22 public hearings on 9/11.

So, just to compare the two, 22 on 9/11, 21 on Benghazi.  The investigations are thought to have cost about $5 million.  This has been going on now 17 months.  It’s not clear to me or I think to really any observer what is new that could still be found.

They have already pulled out that there are things said publicly different from what were said privately, that there were security failures.  That has all been out for quite some time.  But there was one moment that I thought was very interesting.  She said back at one point to them that the response to this shouldn’t be that Washington decides, Democrat or Republican, that diplomacy is too dangerous, that it shouldn’t be something where America pulls out of dangerous places because of attacks like this.

ALSO SEE:

"Fact checking Clinton and critics on Benghazi, emails" by Connie Cass and Calvin Woodward, Associated Press 10/22/2015

ATTENTION DEFAECATE DISORDER - Boner and Benghazi

"Boehner and Benghazi" by Eugene Kiely, FactCheck.org 2/17/2015

House Speaker John Boehner says there are “unanswered questions” about the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi.  He specifically asks “why didn’t we attempt to rescue” Americans under siege and why were some U.S. personnel “told not to get involved” in rescue attempts?

But those questions have been answered at length in several investigative reports, including two by Republican-controlled House committees.  Congressional committees and an independent board detail the rescue attempts that night, carried out despite U.S. military assets not being in position to defend the Benghazi facility.  Those reports say there were no undue delays in responding to the attacks, and they pointedly rejected unfounded allegations that the U.S. response was deliberately thwarted by a “stand down” order.

“Quite the contrary:  The safe evacuation of all U.S. government personnel from Benghazi twelve hours after the initial attack and subsequently to Ramstein Air Force Base was the result of exceptional U.S. government coordination and military response,” the independent Accountability Review Board concluded in its Dec. 18, 2012, report.

The “U.S. military performed well in responding to the attacks,” the House Armed Services Committee said in a February 2014 report.  Separately, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said in its November 2014 report that the CIA — which was first on the scene of the attack — responded in a “timely and appropriate manner.”

Boehner appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and discussed the Select Committee on Benghazi, a special panel created by the Republican-controlled House last year.  The U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi (referred to in official reports as a temporary mission facility, or TMF) was attacked by heavily armed extremists on Sept. 11, 2012.  The terrorist attack left four U.S. citizens dead — including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.

Host Chris Wallace asked Boehner why he set up the committee “even though there have been about a half dozen investigations” and the GOP-controlled House intelligence committee “basically said there was no there there.”  Wallace asked if the committee was created to hurt former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions.

Boehner, Feb. 15:  No, Chris, it’s — the idea here is to get the American people the facts about what happened.  Why wasn’t the security for our embassy in Libya, the extra security, given to the ambassador after repeated requests?  The night of the event, why didn’t we attempt to rescue the people that were there?  Why were the people there told not to get involved?

And then, as importantly, when did the president know this?  And why, for some two weeks, did he describe it differently than what it really was?

There are a lot of unanswered questions, and as Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the Benghazi committee, has been told by me, I don’t need a big show here but we need our facts.  The American people deserve the truth about what happened and that’s all we’re interested in.

All the questions posed by Boehner have been addressed by various House and Senate committees and by the Accountability Review Board convened by the State Department, but we focus in particular on the U.S. rescue attempts because the premise of those questions is misleading.

Let’s review what the reports say about the rescue attempt and how U.S. security, intelligence and military personnel were deployed that night.

Extremists armed with small arms, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars attacked the diplomatic facility at about 9:42 p.m. Benghazi time on Sept. 11, 2012, according to a Defense timeline.  In about 17 minutes after the attack, the Defense Department diverted an unmanned surveillance drone to Benghazi, the timeline says.  At about the same time, the chief of a CIA annex near the Benghazi diplomatic facility was making preparations to send a team of seven to assist in a rescue operation.

At 10:04 p.m., the CIA team departed in two armored vehicles, arriving at the facility at 10:25 p.m. and immediately engaging in a 15-minute firefight with the extremists, according to a bipartisan report issued December 30, 2012, by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

The House intelligence committee report said that “some Annex team members wanted urgently to depart the Annex for the TMF to save their State Department colleagues,” but the Annex chief “ordered the team to wait so that the seniors on the ground could ascertain the situation at the TMF and whether they could secure heavy weaponry support from local militias.”

This order to wait has been described by some as a “stand down” order, but it was not.  The Republican-controlled House intelligence committee said that based on all the evidence, “the Annex leadership deliberated thoughtfully, reasonably, and quickly.”

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Nov. 21, 2014:  The evidence from eyewitness testimony, ISR video footage, closed-circuit television recordings, and other sources provides no support for the allegation that there was any stand-down order.  Rather, there were mere tactical disagreements about the speed with which the team should depart prior to securing additional security assets.

A bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report released on Jan. 15, 2014, reached the same conclusion.

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Jan. 15:  The Committee explored claims that there was a “stand down” order given to the security team at the Annex.  Although some members of the security team expressed frustration that they were unable to respond more quickly to the Mission compound, the Committee found no evidence of intentional delay or obstruction by the Chief of Base or any other party.

At about midnight Benghazi time, a little more than two hours after the attack began, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta gathered top military leaders at the Pentagon to discuss military options, according to the Defense timeline.  (We will get back to Panetta’s decisions later.)

While military leaders convened at the Pentagon, a six-man security team from the U.S. embassy in Tripoli, including two military personnel, departed for Benghazi at about 12:30 a.m.  Rear Adm. Brian Losey, commander at the time of Special Operations Command Africa, did not send all the security forces stationed in Tripoli.  He ordered Army Lt. Col. S.E. Gibson’s team to remain in Tripoli to protect the U.S. embassy in the event of an attack there, according to the House Armed Services Committee report.

Gibson was initially “visibly upset” that his team was not dispatched to Benghazi along with the other team from Tripoli, the House report said.  A colleague described Gibson as being “furious” at the time at having been ordered to “stand down.”  But “Gibson made it clear to the committee that ‘in hindsight’ he believes remaining in Tripoli was appropriate,” the House report said.

“I was not ordered to stand down.  I was ordered to remain in place,” Gibson told the House Armed Services Committee.”  ‘Stand down’ implies that we cease all operations, cease all activities.  We continued to support the team that was in Tripoli.”

The Tripoli team arrived in Benghazi in about an hour, but it was delayed at the airport “for at least three hours,” according to the Senate homeland security committee report.  The committee said the delay “merits further inquiry” to determine if it was merely part of the “chaotic environment” at the time or “was it part of a plot to keep American help from reaching the Americans under siege in Benghazi.”  It turned out to be the result of the “chaotic environment,” not “part of a plot.”

The Senate intelligence committee later said in its report that the Tripoli team was trying to locate Stevens before leaving the airport.  There had been reports that Stevens may have been at the Benghazi Medical Center, but Libyans were concerned about security at the hospital and feared the Americans could be lured into an ambush, the committee report said.

“After more than three hours of negotiations and communications with Libyan officials … the Libyan government arranged for the Libyan Shield Militia to provide transportation and an armed escort from the airport” to the CIA Annex, the Senate intelligence committee report said.

The Tripoli team arrived at the CIA Annex at 5:04 a.m., “about ten minutes before a new assault by the terrorists began, involving mortar rounds fired at the Annex,” according to the Senate homeland security report.  That attack resulted in the deaths of Annex security team members Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, the report said.  Libyan forces arrived at the Annex at 6 a.m. with 50 vehicles and transported the remaining Americans to the airport, where they would be evacuated by plane to Tripoli in two trips at 7:40 a.m. and 10 a.m. enroute ultimately to Germany.

Where was the U.S. military?

Panetta’s midnight meeting (Benghazi time) at the Pentagon lasted until about 2 a.m.  After the meeting, Panetta took several actions.  He agreed to send one Marine Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team platoon stationed in Rota, Spain, to Benghazi and another to Tripoli.  He also directed two special operations forces — one from Central Europe and another based in the United States — to depart for a staging base in Italy, according to the Defense timeline and the Senate homeland security report.  None of those troops reached Benghazi in time.

“[T]here simply was not enough time given the speed of the attacks for armed U.S. military assets to have made a difference,” as the independent Accountability Review Board said in its report.  But other rescue efforts did make a difference.

The ARB report, which was released Dec. 18, 2012, said “every possible effort was made to protect, rescue and recover Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith.”  Smith, a State Department information management officer, also died in the attack at the diplomatic mission.

Accountability Review Board:  The interagency response was timely and appropriate, but there simply was not enough time given the speed of the attacks for armed U.S. military assets to have made a difference.  Senior-level interagency discussions were underway soon after Washington received initial word of the attacks and continued through the night.  The Board found no evidence of any undue delays in decision making or denial of support from Washington or from the military combatant commanders.  Quite the contrary:  The safe evacuation of all U.S. government personnel from Benghazi twelve hours after the initial attack and subsequently to Ramstein Air Force Base was the result of exceptional U.S. government coordination and military response and helped save the lives of two severely wounded Americans.

The ARB was led by Thomas R. Pickering, who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George H.W. Bush, and retired Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush.  Although there has been some criticism of the board in conservative circles, the State Department inspector general’s office issued a report in September 2013 that reviewed the board’s operations in general and its work specifically on Benghazi, and concluded that the ARB “operates as intended — independently and without bias.”

In a press conference on the board’s report, Mullen addressed the military’s inability to mobilize its assets quickly enough to defend the Benghazi facility.  He said that “it is not reasonable, nor feasible, to tether U.S. forces at the ready to respond to protect every high-risk post in the world.”

There was, however, an increase in military protection of U.S. diplomatic facilities after the Benghazi attacks.  A Congressional Research Service report dated July 30, 2014, said that “the U.S. Marine Security Guard posted detachments to 152 U.S. diplomatic facilities around the world as of September 2012; 35 new Marine Guard detachments were requested by the department after the Benghazi attacks.”

There is no question that mistakes were made prior to Sept. 11, 2012, that left the U.S. facilities in Benghazi vulnerable to attack.  Multiple investigative reports document those mistakes.

The Senate homeland security report said the State Department made a “grievous mistake” in keeping the Benghazi facility open given the “dangerous threat environment” in Benghazi in the months leading up to the attack.  The ARB report said “systemic failures” and leadership “deficiencies” caused the State Department to ignore “repeated requests” for additional security staffing in Libya, leaving the Benghazi facility “grossly inadequate to deal with the attack.”  (Which goes to another of Boehner’s questions: “Why wasn’t the security for our embassy in Libya, the extra security, given to the ambassador after repeated requests?”)

But as far as the night of the attack?  The consensus is that the rescue attempts were carried out in a timely manner under difficult circumstances.  For Boehner to ask “why didn’t we attempt to rescue” Americans under attack and why were some U.S. personnel “told not to get involved” ignores the evidence.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 5/9/2014

"Shields and Brooks on primary points for GOP, politics of climate policy" PBS NewsHour 5/9/2014

Excerpts

SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the week’s news, including the outcomes for Republicans in the first three midterm primaries, why the House GOP are pushing a Benghazi inquiry, the latest national assessment on climate change and NBA MVP Kevin Durant’s tribute to his mom and supporters.
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DAVID BROOKS, New York Times columnist:  The voters are not idiots.  And they don’t want to elect people who are not electable.  And I think the voters have also decided, you know, we actually do have problems.  We people who believe in governance.  And that’s really the crucial difference here.  It’s not more conservative, less conservative.  It’s do we want to use government to govern or do we want to use it as a platform for a radio and TV show?

OPINION - Brooks and Marcus 1/17/2014

"Brooks and Marcus on Obama's surveillance reforms, Benghazi attack blame" PBS Newshour 1/17/2014

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus join Gwen Ifill to discuss the week's top political news, including whether or not President Obama went far enough with his recommended surveillance reforms, who's blame for the Benghazi attack and the possibility for new sanctions on Iran.

LIBYA - Senate Benghazi Report

"Senate concludes State Dept. ignored security warnings ahead of Benghazi attack" PBS Newshour 1/15/2014

Excerpt

GWEN IFILL (Newshour):  More than a year ago, a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed in an uprising in Benghazi, Libya.  The questions about the incident, why it happened, how it happened, whether it could have been avoided, have never completely gone away.

Today, after dozens of hearings and interviews, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued its own bipartisan conclusions.

Adam Goldman of The Washington Post joins us now to talk about them.

So, how did the Senate Intelligence Committee's finding differ from what we have heard about?  We have heard so much about this Benghazi episode?  Was there anything different that they discovered today?

ADAM GOLDMAN, The Washington Post:  No.

I think they came to the same conclusion as other reports that what happened in Benghazi was preventable.  I think what was new about the report was the detail they went into.  And that in itself was extraordinary.  The whole report was released.

And we really got a blow-by-blow of what happened.  And there weren't very many redactions in this report.