Tag: NIAC

John R. Houk

© June 25, 2014

 

Today I received a Breitbart News email which is really a promo from Judicial Watch.

 

“Judicial Watch is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Contributions are received from individuals, foundations, and corporations and are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.” (From Donation Page of Judicial Watch)

 

Thus Judicial Watch is an NGO government and judiciary watchdog organization. JW managed to get a Judge to force the release of documents in which Congress originally subpoenaed but the government failed to deliver. Although Leftists are playing ostriches with their heads in the sand or are just downright deceptive are still claiming there is nothing up their sleeves and are spinning the JW smoking gun data collected.

 

I call this a promo email because the hook is to read is the offer of JW’s Benghazi Cover Up Report for free. After you click the link in the email it takes you to a page in which you provide your name, address, email and zip code followed by a link to get the report. The report is a 20 odd pages of a pdf file and you are actually sent to the link: The Benghazi Attack of September 11, 2012: Analysis & Further Questions from a Diplomatic Security Service Regional Security Officer and Special Agent; Intro by Tom Fitton – 1/22/13; and an April 29, 2014 update pertaining to the FOIA documents the government was forced to give up by a Judge. So some of you may have read the 2013 portion of the pdf file.

 

Of course the promo part is the collecting of addresses and email undoubted for marketing and donor purposes in the future. I like JW so I don’t have a problem with that. I can always hit the delete button or file snail mail in the trash.

 

BUT you really should familiarize yourself with those report. I don’t know about you but I am getting weary of listening, reading and watching Leftists whine about two years of Congressional investigations and zero discoveries of crimes being discovered. The JW report CLEARLY demonstrates the entire Obama Administration is hell bent on covering up probable crimes by not being transparent in releasing documents and the obvious production of government officials lying to Congressional Committees. I am certain the Benghazigate revelations are a mere tip of the iceberg. Since obstruction is now being documented in Benghazi investigations you can count on the probability the other Obama labeled phony scandals have nefarious activities behind them.

 

So you can click the Judicial Watch link that is a promo to build their donor list (which is a worthy cause) or I provided the pdf link above. In the mean time I took the liberty to provide an incomplete excerpt of the pdf file of portions I find to be obscene obstructions by the Obama Administration. SO REALLY READ THE WHOLE REPORT.

 

JRH 6/25/14

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Introduction by Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton

 

Judicial Watch promotes transparency, integrity and accountability in government, politics and the law. We carry out or mission through investigations, research, litigation and public education.  From time to time we produce Special Reports on important public policy matters to illuminate the operations of government in a way that informs the public and holds our trusted public servants accountable.

 

We have prepared this Special Report with the analysis, insights and expertise of Mr. Raymond Fournier, a recently retired Diplomatic Security Service Special Agent with more than thirty years of extraordinary experience managing all aspects of security, to include being a Regional Security Officer in United States Embassies in such countries as: Honduras, Sierra Leone, Belgium, and Lebanon — as well as other sensitive overseas postings to include Afghanistan and Israel. Specifically, Mr. Fournier possesses expertise in: assessing and managing risk; developing and executing security budgets and plans; organizing dignitary protection details; as well as technical, procedural security development and implementation to augment physical security.  Mr. Fournier’s assistance has been invaluable.

 

Judicial Watch has opened its own investigation of the Benghazi attack. Our staff of investigators and researchers includes former intelligence officers, analysts, military officers, attorneys, and journalists. Judicial Watch has more than ten (10) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests pending with various Executive departments and agencies seeking all manner of records relating to the attack. We have filed separate lawsuits in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to compel the Obama administration to comply with the FOIA law and release the records we seek. In the interim, we pursue additional avenues of investigation in an effort to provide the American people with complete, accurate, factual information concerning a deadly attack costing the lives of United States Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three additional brave Americans.

 

Thomas Fitton

President

 

Washington, DC

January 22, 2013

 

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Background

 

At 9:40 p.m. on the evening of September 11, 20l2, a group of approximately l50 heavily armed Islamist militia members attacked the United States’ diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. The ensuing 8-hour assault on the Special Mission Compound (SMC, and hereafter: “Compound”) and the nearby CIA annex claimed the lives of four Americans: Ambassador Christopher Stevens, U.S. Foreign Service Specialist Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALS Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.  Stevens, who had previously served as the U.S. Special Envoy to the Libyan Transitional National Council, was the first Ambassador killed in the line of duty since the l979 shooting of Ambassador Adolph Dubs in Kabul, Afghanistan.

 

In the aftermath of the attack, President Obama and senior administration officials were quick to identify Muslim outrage over an obscure Internet video mocking Mohammed as the motivation for the attack1.  In a September l2th statement about the incident, the President remarked, “Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.”2

 

At a September l4, 20l2 event honoring the four victims, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton stated, “We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men. We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with.”3

 

Those in Libya did not share this theory. During a September l5th television interview, Libyan President Mohamed al-Magarief observed that, “It’s clear from the timing on September 11th and from the detailed planning of the attacks that behind it there were experienced masterminds. It was not a spontaneous act in protest of a movie. This has been prepared for a long time on this specific day…If you take into account the weapons used, like RPGs and other heavy weapons, it proves that it was preplanned. It’s a dirty act of revenge, and it has nothing to do with religion.”4

 

Nevertheless, top administration officials continued to claim that the attack was spontaneous and the result of the video. During a September l6th television interview, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice infamously assessed the situation as follows:

 

“There was a hateful video that was disseminated on the Internet. It had nothing to do with the United States government and it’s one that we find disgusting and reprehensible. It’s been offensive to many, many people around the world. That sparked violence in various parts of the world, including violence directed against western facilities including our embassies and consulates. That violence is absolutely unacceptable, it’s not a response that one can ever condone when it comes to such     a video. And we have been working very closely and, indeed, effectively with the governments in the region and around the world to secure our personnel, secure our embassy, condemn the violent response to this video.”5

 

…

 

Eventually, the administration was forced to acknowledge what many observers knew from the beginning — that the attack in Benghazi was neither spontaneous nor the result of an Internet video. On September 28th, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reported that their revised assessment had determined it to be, “a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists” and that, “some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al-Qa’ida.”8

 

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ARB Report/Summary of Findings

 

As required by the Omnibus Diplomatic and Antiterrorism Act of l986, the State Department convened an Accountability Review Board (ARB, and hereafter “Board”) to investigate the attack on October l, 20l2.9 Secretary Clinton chose former Ambassador Thomas Pickering to chair the board. Pickering is also a member of the advisory board of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC)10, a left-wing advocacy group that opposes the imposition of economic sanctions against Iran and that, in the estimation of national security expert Kenneth Timmerman, “has been lobbying Congress to win support for an agenda that mirrors the goals of the Tehran regime.”11   In 2009, former FBI counterterrorism agent Kenneth Piernick reported that the group, “may be lobbying on behalf of Iranian government interests. Were I running the counterintelligence program at the bureau now, I would have cause to look into this further.”12

 

In her 2009 paper Rise of the Iran Lobby, published by the Center for Security Policy, former CIA officer Clare Lopez wrote that, “Ambassador Pickering’s positions on Iran include calls for bilateral talks without preconditions and a plan for a multinational uranium enrichment consortium in Iran. Iran has proposed a similar plan to the UN Security Council. Ambassador Pickering advocates a process leading to mutual diplomatic relations between Iran and the United States. …

 

The other members of the Board were former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, former United Nations Undersecretary for Management Catherine Bertini, former State Department Interim Director of Overseas Building Operations Richard Shinnick, and former Deputy CIA Director Hugh Turner.  Despite State Department regulations requiring that Board members, “must possess expertise that will contribute to the work of the Board, e.g., knowledge, experience or training in areas such as foreign affairs, law, security, embassy construction, intelligence, and other areas appropriate to the Board’s work,”14 no security professionals were selected to the board convened to investigate the Benghazi attack.

 

…

 

Notably, the report contradicts the earlier claims by administration officials that the attacks resulted from a protest that escalated into violence. The Board, “concluded that there was no protest prior to the attacks, which were unanticipated in their scale and intensity.”

 

…

 

… Shortly after its release, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Darrel Issa told reporters that he was, “deeply concerned that the unclassified report omits important information the public has a right to know. This includes details about the perpetrators of the attack in Libya as well as the less-than-noble reasons contributing to State Department decisions to deny security resources. Relevant details that would not harm national security have been withheld and the classified report suffers from an enormous over-classification problem.”16

 

…

 

Despite the self-evident fact that the security resources dedicated to the Compound in Benghazi were insufficient, State Department officials continued to defend their staffing decisions in the aftermath of the attack.  Under questioning by Rep. Darrell Issa during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing investigating the attack, State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Programs Charlene Lamb asserted, “We had the correct number of assets in Benghazi at the time of 9/11.”21   According to published reports, the Regional Security Officer in Libya, Eric Nordstrom, told Congressional investigators that Lamb, “wanted to keep the number of U.S. security personnel in Benghazi ‘artificially low.’”22

 

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Fallout

 

The day after the release of the Board’s report, numerous media outlets reported that four State Department officials responsible for the management and security of the Compound in Benghazi had resigned. Three were identified as Assistant Secretary of State Eric Boswell, Charlene Lamb, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Raymond Maxwell.23  In the weeks that followed, however, it became unclear whether the officials had really resigned or even faced any significant disciplinary measures. On December 26th, the New York Post reported that, “The highest-ranking official caught up in the scandal, Assistant Secretary of State Eric Boswell, has not ‘resigned’ from government service, as officials said last week. He is just switching desks. And the other three are simply on administrative leave and are expected back.”24

 

…

 

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Additional questions Raised

 

…

 

…

 

… It is also known that the Ambassador met with the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin on the evening of the attack. The purpose of that meeting has not been disclosed.  In October, Fox News reported that Stevens, “was in Benghazi to negotiate a weapons transfer, an effort to get SA-7 missiles out of the hands of Libya-based extremists.”31

 

Some experts believe that the Ambassador’s work in Benghazi may have been related to Administration efforts to transfer arms to Syrian opposition groups. As former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and President of the Center for Security Policy Frank Gaffney wrote, “One of the places in Libya most awash with weapons in the most dangerous of hands is Benghazi. It now appears that Stevens was there — on a particularly risky day, with no security to speak of and despite now copiously documented concerns about his own safety and that of his subordinates — for another priority mission: sending arms recovered from the former regime’s stocks to the “opposition” in Syria.”32   Former CIA Officer Clare Lopez has characterized U.S. activities in Benghazi as “gun running” and reported that Administration officials were, “working with the very same al-Qaeda linked relationships in Libya to gather up and buy back and collect weapons from Gaddafi’s stockpile that were missing from the revolution in Libya last year and what it looks like is that they were shipping them onwards to Syria.”33

 

Further substantiating the theory that the Obama administration was involved in arms transfers to Syrian groups is a Times of London report published on September 14, 2012, “Syrian Rebels Squabble Over Weapons as Biggest Shipload Arrives from Libya.”34 According to the report: “Among more than 400 tonnes of cargo the vessel was carrying were SAM-7 surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), which Syrian sources said could be a game-changer for the rebels.” The connection to Benghazi was established by The Times through an examination of the ship’s port authority papers, “The Times was shown the Libyan ship, The Intisaar or The Victory, in the Turkish port of Iskenderun and papers stamped by the port authority by the ship’s captain, Omar Mousaeeb, a Libyan from Benghazi and the head of an organisation called the Libyan National Council for Relief and Support, which is supporting the Syrian uprising.”

 

…

 

… (AFRICOM) deployed two unmanned aerial vehicles to survey the events in Benghazi — one to the Compound and the other to the airport during the evacuation of American personnel.  However, the report gives no description of the images captured by the UAVs. In addition, the involvement of AFRICOM in the response raises the important question of why lethal air support or other military assets were not deployed in response to the attack.

 

…

 

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Conclusion

 

…

 

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Latest Update: Judicial Watch: Benghazi Documents Point to White House on Misleading Talking Points

 

APRIL 29, 2014

 

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that on April 18, 2014, it obtained 41 new Benghazi-related State Department documents. They include a newly declassified email showing then-White House Deputy Strategic Communications Adviser Ben Rhodes and other Obama administration public relations officials attempting to orchestrate a campaign to “reinforce” President Obama and to portray the Benghazi consulate terrorist attack as being “rooted in an Internet video, and not a failure of policy.” Other documents show that State Department officials initially described the incident as an “attack” and a possible kidnap attempt.

 

…

 

Among the top administration PR personnel who received the Rhodes memo were White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Deputy Press Secretary Joshua Earnest, then-White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, then-White House Deputy Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri, then-National Security Council Director of Communications Erin Pelton, Special Assistant to the Press Secretary Howli

 

…

 

The documents Judicial Watch obtained also include a September 12, 2012, email from former Deputy Spokesman at U.S. Mission to the United Nations Payton Knopf to Susan Rice, noting that at a press briefing earlier that day, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland explicitly stated that the attack on the consulate had been well planned. The email sent by Knopf to Rice at 5:42 pm said:

 

…

 

In the days following the Knopf email, Rice appeared on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News and CNN still claiming the assaults occurred “spontaneously” in response to the “hateful video.” On Sunday, September 16 Rice told CBS’s “Face the Nation:”

 

…

 

The Judicial Watch documents confirm that CIA talking points, that were prepared for Congress and may have been used by Rice on “Face the Nation” and four additional Sunday talk shows on September 16, had been heavily edited by then-CIA deputy director Mike Morell. According to one email:

 

The first draft apparently seemed unsuitable….because they seemed to encourage the reader to infer incorrectly that the CIA had warned about a specific attack on our embassy. On the SVTS, Morell noted that these points were not good and he had taken a heavy hand to editing them. He noted that he would be happy to work with [then deputy chief of staff to Hillary Clinton]] Jake Sullivan and Rhodes to develop appropriate talking points.

 

…

 

“Now we know the Obama White House’s chief concern about the Benghazi attack was making sure that President Obama looked good,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And these documents undermine the Obama administration’s narrative that it thought the Benghazi attack had something to do with protests or an Internet video. Given the explosive material in these documents, it is no surprise that we had to go to federal court to pry them loose from the Obama State Department.”

 

…

 

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Don’t be Fooled, There is a Nefarious Benghazi Cover-up

John R. Houk

© June 25, 2014

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The Benghazi Attack of September 11, 2012: Analysis & Further Questions from a Diplomatic Security Service Regional Security Officer and Special Agent

 

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