Is the New York Times Lending a Hand to Obama's Benghazi Cover-up

Dear readers, this analysis of the September 11, 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, appeared in the New York Times on Saturday. Here is the web cite to the full article. ~~~~~ http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/benghazi/?from=global.home ~~~~~ But two of the US House of Representtive’s top terrorism experts rejected the NYT conclusion that al-Qaida did not carry out the attack that left US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens dead, along with Foreign Service officer Sean Smith and former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. The Times report, based on numerous interviews with Islamists in Benghazi, concludes that there is no evidence that al-Qaida or any other international terrorist group had any role in the attack. Instead, the Times reports that the attack was a spontaneous reaction caused by anger at an American-made anti-Islamic video, as the Obama administration first claimed. The Times says the attackers were entirely locally based Islamist militias with few if any contacts outside Libya. But Republican Representative Peter King, a member and former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told Fox News that the story’s premise that other anti-American militias led the attack is at best academic. “It’s misleading,” King said. He specifically challenged the notion in the Times piece that the Libya-based terror group Ansar al-Shariah was not part of the al-Qaida Islamist network. “They are saying that Ansar al-Shariah is involved, but al-Shariah is a part of the al-Qaida umbrella, the al-Qaida network,” King said, challenging the Times’ conclusion that al-Shariah “had no known affiliations with terrorist groups.” “Al-Shariah is a pro- al-Qaida terrorist organization,” King said, adding that the video had little to do with the attack, which he said was highly organized. "This was a well-coordinated attack,...not a ragtag group.” And GOP Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told Fox News Sunday that the attack was clearly an “al-Qaida-led event.” Rogers said his panel has gone through 4,000 classified cables, talked to people on the ground and done a postmortem on the event and he doubts whether the newspaper conducted such an exhaustive investigation. "So what did they get wrong?" Fox host Chris Wallace asked."That al-Qaida was not involved in this," Rogers said. "There was some level of pre-planning. We know that. There was aspiration to conduct an attack by al-Qaida and their affiliates in Libya. We know that. The individuals on the ground talked about a planned tactical movement on the compound even....That tells me they [The Times] didn't talk to people on the ground who were doing the fighting, shooting and the intelligence-gathering." Fellow committee member Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat, agreed with Rogers that intelligence shows that al-Qaida was involved in the attack. But other groups were involved, too, Schiff said. He called the Benghazi attack a "complex picture." He said : "There was some pre-planning, but it was not extensive, and people joined in the attack for multiple reasons, including because of an anti-Moslem video produced by a man in the United States." Rogers also disagreed with the NYT conclusion that al-Shariah was key to the attack. The intelligence shows otherwise, he told Wallace. "Now, do they have differences of opinion with al-Qaida core? Yes. Do they have affiliations with al-Qaida core? Definitely," he said. Rogers said he doesn’t know whether the Times story was politically motivated to clear former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before an expected presidential run in 2016. But he said he is suspicious of the timing, especially with former UN Ambassador Susan Rice talking about the subject on 60 Minutes last week. "I don't want to speculate on why they might do it," Rogers said, adding that what is being presented in The Times and on 60 Minutes has been shown by committee testimony not to be accurate. The Times’ conclusion also conflicts with other evidence, including the testimony of Greg Hicks, Stevens' deputy, according to Fox News. Hicks testified that the video was "a non-event in Libya" at the time of the attack and so not a significant trigger. A separate report by a leading social media firm corroborated Hicks' testimony, finding that the first reference to the anti-Islam film initially blamed for causing the attack was not detected on social media until a day later. On NBC's Meet the Press, GOP Representative Darrell Issa also defended his conclusion that a group affiliated with al-Qaida was involved. "It was accurate," Issa said. "There was a group that was involved that claims an affiliation with al-Qaida." Issa said that Times reporter David Kirkpatrick did "very good work" but that he has seen no evidence that the video was the attack's leading cause, a claim also made by then-UN ambassador Susan Rice in the week after the attack. "The Obama administration should come clean about misstatements about the causes of the attack, even if those claims were made to protect the CIA outpost in Benghazi," Issa said. "They went out on five stations and told the story that was at best a coverup for the CIA or at worst something that cast away this idea that there was a real terrorist operation in Benghazi," Issa insisted. Times journalist Kirkpatrick, who also appeared on the show, said that Republicans like Issa, King and Rogers mix local Islamic militant groups with international al-Qaida. "If you're using the term al-Qaida to describe even a local group of Islamist militants who dislike democracy or have a grudge against the United States, If you're going to call anybody like that 'al-Qaida,' then, okay," he said. A senior Obama administration official told NBC News on Saturday that the White House does not dispute the New York Times report. ~~~~~ Dear readers, I found gaping holes in the NYT explanation of the awful history of what happened in Benghazi the night Ambassador Stevens was assassinated. (1). Where was Washington - the White House and the State Department, especially - during the 12-hour two-phase attack in Benghazi? The security forces and CIA were left on a sawed-off limb. If the NYT time line is even close to accurate, the White House had enough time to save at least the Annex. Instead, according to then Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's testimony, President Obama signed off to Panetta and went to bed. (2). Why would staying in the good graces of an almost non-functional Libyan government take precedence over saving Americans on the ground. Only rank amateurs, or a US government with another more sinister agenda, could have believed this was a valid argument for doing nothing. (3). The descriptions of al-Shariah as a "charity-based" local group are false. The group also exists, and was formed, in the southern desert that links Libya with French West Africa and is reported to be active in FWA. Why was there no mention of this, or at least an attempt to deny such published reports. (4). Further, the "charity" description of al-Shariah is exactly what one could write of the Taliban whenever they first enter an area. Why did the NYT not even mention this similarity. (5). Why did The Times assume that the stories told to their reporter by various Libyan militia leaders should be believed when the article itself shows them lying, covering for each other and behaving as if they were leading during the attack and are still in charge in Libya. (6). Equally important, there was no NYT reaction to the authentic "leaked intel" report that there is proof of four mortar shells landing squarely in the building that night. Every mortar expert asked has said that such precision takes experience, practice, and actual distance information from the firing point to the building and that it can't be done from the back of a small pick-up truck as is commonly used by terrorists. (7). And, while not relevant to al-Qaida's participation, why did The Times not even mention that the four Americans' bodies were carried through the area after they were killed. BRIEFLY, the Times report adds nothing to the Benghazi puzzle except for the few facts confirmed by US "officials." Who authorized these officials to talk to The Times. This is the real story. WHY did Obama and Clinton let Stevens and the others die? Why did they tell US security and the CIA to stand down? Why to this day do they refuse to let people who might answer these questions testify before Congress? WHY??? AND - why has The Times decided right now to back a false account of what the White House did and/or did not do that night. What has the White House promised The Times in exchange for its support of Obama's unsupportable position about Benghazi? Is The Times article just another effort to cover up the truth?