Congress Must Challenge Obama on the Benghazi Conspiracy

National Security Adviser Susan Rice, who made her first Sunday morning appearance since the Sunday after the 2012 Benghazi attacks, remained unrepentant, saying she has no regrets on her words that Sunday. "Because what I said to you that morning and what I did every day since is to share the best information that we had at the time," Rice told "Meet the Press" host David Gregory. Rice, then US Ambassador to the United Nations, appeared on all five Sunday morning news shows, blaming the September 11, 2012 attack on the US diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, on an anti-Islam video produced in the United States. She admitted to Gregory this last Sunday that not all of the information she shared in 2012 turned out to be 100% correct. "But the notion that somehow I or anybody else in the administration misled the American people is patently false," she said. "And I think that's been amply demonstrated....The information I provided, which I explained to you, was what we had at the moment. It could change,...I commented that this was based on what we knew on that morning, was provided to me and my colleagues and, indeed, to Congress, by the intelligence community. And that's been well validated in many different ways since....We'll want to see the results of [an FBI] investigation to draw any definitive conclusions." Rice made similar statements on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, State of the Union with Candy Crowley, and Fox News Sunday. ~~~~~ But critics of the Obama Benghazi position have stressed that there is - and even before that September 2012 Sunday morning there was - ample evidence that the attacks, in which US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed, were not a spontaneous protest sparked by the video, but were pre-planned by an al-Qaida-linked group. Many wondered why Rice, as UN ambassador, even took on the role of spokesman that morning instead of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Rice has said she agreed to the appearances because Clinton was exhausted from dealing with Benghazi. But the controversy over that appearance cost her the job of Secretary of State, for which she was being considered after Clinton announced she was stepping down. The congressional furor over Rice's Sunday comments on Benghazi caused Rice to take her name out of consideration. ~~~~~ Here are the pieces of the Benghazi jigsaw. (1). THE OBAMA POSITION -- On September 16, 2012, five days after the Benghazi attack, Susan Rice appeared on CBS's Face the Nation to state that : "we do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this [attack] was premeditated or preplanned," but on ABC's This Week Rice said that the attack was "hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons." This was repeated as recently as February 2 when President Obama hinself told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly concerning his early insistence that the Benghazi attack was the result of an anti-Islamic video : "We revealed to the American people exactly what we understood at the time,...The notion that we would hide the ball for political purposes when, a week later, we all said, in fact, there was a terrorist attack taking place the day after, I said it was an act of terror -- that wouldn't be a very good cover-up." (2). THE CASE AGAINST THE OBAMA POSITION -- It is probable that President Obama and Secretary Clinton sent Rice to offer their agreed position, one they thought would hold up until the national and congressional outrage over Benghazi subsided. But, they had not counted on other sources coming forward. Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Secretary of State for management, said even prior to the Rice Sunday TV interviews that he believed the assault was planned. Other sources, including Libyan President Mohammed Magariaf, had expressed the view that the attack was pre-planned and that there was an al-Qaida link. Ninety-seven House Republicans sent a letter to President Obama on November 19, 2012, to say Rice's statements were "misleading" and that she should accordingly not be considered a candidate to succeed Hillary Clinton in 2013 as Secretary of State. The Democrat Senate majority responded unanimously in support of a resolution that said : "the violence in Benghazi coincided with an attack on the United States Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, which was also swarmed by an angry mob of protesters on September 11, 2012." The Democrat resolution made no mention of al-Qaida. But, as America continued to demand that the President give a reasonable explanation of what happened at Benghazi, GOP Representative Trey Gowdy, who had doubted the Obama position from the beginning, used a House hearing on May 8, 2013, to read into rhe record an email, which was never classified, that was sent on September 12, 2012, to Susan Rice, as well as many other members of the State Department. The email stated clearly that the attacks were committed by Islamists and the email contained no mention of an "angry mob" or protesters. Gowdy questioned Gregory Hicks, Foreign Service Officer and former Deputy Chief of Mission/Charge d’Affairs in Libya, and Eric Nordstrom, Diplomatic Security Officer and former US State Department Regional Security Officer in Libya, who both appeared at the hearing of the House Committee On Oversight and Government Reform on May 8, 2013. The committee held the hearing to investigate the events and response to the 2012 Benghazi attack. Gowdy asked Hicks about the Obama administration’s response to the deadly attack. Hicks said he was “embarrassed” that the attack was initially blamed on a YouTube video. “So hours after our ambassador and three others are killed in Benghazi, the president of Libya says it was an attack with possible terror links, correct?” Gowdy asked. “Yes sir, that is what I recall,” Hicks replied, adding that the Libyan president did not make any mention of “spontaneous protest” related to a video. “When Ambassador Stevens talked to you, perhaps minutes before he died, as a dying declaration, what precisely did he say to you?” Gowdy asked. “He said, ‘Greg, we are under attack,’ ” Hicks answered. Ambassador Christopher Stevens also did not make any reference to a spontaneous protest, according to Hicks. When asked about US Ambassador Susan Rice going on Sunday talk shows and blaming the attack on an anti-Moslem YouTube video “five different times,” Hicks said he was “stunned.” “My jaw dropped and I was embarrassed,” he added. Hicks also said Rice made no attempts to talk to him before speaking on TV that Sunday, despite the fact that he was the highest ranking official in Libya at the time. Gowdy later read an excerpt from a previously unreleased email sent by a State Department official identifying a terrorist group as the perpetrators of the attack the day after it occurred. The email was sent by Beth Jones, the Acting Assistant Secretary for Middle Eastern Affairs at the State Department, to Hicks and other top US officials. The email was sent on September 12, 2012, one day after the attack. “Some of these emails, even though they are not been classified, have not been released,” Gowdy explained. “Including the one I am about to read from,” : “I spoke to the Libyan ambassador and emphasized the importance of Libyan leaders continuing to make strong statements,” the Jones email read. “When he said his government expected that former Qadaffi regime elements carried out the attacks, I [Jones] told him that the group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al-Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic terrorists.” Again, that was one day after the September 11 attack and four days before Susan Rice, who had received at least the Hicks email. ~~~~~ Dear readers, we can only assume that Rice and Clinton and Obama can neither read nor use a telephone or that they are enmeshed in a continuing conspiracy to cover up the facts about what happened in Benghazi and why they did not want those facts to become public - just a short time before the election of Obama to a second term. But conspiracies are difficult to handle. They include at least two people and that is where the trouble begins. There are the smoking guns - phone call records, official agendas showing meetings, emails, text messages. And the co-conspirators may not always give identical accounts. So, if they were subpoenaed, they could be confronted with inconsistencies between the smoking guns and their position. They could be confronted with third party evidence that punches holes in their story.There is also the promise of Department of Justice immunity in exchange for breaking rank with their co-conspirators. This is why it is critically important that Congress subpoena Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Leon Panetta. Their use of the Fifth Amendment or inconsistencies in their testimony would show what Articles of Impeachment against President Obama should contain.