Pickering: Why would we interview the person in charge when we could blame the flunkies,....

Hot Air ^ | 8:41 am on May 13, 2013 | Ed Morrissey

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Pickering: Why would we interview the person in charge when we could blame the flunkies, or something

posted at 8:41 am on May 13, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Want to know why State Department whistleblower Eric Nordstrom called the Accountability Review Board a whitewash designed to protect the highest ranks at Foggy Bottom?  Take a listen to the man who ran the ARB.  CBS News’ Bob Schieffer asked Thomas Pickering why the supposedly independent panel didn’t bother to depose the Secretary of State who was personally briefed about the attack on the Benghazi consulate by the second-ranking member of her mission in Libya while it unfolded.  Pickering replied that they’d already decided who was responsible for the failures in Benghazi and they saw no need to talk with the person in charge (via NRO):

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Well,...well.

[rdcbn]

Of course they already knew who to blame. That was determined before they even started their investigation.

Why would they need to interview Hillary when she was the one who gave them their directions on precisely who they would place the blame on?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

after the video:

****************************************************

“The decisions were made and reviewed at the level that we fixed responsibility for failures of performance,” Pickering told CBS’ Bob Schieffer, adding, ”I believe that that’s correct.” According to Pickering, he and his colleagues had ample opportunity to interview Secretary Clinton, but concluded that conducting an interview with her was not necessary. “We knew where the responsibility rested,” he said.

Pickering isn’t too impressed with the whistleblowers, apparently:

Appearing Sunday on “Face the Nation,” Pickering defended the report, which he co-authored with former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, against criticisms from three former and current State Department officials who testified last week before the House Oversight Committee. Greg Hicks – the No. 2 official in Libya at the time of the strike that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans – told the committee he believed the report “let people off the hook.”

“They’ve tried to point a finger at people more senior than where we found the decisions were made,” Pickering said, citing specifically Clinton and Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy. Mark Thompson, the deputy coordinator for operations in the State Department’s counterterrorism bureau, told the House committee last week that Clinton attempted to cut out the bureau from communications about the attack.

Well, it’s difficult to find decision-making where one refuses to look. Recall what Nordstrom told Congress last week:

Nordstrom suggested the board’s report attempted to protect higher-ranking officials, and specifically faulted it for not looking at the key role played by Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy in failing to deliver the request for more security to Clinton.

He said a similar failure occurred in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, which killed 19 Americans.

“[The ARB] has decided to fix responsibility on the assistant secretary level and below,” said Nordstrom. “And the message to my colleagues is that if you’re above a certain level, no matter what your decision is no one’s going to question it.

“I look back and I see the last time we had a major attack was East Africa. Who was in that same position, when the unheeded messengers … were raising those concerns? It just so happens it was the same person. The under secretary for management was in that same role before.

“There’s something apparently wrong with the process of how those security recommendations are raised to the secretary.”

It’s also difficult to see the pattern when you’re deliberately fixed on the anything but the big picture.

[butterdezillion]

Cut the lower levels out of the decision-making process and then claim that the decisions were made by them. Don’t investigate any higher because you’ve already blamed it on the subordinates.

Got it. Just like every unaccountable tyrant in some banana republic...

I hope this lets the lower levels know exactly where they stand, and why it is in their best interests, as well as the best interests of the country, to mutiny against these tyrants.

[qaz123]

The title sums it up. What low level stooge are we going to pin this on? But, with something this big, its hard to imagine that there is one willing to fall on that sword. If more people start coming forward, as is being reported, who the hell knows where this will lead. You’d think, by now, that at least a few folks that operate in this world are smart enough to copy emails and record conversations so they can protect themselves.
These people, for as smart as they think they are and tell people they are, are so out of their league its painful. That’s why they should all just stay in their little world of academia, community organizing and being public defenders. And then they can leave the rest to the grownups.

[TigersEye]

Whistleblower: Hillary cut State’s counter-terrorism bureau out of Benghazi loop 05/06/2013 | Ed Morrissey

Blow-by-Blow: How Obama & Hillary Left Americans to Die

"Nordstrom further testified in writing that Hillary Clinton waived security requirements for the Benghazi consulate despite high and critical threat levels in the six categories of security standards established under the Overseas Security Policy Board and the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 1999. The waiver can only be authorized by the Secretary of State, who cannot delegate that responsibility to someone else. ”If the Secretary of State did not waive these requirements, who did so by ordering occupancy of the facilities in Benghazi and Tripoli?” Nordstrom wrote."

Why?

[butterdezillion]

Never mind that their oaths also require it of them...

[MHGinTN]

Actually, hillahag is not responsible for the immediate failures. She was responsible for drawing down the detail of guards there, and she certainly refused to upgrade defenses, but the immediate slaughter is squarely little barry bastard queer’s. He is the only one who could have given cross bordera uthority for the cavalry to come over the hill/med. he is also ultimately the one who command the Tripoli reinforcements to stay in Tripoli. The why is not even in doubt now, but the enemy (read fifth column media) will do all they can to prevent the truth from airing about their little demigod bastard barry. Hillahag is not the pResident and she could not have given authority to cross borders and rescue attempt. Hillahag is being sacrificed to cover little barry’s infected butt. The interesting thing to watch is how bent willie deals with this. I think he secretly enjoys watching hillahag get eviscerated, publicly. He is that degenerate

[Graewoulf]

Pickering knew the answers before he asked the questions: The perfect man to investigate the Zombie Obamanation Benghazi Massacre Cover Up Scandal.

Will our sorry RINOs find that Pickering will be criminally held accountable for his obvious cover up of the deliberate murder of 4 American Employees?

[rdcbn]

“Nordstrom further testified in writing that Hillary Clinton waived security requirements for the Benghazi consulate despite high and critical threat levels in the six categories of security standards established under the Overseas Security Policy Board and the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 1999. The waiver can only be authorized by the Secretary of State, who cannot delegate that responsibility to someone else. ”If the Secretary of State did not waive these requirements, who did so by ordering occupancy of the facilities in Benghazi and Tripoli?” Nordstrom wrote.”

Why?

---

Why?

Perhaps because because the whole overthrow of the Qaddafi Regime was a United States enabled hostile take over of Libya's Oil wealth and Gaddafi's Trillion dollar European shadow empire of grey area , shell company investments in some of the most powerful and influential companies in Europe.

And Obama and Clinton were the running the show like it was their own piggy bank though an unaccountable personal representative who they did not want anyone in the formal chain of command taking too close of a look at.

You learn a lot in the first moments of a scandal before everyone is on the same page. One of the State Department people on camera stated that the Benghazi attack was a huge disaster because Amb Stevens was in possession of a lot of sensitive oil contracts and those Libyan OIl Contracts had gone missing.

[Christie at the beach]

->> Pickering: Why would we interview the person in charge when we could blame the flunkies, or something

>> head to desk << Twilight zone.

[spawn44]

We asked the people that attended the POLICY MEETINGS about what the POLICY MAKERS told them. And we concluded it didn’t go any further than those attending the meetings. Why, because we asked them. This FOOL should be fired immediately. Any wonder why government should be cut in half and MORONS DRONES like this put jail for lying.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Oil Contacts?....tell us more.

[TigersEye]

Yes, well, there is that! lol

[rdcbn]

At the start of the Benghazi disaster, the State Department People and the White House were in pure shell shocked, deer in the headlights panic.

One of the State Department spokes persons on camera made the statement that a huge disaster had occurred because Ambassador Stevens was carrying sensitive and secret documents, some of which were oil contracts and those documents had gone missing after the attack.

[NTHockey]

Well, which “flunky” is going to be the regime’s John Dean.

[kcvl]

Ambassador Thomas Pickering: Clinton Has Accepted Responsibility

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Former-U.N.-Ambassador-Thomas-R.-Pickering-on-MSNBC-051213.jpg

The 42-year veteran of the U.S. State Department who wrote a report chiding it for “grossly inadequate” security measures at the consulate building in Benghazi, Libya leading up to a September 2012 attack defended former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton on Sunday from repeated Republican criticism.

Ambassador Thomas Pickering told MSNBC host Alex Witt that GOP lawmakers’ insistence that Clinton was part of a cover-up after the attack “seems to me to have drifted now very much into the realm of political partisanship.”

However, he did not offer an opinion on the much-criticized talking points issued by the White House after the attack, later found to be edited multiple times.

“I did not study in detail the question of the talking points,” he told Witt. “Therefore, I have to tell you I reserve judgement on that particular issue. Had I been asked to study that in detail — it was not part of our report — I would certainly have an opinion for you.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/13/benghazi-report-author-defends-clinton-despite-grossly-inadequate-security-before-attack/

******

Pickering serves on the board of directors for the American Iranian Council, an organization devoted to the normalization of relations between Iran and America.

[Cyber Liberty]

CBS News’ Bob Schieffer asked Thomas Pickering why the supposedly independent panel didn’t bother to depose the Secretary of State who was personally briefed about the attack on the Benghazi consulate by the second-ranking member of her mission in Libya while it unfolded.

I'm sure Schieffer's reply was along the lines of, "Well, of course! We wouldn't want the Republicans to sully any more reputations than we have to, Tom."

[kcvl]

(Before It’s News)

Thomas Pickering chaired the Accountability Review Board (ARB) on Benghazi. There were five members. Hillary chose four of them. She chose Pickering. Pickering chose not to interview her or her staff for his final report and analysis on what went wrong at that sorrowful U.S. Special Mission. Pickering, a former Ambassador to Russia and India (appointed by Bill Clinton) and Admiral Mike Mullen, also on the ARB, have refused to testify in front of the House of Representatives Oversight Committee. Back in November 2012, Pickering claimed America is a misguided country full of Islamophobes, and just two weeks after Hillary pegged him to chair the ARB, he indicated that the U.S. could be a holocaust for Muslims due to our “unfamiliarity” with the theology. Perhaps the problem is that we are too familiar…we get it, we understand it completely in large part because we see “moderate” Muslims doing so little to counter the radicals, and we’ve seen the death and destruction throughout the world. No small thing.

As today’s big Benghazi hearing gets underway, Republicans are saying Ambassador Thomas Pickering – the co-chairman of the State Department’s committee investigating of the Benghazi attack – has refused to testify today.

The State Department says the opposite is true – that Pickering wanted to testify but Republicans would not let him.

“Ambassador Pickering volunteered to appear,” a State Department official tells ABC News. “But [Government Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Darrell] Issa said no.”

“That is 100 percent untrue,” says Issa spokesman Frederick Hill.

In fact, Hill has released letters dated February 22 inviting Pickering (read them here), and the other co-chairman of the investigation, former Joint Chiefs Chair retired Adm. Michael Mullen, to testify at today’s hearing.

“Ambassador Pickering initially told the Committee he was not available on that date,” Hill tells ABC News. “When asked about a different date, he said he was not inclined to testify.”

http://beforeitsnews.com/opinion-conservative/2013/05/pickering-mullen-refuse-to-testify-on-benghazi-issa-hillary-not-a-target-2640542.html