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The Scandal In Libya: On the night Bengazi burned and four Americans died, forces ready to deploy were told to stand down and our secretary of state cut out of the loop her department's counter-terrorism bureau. Few people know who Gregory Hicks and Mark Thompson are, but then nobody knew who John Dean was when he testified at the Watergate hearings and blew the Nixon administration and its coverup out of the water. "I thought it was a terrorist attack from the get-go," says Hicks, the U.S. deputy chief of mission in Libya on that fateful night. "I think everybody...

SNIP Throughout the night, sources say Americans on the ground in Libya at times felt helpless and abandoned. "We relied on Washington for dispassionate assessment," one eyewitness told CBS News. "Instead, they [Washington officials] were asking us what help we needed. We answered: 'Send reinforcements!' " But they were told immediate help wasn't available. Embassy personnel say they repeatedly asked the Defense Attache on site in Tripoli for military assistance. "Isn't there anything available?" one Embassy official says he asked. "But the answer was 'no.'" "What about Aviano?" the official pressed, referencing the NATO air base with US assets in...

Everybody in the mission" in Benghazi, Libya, thought the attack on a U.S. consulate there last Sept. 11 was an act of terror "from the get-go," according to excerpts of an interview investigators conducted with the No. 2 official in Libya at the time, obtained exclusively by CBS News' "Face the Nation." "I think everybody in the mission thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning," Greg Hicks, a 22-year foreign service diplomat who was the highest-ranking U.S. official in Libya after the strike, told investigators under authority of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Hicks, the former...

War On Terror: Eight months after the Benghazi attack, the FBI begs for help by releasing photos of three suspects, reports surface about an al-Qaida link and the State Department's review panel is under investigation. Ahead of highly anticipated hearings set for Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee featuring testimony from State Department whistle-blowers — of which a clueless President Obama professes no knowledge — the FBI has released photos of three people who were at the U.S. consulate when it was attacked last Sept. 11 — pictures that were available on Day One. But of course...

White House spokesman Jay Carney said in response to a question about the September 11, 2012 Benghazi terror attack that it "happened a long time ago."

Could explain why murdered ambassador was in attacked facility TEL AVIV – Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., may have dropped a bombshell in an interview with Fox News in which he stated that murdered U.S Ambassador Christopher Stevens was in Benghazi to keep weapons caches from falling into the hands of terrorists. Until now, no official explanation for Stevens deployment to Libya has acknowledged any such activity. Stevens reportedly died from smoke inhalation as a result of the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. special mission and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya. The official State Department probe into the Benghazi...

CBS News has learned the Obama admin has turned Benghazi docs to senate intel commOne source who viewed the docs says someone in a federal agency "press shop" was involved in changing the talking points to remove al QaedaAn official familiar with the docs says there were warnings from Libya sent to Washington in the days leading up to the attack--(cont)--that specifically warned of an imminent attack on the US compound in BenghaziA source familiar with the docs says most every communication between Libya and DC from the start of the attacks referenced ----al Qaeda or al Qaeda affiliates as...

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Thursday that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told him "the president was informed of the April and June attacks." One of those attacks, in June, blew a hole in the perimeter wall of the Benghazi compound. The two strikes were among dozens of security incidents recorded in the region in the months preceding Sept. 11, and in hindsight have been described as warning signs.

Of all of the characteristics one might ascribe to Susan Rice, prescience is probably not the first thing that comes to mind. Surprisingly however, five years ago she said something that demonstrated a momentary clarity of vision that is staggering. In a March 2008 interview she said the following: “Clinton hasn’t had to answer the phone at 3:00 in the morning, and yet she attacked Barack Obama for not being ready. They’re both not ready to have that 3 AM phone call.” If the events immediately following Benghazi showed Ambassador Rice to be a hapless marionette of the administration, the...

Obama gave his chief counterterrorism advisor, John Brennan, who is now the nominee to be the next leader of the CIA, a blank check. Brennan could do just about whatever he needed to do in North Africa and the Mideast, contend Murphy and Webb. Brennan chose to conduct a dangerous classified war without looping in Stevens, who paid with his life for his ignorance, according to the book. The Joint Special Operations Command, which Brennan controls, is a collection of special forces outside of the regular military command originally formed as a hostage-rescue team. But in the middle of last...

Finally, we have the answer, thanks to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. In his reluctant Senate testimony, he provided the missing piece of the puzzle: The commander in chief was MIA. The coverup was created to protect his absence. According to Panetta, President Obama checked in with his military team early on during the attack, then checked out for the rest of the night. The next day, we already knew, he blamed the video maker and flew to Las Vegas for a campaign event. Meanwhile, half a world away, Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans had been slaughtered by Islamists....

February 1, 2013 State Dept. Publicized Names, Photos of Stevens' Benghazi Security Detail Before 9/11/12; Suppressed Their Identities Afterward Terence P. Jeffrey State Department Special Agent Mario Montoya instructs Libyan local guards in marksmanship in Benghazi in 2011 in a photo published in the December 2011 issue of the State Department's State Magazine. (State Dept. photo) (CNSNews.com) - The State Department took two dramatically different approaches to dealing with the identities of the Diplomatic Security (DS) agents it sent to Benghazi, Libya, to protect Amb. Chris Stevens and the small number of other temporary U.S. diplomatic personnel the department rotated...

Never has one live television event held the potential to enrage a nation, destroy a sitting president, disqualify an aspiring President and delegitimize a malignant, corrupted media industry than the testimony of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before Congress, today. Prior to this public hearing, Good Morning America will have spent more time interviewing Honey Boo-Boo during one show, than all network news stations, combined (excluding Fox News) have spent discussing the details surrounding the murder of a U.S. Ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012. The last murder of a U.S. Ambassador occurred in...

Senate hearing: 9:00a.m. EST. House hearing: 2:00 p.m. ESTWatch live here. Also on C-SPAN 3. In her first testimony since the Benghazi attack, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will participate in a full day of hearings Wednesday about U.S. diplomatic security and the American mission in Libya. Sec. Clinton will appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the morning followed by an afternoon testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In December, the State Department's highest ranking foreign service officers, William Burns and Thomas Nides, testified before Congressional lawmakers in the Secretary's place. They discussed a new report by...

Republic of Korea: For the record. Pak Ku'n-hye (Park Geun-hye) of the New Frontier Party won South Korea's presidential election on 19 December, media reported. She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee and the first woman elected to be president of the Republic of Korea. That should confound the North! North Korea-Iran: According to a Japanese news service, an Iranian lawmaker told the service that North Korea informed Iran in October of its plan to launch a satellite. The head of an Iranian parliamentary delegation to North Korea, Hamid Reza Taraghi, revealed talks took place mid-October with the North's delegates...

And so the reckoning begins. Only hours after a special task force concluded on Wednesday that “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies” may have contributed to the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, the State Department’s security chief resigned and three other officials were relieved of their duties. What was lacking in the report, however, was any sense of who was responsible farther up the chain. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Accountability Review Board—chaired by retired Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering and vice chaired by another national-security heavyweight, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael...

John Bolton, former U.N. ambassador under President George W. Bush, suggested Monday night that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fabricated a "diplomatic illness" in order to dodge scheduled testimony this week on the Sept. 11 anniversary attack in Benghazi, Libya. Speaking on Fox News, Bolton claimed "every foreign service officer in every foreign ministry in the world" is familiar with coming up with such "diplomatic illnesses" when they "don't want to go to a meeting or a conference, or an event." "And this is a diplomatic illness to beat the band," Bolton said of recent news that Clinton had fainted...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will testify on Dec. 20 before the House of Representatives and Senate foreign affairs committees on a report on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, the committees said on Wednesday. The attack on Sept. 11 killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, and raised questions about the adequacy of security in far-flung posts. Republicans have criticized Democratic President Barack Obama's administration for its flawed early public explanations of the attack. They have also criticized shifting explanations of why talking points given to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations...

Republicans are 'not giving up' on BenghaziBy Julian Pecquet - 12/15/12 03:24 PM ET Republican lawmakers are vowing to keep pressing the administration on Benghazi despite Susan Rice’s decision to drop her bid to become secretary of State. “We'll continue to seek answers,” a Republican Senate aide told The Hill. “We're not giving up on it.” Rice’s decision to step aside averted a contentious confirmation fight with Republican senators that might have pointed to an end to the political battle over the U.S. consulate attack. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations had become the flash-point for criticism since describing...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won't testify to Congress next week on Benghazi, after fainting and suffering a concussion Saturday and due to her ongoing stomach ailment. "While suffering from a stomach virus, Secretary Clinton became dehydrated and fainted, sustaining a concussion," Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Philippe Reines said in a statement. "She has been recovering at home and will continue to be monitored regularly by her doctors. At their recommendation, she will continue to work from home next week, staying in regular contact with Department and other officials. She is looking forward to being back in the office...