With the presidential election behind us, it’s now time for the 10th in a series about Fox News’s Oct. 26 story on Benghazi, Libya.
On Oct. 26, Fox News published a big story on the U.S. response to the Sept. 11 attacks on a diplomatic installation in Benghazi. Beset by incompetence and slow-footedness, the Central Intelligence Agency failed to capably defend U.S. personnel against the Libyan attackers, alleged the piece by Fox’s Jennifer Griffin. Four U.S. personnel died in the clashes.
The U.S. military had surveillance technology in place to capture a portion of the conflict. Griffin’s story explains:
Fox News has learned that there were two military surveillance drones redirected to Benghazi shortly after the attack on the consulate began. They were already in the vicinity. The second surveillance craft was sent to relieve the first drone, perhaps due to fuel issues. Both were capable of sending real time visuals back to U.S. officials in Washington, D.C. Any U.S. official or agency with the proper clearance, including the White House Situation Room, State Department, CIA, Pentagon and others, could call up that video in real time on their computers.
That’s from the Web story published on FoxNews.com. Notice how carefully Griffin articulates her reporting; she doesn’t make any representations about who was watching these “visuals,” but rather reports only that the video was available.
There are two Fox Newses, however. One is the Fox News that Griffin inhabits. The other is the one that Sean Hannity inhabits.
On “Hannity,” Griffin’s reporting on video surveillance has gotten the elastic treatment. On the night of Oct. 29, right around the time Superstorm Sandy was greeting the Jersey shore, Hannity was interviewing Charles Woods, the father of fallen Benghazi defender Tyrone Woods. He said to Hannity:
CHARLES WOODS: Let’s say I don’t want to point any fingers, but obviously people in the White House were watching this happen real-time. Someone in the White House or many people in the White House watched the events unfolding and knew that if they gave the order to stand down that my son would die. They watched my son die.
Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council, tells the Erik Wemple Blog, “No one at the White House watched live footage of the Benghazi attacks from the situation room or anywhere else in the White House.”
Hannity himself has tuned his video attacks to a different channel. On Wednesday night, in a chat with author Bob Woodward, Hannity began inveighing against the Obama administration’s handling of Benghazi:
HANNITY: But let me ask you this: We don’t know where the president was on the night of 9/11, when this happened. We don’t know what he knew. He denied for two weeks what was — what we know our State Department watched in real-time, according to this woman [State Department official Charlene] Lamb, who testified [before Congress on Oct. 10].
Bolded text added to highlight Hannity’s version of a campaign theme. On Friday, Nov. 2, with Liz Cheney, he said:
HANNITY: There is no food in some places. And [the president] is gone. He is out back to Vegas. He seems but not a photo op of what he did with Benghazi. Was he in the situation room? Was he aware that the State Department was watching this in real time?
On Oct. 31, with Newt Gingrich, he said:
HANNITY: Well, there are three aspects to this from my perspective, before during and after the ambassador requested extra security. He was denied. They reduced the force at one point so who made that decision?
Then it’s during this entire episode, we know that according to Charlene Lamb, our government, our State Department was watching this in real-time. Where was president?
And on Oct. 30, with Fred Thompson, he said:
HANNITY: Why two weeks after the attack were you still denying it was a terrorist attack when we now know that our State Department and intelligence knew and were watching this in real-time? So you’re offended, Mr. President?
When asked whether the State Department was indeed watching the Benghazi attacks in real time, a State official responded, “Nobody at the Department had the ability to watch either of the attacks in real time.”
read more at....
Drone secrecy, Benghazi cover-up and phony Iran deal?
Unlike domestic policy, Congress has a limited role to play in foreign policy. The power of the purse is key, as are oversight and confirmation hearings, but the president is essentially in the driver’s seat when it comes to national security.
In the Obama administration there is no more essential task than in working to make the administration more transparent about its missteps and more definitive about its policy choices.
In what seems like a movie plot, we learn the Iranians a week before the election took a shot at a U.S. drone, a fact withheld from the public until after the election. The New York Times reports: “Iranian warplanes shot at an American military surveillance drone flying over the Persian Gulf near Iran last week, Pentagon officials disclosed Thursday. They said that the aircraft, a Predator drone, was flying in international airspace and was not hit and that the episode had prompted a strong protest to the Iranian government. The shooting, which involved two Russian-made Su-25 jets known as Frogfoots, occurred on Nov. 1 and was the first known instance of Iranian warplanes firing on an American surveillance drone.” Even the Times concedes the problem here:
[T]he failure to disclose a hostile encounter with Iran’s military at a time of increased international tensions over the disputed Iranian nuclear program — and five days before the American presidential election — raises questions for the Obama administration. Had the Iranian attack been disclosed before Election Day, it is likely to have been viewed in a political context — interpreted either as sign of the administration’s weakness or, conversely, as an opportunity for President Obama to demonstrate leadership.
Cliff May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies calls the Iranian move “a provocative act, a stick in the eye.” May notes it is a test of sorts, an effort to see if President Obama is desperate for a deal on nuclear weapons development. Will he put the brakes on widely reported secret talks? “If not, he wants the negotiations more than they do – that kind of thing is helpful to know and to reinforce,” May cautions. He adds: “Killing Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, plotting terrorism right in the U.S. capital – they [the Iranians] like to remind themselves, us and the world that they can do these things with impunity.”
Panetta: Aircraft not close to stop Benghazi attack
Published Friday, November 9, 2012
By DONNA CASSATA Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is telling Congress that the military did not have armed aircraft near Libya that could have helped defend against the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
In a letter to Republican Sen. John McCain on Friday, Panetta specifically addressed the claim that the military could have dispatched armed unmanned aerial vehicles, AC-130 gunships or fighter jets to thwart the attack.
The Pentagon chief said these aircraft weren’t near Benghazi and they were not an effective option.
Panetta insisted that the U.S. military did everything “they were in position” to do to respond to the attack and spared no effort save the four American lives.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter.
Read more here: http://www.islandpacket.com/2012/11/09/2272544/panetta-aircraft-not-close-to.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.islandpacket.com/2012/11/09/2272544/panetta-aircraft-not-close-to.html#storylink=cpy
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