Benghazi Won't Go Away - No Matter How Much Liberals Want To Hide The Truth

Ex-CIA boss Morell gives unorthodox reasons for omitting key Benghazi details

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April 03, 2014


In his opening statement during highly anticipated testimony Wednesday on Benghazi, former CIA deputy director Michael Morell claimed to be an intelligence professional who was willing to lay out the facts -- no matter how damaging.

"I take very seriously the allegations about how the CIA in general and about how I in particular handled the analysis and the talking points," Morell told the House Intelligence Committee, in his first public testimony on the Benghazi attacks. "The ethical code under which intelligence officers carry out their responsibilities calls for total objectivity."

But Morell's own testimony would appear to undercut that statement.

Early on, Morell made a startling claim about the so-called “talking points,” the faulty narrative that initially blamed a protest for the attack.

On the talking points, Morell said he dropped information about CIA security warnings -- which were factual and accurate -- because he thought it would be unprofessional to embarrass then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's State Department.

This raised eyebrows, considering those warnings had alerted others that security conditions were rapidly deteriorating in eastern Libya. The warnings were not acted on, and four Americans, including ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed in the 2012 attack.

"You take out everything that is even related to warnings and a bunch of other stuff too,” Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said. "To me it seems like you are more interested in protecting the State Department than the State Department is, and more interested in protecting the FBI than the FBI."

In his defense, Morell responded: "I simply saw this as a way for CIA to pound its chest and say, ‘look, we warned’; therefore laying all the blame on the State Department. I did not think that appropriate."

In an email, one day before the talking points were used by then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on national television, where she wrongly blamed a protest, then-CIA Director David Petraeus told Morell the talking points were so devoid of fact that they were useless.

But despite his boss' reservations, Morell went ahead with the text which limited damage to the State Department.

Thornberry told Morell: "Director Petraeus is concerned because he wanted more information about warnings in there. So that doesn't make sense to me."

The Republican chairman of the powerful House committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., also pushed Morell to explain why a reference to Al Qaeda was dropped.

"The only way we knew that was from classified sources," Morell explained. "There was nothing unclassified that said that Al Qaeda, that some of these individuals were associated with Al Qaeda."

Rogers suggested that didn’t square with the facts.

"I'm just not following that logic," Rogers countered. "Again, I came out the next day and said it had the hallmarks of an Al Qaeda attack, I don't think I was disclosing classified sources in doing it."

In the process of defending himself, Morell also contradicted administration statements immediately after the attack that no one knew who was behind it. Morell further discredited a highly touted December New York Times piece that "turned up no evidencethat al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault."

"The analysts said from the get-go that Al Qaeda was involved in this attack from the get-go," Morell said.

When Morell retired from the CIA last year, he told The Wall Street Journal he hoped to advise a presidential campaign, with anonymous sources telling the paper Morell was close to Clinton. Morell now works as a counselor at Beacon Global Strategies, a Washington D.C. firm closely aligned with the former secretary of State.

When asked about the overlapping connection between Beacon's founding partners, which include the former Republican staff director for the House Intelligence Committee where Morell testified, a Beacon statement said there was no conflict of interest.

 

(continued)

"Upon accepting the offer to join the firm in July, he [Former Intelligence Committee Staff Director Michael Allen] promptly and fully disclosed such to Congressional officials. Mr. Morell was not approached until November. Therefore, nobody could have been influenced by events that were not yet planned and had not yet occurred,” the statement said.

Bill Cowan, a Fox News military analyst who spent more than two decades working with the intelligence agencies, said his former colleagues were alarmed by Morell’s testimony, especially his statement that if he wanted the CIA’s best judgment he would go to the analysts in Washington rather than to the agency’s top operatives in the field.

“I have a lot of friends inside and outside the agency who are absolutely incensed that Morell would take the word…of analysts in Washington DC over the chief of station,” Cowan said. “I believe his testimony was a real slam to the men and women serving out there, around the world, in the CIA who are really putting their lives on the line…those people really feel like they've been betrayed - that their work maybe doesn't matter quite as much as his personal ambitions do.”

Morell confirmed in Wednesday testimony that he reviewed, but ultimately dismissed, the reporting of the intelligence community’s top officer on the ground in Libya, the Chief of Station, who reported throughout the first week after the attack there was no protest that night.


http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...thodox-reasons-for-omitting-key-details-from/

 

You know the saddest part of this tragedy should be the loss of 4 brave Americans. And initially it truly was. Thanks to a small group of ideologues twisted enough to use this tragedy for their own political gain, it will not be remembered so much as the loss of these brave individuals serving their country the way it should be remembered instead the word Benghazi will be associated with a bunch of sick bastards that seized on a tragedy for purely political reasons. What a sad way to honor these brave Americans.

If they had any capacity for self-reflection, they would know that they will be judged harshly by history. If they had any capacity for self-reflection they probably wouldn't have gone down this dark path in the first place.

If you have the capacity for shame, now would be the time to experience it.

 

...and it is....

What troubles those of us in the real world is how could the most telegraphed attack in history been allowed to happen? Who are the incompetent people responsible & what are we doing to make sure these people are removed & it doesn't happen again?

Another sad part of this tragedy is how the WH is turning valid concerns into something political!

 

Do you remember when you had this to say?

http://www.partisanlines.com/thread...o-blame-for-benghazi.50826/page-2#post-235785

Perhaps you don't remember, but I certainly do. If the truth be known, you couldn't care less about the lives of four brave Americans in Benghazi. You don't want seekers of the truth to scratch away at lies told by the Obama administration. After all, the truth might embarrass Obama or Hillary Clinton, but Benghazi has been laid at their doorstep and it will be impossible, try as they might, to sweep it under the rug.

The least this country owes is the truth to the four brave Americans who gave their lives in Benghazi. The best way to honor these brave men is for every American to have "Give me the truth!" on their tongues every hour of every day. When was the last time that phrase ever crossed your lips?

 

...Aaaaaand the capacity for self-reflection is again non-existent.

 

Come on, Little Joe, repeat it with me: GIVE ME THE TRUTH! You can do it... yes, you can.

 

You know the saddest part of this tragedy should be the loss of 4 brave Americans. And initially it truly was. Thanks to a small group of ideologues twisted enough to use this tragedy for their own political gain, it will not be remembered so much as the loss of these brave individuals serving their country the way it should be remembered instead the word Benghazi will be associated with a bunch of sick bastards that seized on a tragedy for purely political reasons. What a sad way to honor these brave Americans.

If they had any capacity for self-reflection, they would know that they will be judged harshly by history. If they had any capacity for self-reflection they probably wouldn't have gone down this dark path in the first place.

If you have the capacity for shame, now would be the time to experience it.

 

Wait now ... did 9/11 go away yet already?

 

Hey look, now FOX reports the GOP has seen the light.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/04/1...ed-with-military-response-to-benghazi-attack/

Coin dave and the pimple face can line up to kiss butts now.

 

""I think I've pretty well been satisfied that given where the troops were, how quickly the thing all happened and how quickly it dissipated, we probably couldn't have done more than we did," McKeon told reporters at a roundtable discussion. "

 

Been almost a week, how did coin dave and rlm miss this event on their unbiased faux news entertainment programs?

 

Oh, I have no doubt the MILITARY did all it could. I praise our MILITARY for what they were able to do that night. Nope, I have absolutely no problem at all with what the MILITARY was able to accomplish, all things considered. Thanks for posting that link!

 

Well, President Obama is the Commander-in-Chief of the MILITARY. Thank you!

 

Benghazi has gone away. It seems that the only ones who still think it's a significant issue are people such as our Bagger friends here. As usual, the Faux propaganda mill is speaking only to the choir. For better or worse I don't see that anyone else is all that worked up about it anymore.

 

That they got worked-up about it at all reveals the nature of their character: Rotten to the core.

 

I praise our military men and women for the actions they took since they're the ones who actually do the work. I'm just giving praise where praise is due.

 

That you DIDN'T get worked up over the death of our Ambassador and his aides by terrorists reveals the nature of your character: Worthless gutter-slime (who parrots JoeNation constantly, btw).

 

Nah:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/int...ress-should-continue-to-investigate-benghazi/

 

And president Obama thanks you for your support.