“State Dept Continues to Hide Identities of Benghazi Survivors from Congress”:
As the congressional investigation into the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, continues to heat up, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters on Monday that the administration is allowing survivors of the attack and other Department employees to come forward and tell the truth about what happened.
“We have always encouraged any State Department employee who wants to share their story and tell the truth,” Ventrell said on Monday, according to the Washington Post.
But a letter the State Department’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Thomas Gibbons sent to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on the same day tells a completely different story. Gibbons was responding to a request from Graham for the administration to allow Congress to interview the five Diplomatic Security agents who survived the attack.
“The Department appreciates your interest in talking to the five State Department Diplomatic Security agents who survived the attack,” Gibbons wrote. “At the same time, we have serious concerns about their welfare and want to be careful not to interfere with the FBI’s investigation of the attack.”
Gibbons wrote that one of the five agents who survived “is currently recovering at a local military hospital” and “the other four have returned to duty.”
“All are security professionals, and we are committed to ensuring their security as they return to the field,” Gibbons continued. “Should their identities become public, they may become targets, putting their lives, as well as those of their families and the people they protect, at increased risk.”
The State Department says it is not suppressing whistleblower accounts of the attack, but it is continuing to keep survivors of the attack from Congress. While those survivors ultimately may not become whistleblowers if they choose not to come forward, Congress cannot even attempt to communicate with them because the State Department is hiding their identities.
Nonetheless, Gibbons argued in the letter that President Barack Obama’s administration has “provided Congress with extraordinary access information related to the attack in Benghazi.”
[…]
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), is expected to hear testimony from whistleblowers who have come forward at a hearing on Wednesday.
Your head spinning yet? It’s like the government is running a witness relocation program for those who might be critical of the government while claiming they’ve been extraordinarily forthcoming in their desire to see any real information on Benghazi go away or be covered up or simply be omitted from any press investigations.
It’s surreal.
Almost as surreal as the “conservative” push for immigration reform (financed by progressive facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, among others), the “conservative” push to defend incumbents and keep TEA Party insurgents from presuming to run for office, and the “conservative” push for an internet sales tax — a precursor to the VAT tax supported by the American Conservative Union, which each year gives us CPAC, trophies for those conservatives who most ardently support the establishment’s candidates, and another push for another Bush.
Up is down. Black is white. Simon is Schuster.
And all we can do is, well…
(h/t sdferr)
I thought that filmmaker was still in jail so what could be the problem?
Don’t tell me that international Islamic terrorists could be involved and be a continuing threat, come on now, what difference would that make?
The administration is playing three card monte with the Benghazi survivors?
Figures that a bunch of street hoods from Chicago would take that scam to new heights.
“We couldn’t do anything!”, says Congressman Cummings, echoing the ObaZma administration. “Couldn’t do ANYTHING!”
Why is Elijah Cummings testifying?
And therewith the Democrat Committee minority declares it is “all in” for the administration cover-up. There will be no co-operation getting to the truth.
– C Span is not covering the hearings on their live TV channels. You can hear it on Cspan Radio if you are persistent . Seems when you select in the normal way, by clicking on the Cspan radio logo, you get the schedule. ?????
– There is a box in the upper left of the screen that lets you select “Cspan radio – Live.”
– How far will they go to cover this up???????
I’m watching it online at CSPAN3.
So, basically, FEST is Rainbow Six?
C-SPAN3 link: http://www.c-span.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN3/
– Ok. Now they have the hearings on Cspan3. Total confusion.
– Just to add to the confusion there seems to be a delay between the video and radio versions.
– What a total crock.
Fox is showing it. In HD, even.
“On the return of the Japanese fleet to Hashirajima on 14 June the wounded were immediately transferred to naval hospitals; most were classified as “secret patients”, placed in isolation wards and quarantined from other patients and their own families to prevent the secret of this major defeat from getting out to the general populace.[122]
The remaining officers and men were quickly dispersed to other units of the fleet and, with no chance to see family or friends, were shipped to units in the South Pacific where the majority died.[123]
By contrast none of the flag officers or staff of the Combined Fleet was penalized, with Nagumo later being placed in command of the rebuilt carrier force. [124]”
Battle of Midway
You expected something else?
Choices, I continue to believe Ernst, are possible. It isn’t a question of expectation, so much.
Cummings chooses now, for instance, to testify “But we couldn’t do anything!” He has a duty to protect the President’s ass. He says as much. But then I think, no, Mr. Cummings, you do not have a duty to protect the President’s ass. You make a choice to protect the President’s ass.
“Should their identities become public, they may become targets, putting their lives, as well as those of their families and the people they protect, at increased risk.”
Islamic whatnow? I think what State was saying there is that if these people’s names are revealed, they and their families are going to be targeted by Democrats, Leftists, Progressives, and the various other scum that make up the Loyal Opposition.
Merely being kidnapped by jihadists? Getting off easy.
Not for the Democrat/media/cultural-institutional complex, they aren’t.
Now Caroline Maloney chooses to take the same line of argumentation: “We couldn’t do anything!”
These are choices. Nothing prevents the Democrats from asking questions of the witnesses, rather than making testimonial speeches of their own.
The Democrats chose power in 1998-99. And have reaffirmed that choice at every opportunity since. For Cummings or Maloney or any other Democrat to chose to to investigate, they would first have to chose to relinquish power.
i thought simon is garfinkle
he’s garfarkle
Why is Eleanor Norton on this panel? DC doesn’t even have voting rights, do they?
– They have a special classification wherein they are given “non-voting representation”. DC is weirdville in every possible sense.
I thought that was the case. She should sit there and STFU since she’s profoundly stupid and irrelevant.
Why is Eleanor Norton on this panel?
To obfuscate, spin and deflect, by the looks of it. Doing a pretty good job, I’d say.
black caucus folks are very proggtarded
SW, we ain’t seen nothing yet. I saw Sheila Jackson Lee and her hairpiece sitting there, as well.
black caucus folks are very proggtarded
A lot of them have been out and out communists for decades.
Hicks: Higher-ups at State told me not to talk to GOP congressman about Benghazi; Update: “Effectively demoted”
– First the cover up, now obstruction. All we need next is one of Hillary’s aides to commit suicide under suspicious circumstances and the triangulation will be complete.
Elijah Cummings needs an ass-kicking.