Free Republic

A House committee is planning to hold a hearing next week on the Libya consulate attack, following up on an issue that Republicans had emphasized before the presidential election in questioning President Obama's foreign policy record. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the consulate in Benghazi. A local Libyan extremist group is suspected of carrying out the attack, but the Obama administration has been criticized for its confusing explanation for the strike and for security warnings that apparently weren't heeded. The House Intelligence Committee will hold its hearing on the...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The California man behind an anti-Muslim film that led to violence in many parts of the Middle East was sentenced Wednesday to a year in federal prison for probation violations in an unrelated matter, then issued a provocative statement through his attorney. The sentence was the result of a plea bargain between lawyers for Mark Bassely Youssef and federal prosecutors. Youssef admitted in open court that he had used several false names in violation of his probation order and obtained a driver's license under a false name. He was on probation for a bank fraud case....

He's not a Jew. At least, that's the latest on the man behind the anti-Islam film, "Innocence of Muslims," that has fueled attacks on U.S. diplomatic installations in Libya, Egypt and Yemen, leaving the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, dead. The filmmaker appears to be an Egyptian Christian rather than an Israeli Jew, as he had claimed in interviews. The Associated Press tracked down an Egyptian Coptic Christian living in Southern California who admitted to involvement with the film's logistics, and whose middle name and a known alias closely resemble the apparently fake name - Sam Bacile -...

No word yet on what the violation was, but I assume it must be far more serious than using an alias or a computer. Given the insanity of the past two weeks, replete with the White House nudging Google to pull the video off of YouTube and the State Department running ads on Pakistani TV to apologize for a movie they had nothing to do with, I can’t quite believe the DOJ would risk the perception that they’re punishing this guy for a thoughtcrime unless something serious was involved. There has to be a real crime underlying this. Right? The...

We now have a firsthand account that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged the Innocence of Muslims filmmaker (Nakoula Basseley Nakoula) would be “arrested and prosecuted” for making the video the administration spent weeks blaming for the Benghazi attack. That means Hillary outwardly expressed a desire to make Nakoula a political prisoner. There is another individual in Hillary’s past who appears to be living the life of a political prisoner right this very second; his name is Peter Paul and his ordeal began in the year 2000. Paul was the individual behind a completely different video trailer. In 2007, a...

The California man behind an anti-Muslim film that roiled the Middle East was sentenced Wednesday to a year in prison for violating his probation stemming from a 2010 bank fraud conviction by lying about his identity. U.S. District Court Judge Christina Snyder immediately sentenced Mark Basseley Youssef after he admitted to four of the eight alleged violations, including obtaining a fraudulent California driver's license. Prosecutors agreed to drop the other four allegations under an agreement with Youssef's attorneys, which also included more probation. None of the violations had to do with the content of "Innocence of Muslims," a film that...

As more information comes to the light about the Obama administration's Benghazi cover-up, a former Navy SEAL officer who once took a military detachment to Libya suggests President Barack Obama was either AWOL -- essentially an "empty chair" -- or deliberately denied Americans under siege in Benghazi the aid they needed by not authorizing "cross-border authority," without which rescue operations could have taken place. Matt Bracken, the former SEAL, writes "only the president can give the order for our military to cross a nation’s border without that nation’s permission." He notes that Obama granted "cross-border authority" for Americans to enter...

I analyzed this video in three ways. First I examined the video itself to determine what was happening and where. Second I wanted to determine what was being said to see if I could determine if there was any clear evidence of pre-planning or coordination. This prima facie evidence was available to our government on September 12th, Benghazi time and September 11th, U.S. EDT. If there is evidence of pre-planning or coordination in either the video itself, or in the spoken word of the terrorists, it would be obvious that our government has either been lying to us all along...

This photograph is actually a video still captured from an Al Jazeera video of the amazing scene at the U.S. Benghazi Consulate compound sometime before 11:30 pm. Four additional captioned photos can be found at my Flickr page below. This is the first in a series of photos I will be posting over the weekend along with some new video. In each instance it is my goal to present information that the U.S. news media has by and large failed to present to the American public. Most of the video and video still images were obtained from Middle Eastern sources....

Senior counterterrorism officials felt cut out of the loop the night of the attack on the Benghazi consulate, according to emails that were shared with Fox News by military sources who are familiar with discussions of how to respond the night of the Sept. 11 attack. Top State Department officials decided not to send an interagency rapid response unit designed to respond to terrorist attacks known as a FEST team, a Foreign Emergency Support Team. This team from the State Department and CIA has a military Joint Special Operations Command element to it and has been routinely deployed to assist...

America is a seething hotbed of “Islamophobia,” filled with ignorant racist rubes who irrationally fear the benign Muslim religion, according to the Obama administration’s lead investigator into the Benghazi atrocities. So said former Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering in more polished, diplomatic language during an Oct. 23 panel discussion at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. The talk was on “what role the faith community can play in fighting Islamophobia,” a make-believe mental illness that Islamists would love to have listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Radical Islam’s stateside defenders frequently accuse anti-terrorism hawks of “McCarthyism,” hurling...

As was noted on AT recently, a retired State Department Foreign Service Officer said: "Our Benghazi facility was a half-baked operation. It was not a consulate. It was a 'facility' with an ambiguous purpose, at least as far as the unclassified world is concerned." If it was not a consulate, then it was not sovereign United States territory.  This fact has important legal consequences -- as was only just touched upon (at ~13:00, but pick up at ~10:00 for full context) by Newt Gingrich on Fox News in his appearance on Greta Van Susteren's Oct. 30 show (caution: auto-play).One of...

A Libyan policeman was caught photographing the inside of the US Consulate in Benghazi on the morning of September 11, hours before US Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed in a terror attack there, and worried US consular staff complained to the Libyan Foreign Ministry over the security breach, an Arabic TV station reported on Thursday, quoting from letters found at the consulate after it was attacked. Alaan TV, a channel based in the United Arab Emirates, said the letters also showed that the Americans had been urging the Libyan authorities to provide special security arrangements for Stevens’ visit — including...

CBS News has learned that during the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Obama Administration did not convene its top interagency counterterrorism resource: the Counterterrorism Security Group, (CSG). "The CSG is the one group that's supposed to know what resources every agency has. They know of multiple options and have the ability to coordinate counterterrorism assets across all the agencies," a high-ranking government official told CBS News. "They were not allowed to do their job. They were not called upon."

Our ambassador to Libya was killed in our own consulate in Benghazi on the night of September 11. For the next six weeks, President Obama repeated the same talking point: The morning after the attack, he ordered increased security in our embassies in the region. Suddenly, on the campaign trail in Denver on October 26, he changed his story. “The minute I found out what was happening . . . I gave the directive,” he said, “to make sure we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to do. I guarantee you everybody in the CIA and military...

Former Pacific Fleet chief: We need full disclosure on Benghazi — now POSTED AT 9:31 AM ON OCTOBER 30, 2012 BY ED MORRISSEY Retired Admiral James A. Lyons likely pulled few punches as commander in chief of the US Pacific Fleet during his career … and he hasn’t started pulling punches now, either. In a blistering column at The Washington Times, the former commander blasts the lack of action from the US when the administration learned our consulate in Benghazi had come under attack, writing that “courage was lacking” that might have saved at least some of the four American...

Obama Met With Panetta, Biden on 9/11/12 55 Minutes After State Notified WH Benghazi Was Under Attack By Terence P. Jeffrey October 30, 2012 (CNSNews.com) - President Barack Obama met with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Vice President Joe Biden at the White House on Sept. 11, 2012 at 5:00 PM—just 55 minutes after a State Department email notified the White House and the Pentagon that the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi was under attack. The meeting between Obama, Panetta and Biden had been scheduled before the attack took place, and the Department of Defense is not commenting now on...

An Egyptian suspected of involvement in last month’s attack on the US mission in Benghazi in which Ambassador Chris Stevens was slain in Cairo yesterday, Wednesday. According to the Egyptian Interior Ministry, the man — named only as Hazem — died in a shoot-out with security forces at an apartment in Nasr City, northeast Cairo. They had been sent to arrest him following information received implicating him in the Benghazi attack. He is said to have recently returned from Libya. Security sources say he threw a bomb from the ground floor apartment but it bounced back into the building. Police...

CBS News has released a clip of an interview by Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes on Sep. 12 with President Barack Obama that indicates Obama knew the assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya was a premeditated terror attack--and suggests the White House later deceived the public by blaming protests against an anti-Islam video. CBS chose not to air the clip for over a month--but did air Obama’s attack on Romney that same night. Obama told Kroft that the attack in Benghazi was different from the violent protest at the U.S. embassy in Cairo: "You're right that this is...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will nominate Army Gen. David Rodriguez to succeed Gen. Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command and Marine Lt. Gen. John Paxton to succeed Gen. Joseph Dunford as assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced Thursday. Both appointments must be confirmed by the Senate. Rodriguez is the commander of U.S. Army Forces Command and has served in a “variety of key leadership roles on the battlefield,” Panetta said. He’s “a proven leader” who oversaw coalition and Afghan forces during the surge in Afghanistan, and “was the key architect of the...