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WASHINGTON (AP) - The seasoned diplomat who penned a highly critical report on security at a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, defended his scathing assessment but absolved then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. "We knew where the responsibility rested," Thomas Pickering said Sunday.

Thomas Pickering - the former UN ambassador who along with former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullen prepared the Accountability Review Board report on the State Department's handling of the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya - says he didn't think it was necessary to interview former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "because in fact we knew where the responsibility rested." BOB SCHIEFFER: And good morning again. Ambassador Thomas Pickering is the one who led the State Department's investigation into how those Benghazi attacks where handled. Mr. Ambassador, you and I have known one another as you had...

May 12, 2013 Darrell Issa: House Oversight Committee to depose Pickering and Mullen over Benghazi Twitchy Staff Darrell Issa reports that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which he chairs, will depose Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Admiral Mike Mullen over Benghazi....

The Talk Shows May 12th, 2013 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Reps. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and Adam Smith, D-Wash.; Rep.-elect Mark Sanford, R-S.C.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.; Sen. Dianne Feinsweine, D-Calif.; former diplomat Thomas Pickering, who helped lead the State Department's review of the attack against the U.S. in Benghazi, Libya. FACE THE NATION (CBS): Pickering; former Defense Secretary Robert Gates; Sens. Da Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H.THIS WEEK (ABC): Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Jack Reed, D-R.I. STATE OF THE...

Washington, DC – We all know about the notorious Obama “Kill List.” CIA Director John Brennan proudly told us about that last year when he described how the O-Team decides which Americans should be executed by Hellfire Missile fired from remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs). Why hasn’t the White House used this capability to “take out” those who killed our diplomats in Benghazi, Libya last year? Clip and save this column. Herein are some important events, names, places – facts your children and grandchildren will need to know about these perilous times: Tuesday, September 11, 2012, Benghazi, Libya. The U.S. consulate...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Obama’s Benghazi PropagandistPosted By Matthew Vadum On May 8, 2013 @ 12:56 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 4 Comments A young White House speechwriter may be responsible for concocting the official lies about last September’s deadly terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya.The Obama administration’s rapidly unravelling narrative about what happened at the U.S. consulate in Libya’s second-largest city may have been cooked up by creative writer Ben Rhodes, the president’s 30-something Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting.The origin of the administration’s desperate election-season fabrications may come up today as a congressional committee...

On Wednesday congressional hearings on Benghazi will be revived, with much ado about whistle blowers, and dissenting testimony, but to what end? The story concocted by The Administration and The State Department is a swiss cheese-like artifice that would never hold up in an era of true journalism. However, though the ruse did not completely cover up the mistakes of Benghazi, the left hopes it will hold together long enough to protect Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Expect the left to circle the wagons around the two top players. At this point they will be willing to toss any underling...

Even as the White House strove last week to move beyond questions about the Benghazi attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2012, fresh evidence emerged that senior Obama administration officials knowingly misled the country about what had happened in the days following the assaults. The Weekly Standard has obtained a timeline briefed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence detailing the heavy substantive revisions made to the CIA’s talking points, just six weeks before the 2012 presidential election, and additional information about why the changes were made and by whom. As intelligence officials pieced together the puzzle of events...

New evidence reveals the Obama administration’s version of the events that took place in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 was based on a tissue of lies. The Weekly Standard’s Steven Hayes has obtained a timeline and a series of emails revealing the self-serving efforts made by administration officials, who heavily edited CIA talking points about the attack that cost four Americans, including ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, their lives. Also revealed is who made the changes and why they made them. The revelations are part of a report published by the five Republican Committee chairmen that has been largely dismissed...

Allahpundit already covered the Syria-related aspects of Monday’s White House press briefing, but here’s another key bit that could prove mighty tricky for the Obama administration as the week progresses. Sounds like they’re sticking to their guns on the Accountability Review Board report from last December, to which they’ve ever since been referring questions; and although late last week the State Department’s IG office reported that they’re conducting an investigation into just how thoroughly definitive that report really was, Carney insisted that review was “led by two men of unimpeachable expertise and credibility that oversaw a process that was rigorous...

That CBS’ Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer, of all people, nodded in agreement when Rep. Darrell Issa asserted on Schieffer’s Sunday morning show that the administration had engaged in a cover-up regarding Benghazi is a huge sign that this scandal is finally being taken seriously by the most traditional establishment liberal media.This is bad news for such über-establishment figures as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but they are politicians who come and, alas eventually, though it seems to take forever, go.More problematically, a permanent organ of our government has been so besmirched by Benghazi it may take years fully...

U.S. special operations forces in Libya could have saved Americans killed in the attack last Sept. 11 on the consulate in Benghazi but were told to stand down, a State Department whistle-blower has told congressional investigators. The testimony by Gregory Hicks, who will appear before a House panel on Wednesday, contradicts previous testimony by administration officials who have said all U.S. forces in Libya were deployed the night of the attack. Hicks was in Tripoli during the attack and became the top U.S. diplomat in Libya when Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed. He said the special operations team was ready...

When the Accountability Review Board’s report on Benghazi came out, last December, John Bolton noted that the State Dept. was basically investigating itself, and suggested that their assertions might not hold up to scrutiny. It looks like the ARB´s findings are indeed not holding up to scrutiny. The report is being savaged by the attorneys who are representing material witnesses who they say were ignored by the ARB. (Snip) Toensing told Geraldo that “the things that her client will be saying will be contradictory to what the administration’s scenario was.” Di Genova promised that “what will come out of the

On Wednesday, the FBI released photos of three men present at the deadly jihadist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya; the bureau has asked the Libyans’ help in identifying them. Which nicely highlights the fact that it’s been more than seven months since Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other brave Americans were killed — and yet there’s been no justice, nor even vengeance, in the matter. Nor much exposure: We know little more today than we did in the immediate aftermath of the fiasco. Indeed, the State Department’s Inspector General is now investigating the Accountability Review Board that...

May 2, 2013 State Department's Benghazi review panel under investigation, Fox News confirms James Rosen The State Department's Office of Inspector General is investigating the special internal panel that probed the Benghazi terror attack for the State Department, Fox News has confirmed. The IG's office is said by well-placed sources to be seeking to determine whether the Accountability Review Board, or ARB -- led by former U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen -- failed to interview key witnesses who had asked to provide their accounts of the Benghazi attacks to...

Accountability: As with Fast and Furious, the designated scapegoats for the deaths of Americans at the hands of administration bungling will merely be switching desks. Only the maker of that irrelevant video is in jail. Reports of the resignation of four State Department officials after the Accountability Review Board's (ARB) review of State Department actions before during and after the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, may have been greatly exaggerated. Eric Boswell, the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, has not resigned from the department, as a State Department spokeswoman indicated Dec. 19. Boswell is instead...

Benghazi report could damage Clinton’s legacy at State Dept.By Julian Pecquet - 12/19/12 05:30 AM ET The Benghazi report released Tuesday night bemoans “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies” in Hillary Clinton's State Department that could come back to haunt her should she run for president in 2016. Clinton remains one of the nation's most popular politicians and has worked tirelessly to improve America's image abroad following President George W. Bush's tenure. The independent review of the Sept. 11 attack, however, tarnishes that legacy by faulting the department for failing to put in place a coordinated approach for handling...

Three top officials in the State Department resigned Wednesday in the wake of a scathing report which slammed "systemic failures" and "management deficiencies" in the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, which resulted in the murder of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Assistant Secretary Eric Boswell, head of the bureau of diplomatic security, and Charlene Lamb, deputy assistant secretary for international programs, have stepped down, CNN and CBS television said, citing unnamed department officials. Lamb, who was Boswell’s deputy in charge of international programs, denied requests from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli for an extension of temporary security...

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...