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At a press conference today at the White House, President Obama said "There's no there there" on criticism of how his administration handled the Benghazi terror attack: "And suddenly three days ago this gets spun up as if there's something new to the story," Obama said in response to a question about Benghazi. "There's no there there." The president continued, "Keep in mind by the way these so-called talking points that were prepared for Susan Rice, five, six days after the event occurred, pretty much matched the assessments that I was receiving at that time in my presidential daily briefing."

The United States military is preparing to establish a drone base in northwest Africa so that it can increase surveillance missions on the local affiliate of Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups that American and other Western officials say pose a growing menace to the region. For now, officials say they envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones from the base, though they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens. If the base is approved, the most likely location for it would be in Niger, a largely desert nation on the eastern border...

THE capital is in the throes of déjà vu and preview as it plunges back into Clinton Rules, defined by a presidential aide on the hit ABC show “Scandal” as damage control that goes like this: “It’s not true, it’s not true, it’s not true, it’s old news.” The conservatives appearing on Benghazi-obsessed Fox News are a damage patrol with an approach that goes like this: “Lies, paranoia, subpoena, impeach, Watergate, Iran-contra.” (Though now that the I.R.S. has confessed to targeting Tea Party groups, maybe some of the paranoia is justified.) Welcome to a glorious spring weekend of accusation and...

On Friday, Bloomberg’s Francis Wilkinson predicted that “Benghazi will be Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Whitewater.” Considering her long history of scandals – and the litany of subsequent excuses and denials she sent spinning to absolve herself of any fault -- Examiner predicted Thursday that “Benghazi could prove to be a real "corkscrew landing" under "sniper fire" for Clinton in 2016.” “In case you have any lingering doubt about the true agenda of House Republicans” in Wednesday's Benghazi hearing, check out these numbers,” Jed Lewison fretted Thursday for the uber-liberal blog site, Daily Kos. 15: Number of times President Barack Obama was...

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) suggested that President Obama could be impeached over what he alleged was a White House cover-up after last year’s attack in Benghazi, Libya. Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview Thursday with “The Rusty Humphries Show” that impeachment would become an issue soon over the “greatest cover-up in American history.” “People may be starting to use the I-word before too long,” Inhofe said. “The I-word meaning impeachment?” Humphries asked. “Yeah,” Inhofe responded. “Of all the great cover-ups in history — the Pentagon papers, Iran-Contra, Watergate, all the rest of...

On Friday, March 30, 2012, Hisham Y. Altalib visited the White House. According to visitor logs, Altalib was received by Joshua DuBois, the director of President Obama's Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Four days later, White House officials welcomed a foreign delegation of the radical Sharia-enforcing Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt. The White House meeting with overseas Muslim Brotherhood leaders was reported in April by a few mainstream journalists and questioned loudly by conservative media. But the White House confab in March with U.S.-based Altalib -- which appears to be a prep session with the global Muslim Brotherhood's American...

FBI agents aren’t allowed to treat individuals associated with terrorist groups as potential threats to the nation, according to a startling, newly discovered FBI directive. The fact that a terrorism suspect is associated with a terrorist group means nothing, according to the FBI document, “Guiding Principles: Touchstone Document on Training.” The “touchstone” document, dated March of this year, is available online but hasn’t been reported on by major media outlets. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents are to be instructed that “mere association with organizations that demonstrate both legitimate (advocacy) and illicit (violent extremism) objectives should not automatically result in a...

Washington (CNN) -- Late on the night of last September 11, U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens spoke to his deputy for the final time from the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. "Greg, we're under attack," Stevens told Gregory Hicks.Within hours, Stevens and three other Americans were dead, victims of an armed terrorist assault that has since become a political and foreign policy flashpoint in Washington's partisan wars.

May 8, 2013 Cheney on Benghazi: “I cannot understand why they weren’t ready to go” BY ED MORRISSEY This should provide a kick-start to the hearings today in Washington, as the House Oversight Committee takes testimony from three whistleblowers about the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi and its aftermath. The Daily Mail‘s David Martosko caught up with Dick Cheney at a book party for Donald Rumsfeld, and the former VP (and also Secretary of Defense in the George H. W. Bush administration) didn’t hesitate to question the preparation of his successors. Noting that the attack took place on...

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...

The deputy of slain U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens has told congressional investigators that a team of Special Forces prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command South Africa. The account from Gregory Hicks is in stark contrast to assertions from the Obama administration, which insisted that nobody was ever told to stand down and that all available resources were utilized. Hicks gave private testimony to congressional investigators last month in advance of his upcoming appearance at a congressional hearing Wednesday. According to excerpts released Monday,...

Everybody in the mission" in Benghazi, Libya, thought the attack on a U.S. consulate there last Sept. 11 was an act of terror "from the get-go," according to excerpts of an interview investigators conducted with the No. 2 official in Libya at the time, obtained exclusively by CBS News' "Face the Nation." "I think everybody in the mission thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning," Greg Hicks, a 22-year foreign service diplomat who was the highest-ranking U.S. official in Libya after the strike, told investigators under authority of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Hicks, the former...

Scandal: A congressional report shows security cuts before the Benghazi attack were approved by the secretary of state and that White House talking points describing the events were edited to protect the State Department. The "progress" report by House Republicans will no doubt be dismissed as a partisan political document. But it effectively records administration efforts to ignore the threat of terrorism before the attack on our diplomatic mission in Benghazi, to cover up administration culpability afterward and to sweep aside responsibility for the deaths of four Americans to make the administration look caring and competent. Despite then-Secretary of State...

A congressional report released Tuesday on the terrorist attack on the U.S. State Department compound in Benghazi, Libya says there is “ample evidence that the attack was planned and intentional” and that al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sharia joined in carrying it out. The report also notes that al Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sharia took credit for the attack while it was still unfolding, and that the State Department reported this at the time to other government agencies, including the White House. … “To protect the State Department, the Administration deliberately removed references to al Qaeda-linked groups...

I knew there was something missing from the Benghazi story, something fundamental that had thus far escaped my attention. Not that the questions being asked by the hundreds of Special Forces guys aren’t important. I, too, want to know why–if this is accurate–we didn’t have military forces ready to move in. I, too, want to know why the top political figures–the president and the secretaries of state and defense (Obama, Hillary and Panetta)–were so clearly disinclined to take action. That whole phony charade about the “video” bespeaks an effort to get the world to focus on the wrong thing. The...

Exclusive: Jack Cashill reviews skullduggery surrounding official's death 17 years ago Seventeen years ago yesterday, Hillary Clinton got her first practice in publicly blowing off the death of a government official she had dispatched on a dubious mission to a war-torn corner of the world. In the weeks and months that followed, Hillary honed her arts of deception, delay and double-dealing and tested the media’s tolerance for the same. What she and Bill had to conclude was that in a year in which a Democrat was running for re-election, a sycophantic media could be very tolerant indeed. Some background: On...

A fifth person died as a result of the attack on our outpost at Benghazi, say sources familiar with events that took place there on 11 September 2012. "This is not being reported by State or White House," said one source, who has knowledge of events surrounding the attack that killed former SEAL Glen Doherty, computer tech Sean Smith, Ambassador Chris Stevens, and former SEAL Tyrone Woods. The source did not specify whether the fifth person killed was American, nor in what capacity the person worked. "There were people stationed there in a clandestine capacity," the source said. A second...

Survivors of the Benghazi attack were told to “shut up” by the Democratic leadership with the clear purpose of protecting the inept elected and appointed democrats of this administration. This regime cannot be embarrassed. Never. It’s the Chicago way. In a rare display of courage a mortified Senator Lindsey Graham said Senate Republicans are generally being denied access to the survivors of the Benghazi terror attack of September 11, 2012. In an interview with Fox News (1) the South Carolina Senator said he was able to meet with some of the survivors. He told Brit Hume “the bottom line is...

Benghazi: The House GOP has threatened to subpoena the survivors of the Benghazi terrorist attack, those who know the truth, and hold up the nomination of our murdered ambassador's replacement. It should do both. The Obama administration is fond of using a familiar tactic, the shield of an "ongoing investigation," to cover up its malfeasance in the deaths of Americans serving their country. It was used to hide the truth regarding the administration's Fast and Furious gun-running operation to Mexican drug cartels, which resulted in the deaths of agents Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata. They are using it again concerning...

Libyan Islamists detained 48 Egyptian Christians in Benghazi last week, torturing them and using acid to burn off tattoos of the cross, according to family members. The Christians, who are peddlers, were arrested by Islamist Salafists in Benghazi, who said they had Christian icons at their marketplace stalls ... Benghazi residents have expressed outrage at the hardcore Salafists, who are believed to have been behind the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Repression of Christians living in Libya is on the rise ... Kamel’s uncle, Khalaf Naguib Salib, said the Copts...