Free Republic

By Sharyl Attkisson CBS NewsJanuary 8, 2014, 5: 45 PM U.S. Benghazi compound lease renewed without security Updated 7:25 p.m. ETThe State Department renewed the lease for the U.S. compound in Benghazi two months before the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks without requiring the facility to meet normal security standards. That news comes from an interview Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., conducted with a survivor of the attacks.   The survivor, a State Department diplomatic security agent whose name isn't being disclosed, spoke behind closed doors in late November to Senators Graham, Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Robert Menendez, D-N.J. The previously-undisclosed existence...

In the opening hour of his inaugural East Coast drive-time show, Michael Savage signaled he has no intention of abandoning his passion for uncovering the full story behind the deaths of 22 members of Navy SEAL Team 6 in Afghanistan shortly after it was leaked that their unit killed Osama bin Laden. The subject came up for a second time in the show when a regular listener said she liked the fact that he covered subjects no one else on talk-radio seemed to be talking about. “They were killed. They were assassinated. They were executed. Or it was done because...

Page 1 below; 2 more pages at link. During an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, New York Times reporter David Kirkpatrick was asked about the connections between Muhammad Jamal’s network and the Benghazi attack.Jamal, as I documented in a response to Kirkpatrick’s em>Times piece, was clearly operating as part of al Qaeda’s international network. And according to multiple reports, including in the New York Times itself, Jamal’s network is suspected of taking part in the Benghazi attack. This reporting contradicts Kirkpatrick’s thesis that only “local” Libyan actors were involved and that neither al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists, nor any other internationally connected...

One shouldn’t question the good faith of a news report merely because one disagrees with the report’s conclusions. But David Kirkpatrick’s revisionist Benghazi account in the New York Times invites doubt about his commitment to unbiased reporting about that tragic affair. My doubts stem both from the reporting itself and from what a person whom Kirkpatrick interviewed told me. [....] Kirkpatrick’s heavy reliance on self-serving comments by Libyans that also serve the purposes of Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, etc, suggests that he had a story he wanted to write and was looking for confirmation of that story. This suspicion was...

WASHINGTON—The mother of a victim in the 2012 Benghazi, Libya, terrorist attack blasted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an interview with WORLD, saying a recent article in The New York Times is only trying to protect Clinton’s 2016 presidential aspirations. “They’re just covering up for Hillary,” Pat Smith, mother of slain foreign-service officer Sean Smith, told me by phone. “Hillary killed my son. … As far as I can tell from all my sources, she was responsible—directly.” Lawmakers, media outlets, and analysts have all criticized a front-page story in Saturday’s edition of The New York Times, in which...

Benghazi: The attempt to rehabilitate Hillary Clinton begins as the New York Times revives the long-ago debunked "video clip" excuse for the well-planned Benghazi massacre while denying documented al-Qaida involvement. These days it's all the news that is fit to be made up that graces the pages of the once-proud Gray Lady that has morphed from a self-proclaimed "newspaper of record" to the house organ for the Obama administration. The latest example is a piece on the Benghazi terrorist attack of Sept. 10, 2010, titled, "A Deadly Mix in Benghazi." It resembles the infamous White House talking points — on...

After reading the David Kirkpatrick's NYT piece this evening, I decided to do a little cross-checking/fact-checking, as my web search came up bupkis. Specifically, I found no mention of a key suspect in the Benghazi attack in either the NYT piece nor any critique thereof. The suspect in question: Muhammad Jamal al Kashef. It didn't take long to find the UNSC addition of al Kashef to the Al-Qaida Sanctions List, as it had occurred in October and was easy to find. I also found several other casual 'honorable mentions' thereof such as this piece from Long War Journal in February...

The State Department on Monday said it has no evidence that “core al Qaeda” was behind last year's terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. “We have no indications that core al Qaeda, which I think is what most people are referring to when they talk about quote ‘al Qaeda,’ directed or planned what happened in Benghazi,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said at a briefing. The statement appears to leave open the possibility that associates or followers of the terrorist network were involved in the assault. The comments come on the heels of a New York Times investigation published over the...

The recent New York Times article attempting to downplay terrorist involvement in the Benghazi attack that claimed the lives of four Americans on Sept. 11, 2012, directly contradicts evidence in the now infamous pre-edited talking points of then-United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice. “Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault,” David D. Kirkpatrick wrote in the Times. “The attack was led, instead, by...

The NY Times has lost all of its credibility. All of it. Not long ago they made the decision to endorse all of Barack Obama's lies and now has gone fully into the Hillary Clinton tank. David Kirkpatrick's article "A Deadly Mix in Benghazi" could be summarized thusly: Kirkpatrick: "Mr. al Qaeda, were you involved in the Benghazi attack?" Al Qaeda: "No we were not." Kirkpatrick: "Who attacked the consulate?" Al Qaeda: "Hooligans" Kirkpatrick: "Why?" Al Qaeda: "It was that video." Kirkpatrick: "Thank you" That's pretty much it. It's pathetic and a painfully obvious attempt to vindicate Hillary Clinton. It has...

**SNIP** But a New York Times report published over the weekend has angered sources who were on the ground that night. Those sources, who continue to face threats of losing their jobs, sharply challenged the Times’ findings that there was no involvement from Al Qaeda or any other international terror group and that an anti-Islam film played a role in inciting the initial wave of attacks. “It was a coordinated attack. It is completely false to say anything else. … It is completely a lie,” one witness to the attack told Fox News. The controversial Times report has stirred a...

Either New York Times writer David Kirkpatrick is ignoring his own colleagues’ work, or the Hillary Clinton supporters are laying out early foundations to combat what will be the biggest criticism of her tenure as Secretary of State if she decides to run for the Oval Office. The New York Times' assertion that Al Qaeda’s involvement in the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi is particularly questionable considering the preponderance of evidence that shows otherwise. In his piece, Kirkpatrick writes, ”But the Republican arguments appear to conflate purely local extremist organizations like Ansar...

Fifteen months after the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, the narrative of the attack continues to be shaped, and reshaped, by politicians and the press. But a New York Times report published over the weekend has angered sources who were on the ground that night. Those sources, who continue to face threats of losing their jobs, sharply challenged the Times’ findings that there was no involvement from Al Qaeda or any other international terror group and that an anti-Islam film played a role in inciting the initial wave of attacks. “It...

The night of Sept. 1, 2009, Echo Platoon of Navy SEAL Team 10 headed out into the Fallujah night. Their goal: concluding a five-year search for the al Qaeda killer who had been responsible for the shocking 2004 murders of four American military contractors — one of them an ex-SEAL — whose bodies were then burned, dragged through the streets and hanged from a bridge.

**SNIP** The cable was a last token of months of American misunderstandings and misperceptions about Libya and especially Benghazi, many fostered by shadows of the earlier Sept. 11 attack. The United States waded deeply into post-Qaddafi Libya, hoping to build a beachhead against extremists, especially Al Qaeda. It believed it could draw a bright line between friends and enemies in Libya. But it ultimately lost its ambassador in an attack that involved both avowed opponents of the West and fighters belonging to militias that the Americans had taken for allies. Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on...

A top congressional Republican is saying a new report that concludes Al Qaeda did not carry out the 2012 attack on the U.S diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, is “misleading.” The new report published Saturday in the New York Times concludes that there was no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault that took place on September 11, 2012, and that it appeared that the attack was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made anti-Islamic video, as the Obama administration first claimed. New York Rep. Peter King, member and former...

A congressional oversight committee will hold a hearing in January on a helicopter crash in Afghanistan that killed 30 Americans, including 22 members of the Navy's elite SEAL Team 6. The House Oversight subcommittee on National Security, led by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), will hold the hearing sometime in January to probe the 2011 crash, a spokeswoman for Chaffetz said. Witnesses for the hearing have not yet been determined, the spokeswoman said. Chaffetz’s panel began investigating the deadly crash in the summer, after victims’ families said the Pentagon did not provide sufficient answers about the attack on Aug. 6, 2011,...

Obama justified his Libyan War to the American people by claiming that people of Benghazi were in danger from Gaddafi. After he succeeded in overthrowing Gaddafi, Benghazi reverted to its radical roots and became a city run by terrorist militias leading to the murder of four Americans. And now a fifth American. That shouldn’t be surprising because Benghazi had become a stop on the Jihadi Express. Every week, about a dozen Syrians arrive at Benghazi’s airport for what’s described as insurgent training. When they fly out, they’re carrying fake Libyan passports, according to three officials familiar with the comings and...

WASHINGTON — CIA officers revealed a clash over how quickly they should go help the besieged U.S. ambassador during the 2012 attack on an outpost in Libya, and a standing order for them to avoid violent encounters, according to a congressman and others who heard their private congressional testimony or were briefed on it. The Obama administration has been dogged by complaints that the White House, Pentagon and State Department may not have done enough before and during the attack to save U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, and by accusations that it later engaged in a cover-up.

One of the most startling revelations of late was that Congress has not seen the videos made by the Predator/Reaper remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) that were flying during that event we now call Benghazigate. This detail is one of many arising from the recent classified hearings held by the House Intelligence Committee in which five eye-witnesses to the event gave testimony for the first time (A discussion of the apparent impetus for these hearings may be found here.) Early reports on the event do not reference overhead aircraft (Including the first "official" briefing and the first [pdf] "official" testimony.) Sharyl...