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Clinton and Obama discussed Benghazi. What did they say? ‘What would you be focusing on in the Benghazi investigation?” I spent many years in the investigation biz, so it’s only natural that I’ve been asked that question a lot lately. I had the good fortune to be trained in Rudy Giuliani’s U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. Rudy famously made his mark by making law enforcement reflect what common sense knew: Enterprises take their cues from the top. Criminal enterprises are no different: The capos do not carry out the policy of the button-men — it’s the other way around. So...

Yesterday, Barack Obama tried to shrug off another of the burgeoning scandals in Washington during a joint press conference with UK PM David Cameron.  Allowing the US press just one question, Obama called on the AP’s Julie Pace, and probably regretted doing so almost immediately.  (It could have been worse; had it been later in the day, she probably would have asked him why he wanted to look at her phone records.) Pace managed to offer a multi-tiered question, one portion of which asked Obama why the post-Benghazi talking points got massaged so heavily as to remove any hint that...

Andrew rightly points out that, among the very interesting news that came out of the Benghazi hearing was the revelation that the State Department’s Gregory Hicks, then the No. 2 American official in Libya, spoke with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at 2 a.m. on the night of the attack. Just to flesh that out a bit, Hicks said he briefed Clinton and her senior staff on what was happening on the ground at the time. As Andrew notes, no one mentioned the Internet video — which Hicks testified was a “non-event” in Libya. More significant, Hicks and the...

What were Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton thinking? Why did they keep pitching the line that the 9/11/12 Benghazi attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans started as a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim video? One possible explanation is confusion. There was such an attack on our embassy in Cairo earlier that day that fit that description. When Hillary Clinton on Sept. 14 talked of a "mob" and "violent attacks" over the caskets of the Americans slain in Benghazi, she could have been referring to the attacks in Cairo. In that case, she would not exactly be...

Conservatives who have been wondering how Obama survived the 2012 election now have fuel for the common complaint that he stole the election by cheating. And no, I’m not talking about the vote rigging in precincts where he had more votes than voters. Nor am I talking about petitions where signature gatherers illegally forged names in order for Obama to qualify for a state primary ballot. I’m also not talking about Obama’s failure to vote on much legislation when he was an Illinois state senator, nor on his ability to produce any meaningful legislation for the three weeks he acted...

The top-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee said President Barack Obama could possibly be impeached over what happened in Benghazi. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said in a radio interview Thursday that “of all the great cover-ups in history” — including the Pentagon papers, Iran-Contra and Watergate — Benghazi “is going to go down as most serious, most egregious cover-up in American history.” “We may be starting to use the I-word before too long,” Inhofe said on the Las Vegas-based “Rusty Humphries Show.” “The I-word meaning impeachment?” Humphries asked. “Yeah,” Inhofe confirmed. When Humphries questioned the likelihood of impeachment,...

Editor's note: U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz represents Utah's 3rd Congressional District. Washington (CNN) -- In testimony that sharply contradicted the Obama administration's initial narrative of the September 11, 2012, terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, three witnesses shared firsthand accounts this week of what happened before, during and after the attack. The three testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, recounting the horrific events that took the lives of four heroic Americans that day at the U.S. Consulate. Much of what we have known about Benghazi to this point has come from Obama administration sources. The accounts of these...

The Benghazi scandal is easy to understand, and that’s what makes it so dangerous for the White House. Simply, the Obama administration’s narrative — that al-Qaeda was on the run, that Hosni Mubarak had to go, and that the Arab Spring was a good thing — was proven false when four brave Americans were killed. Because the administration was a slave to their own narrative, rather than aggressively fighting al-Qaeda, rather than recognizing the $50 billion investment in Mubarak’s stability, and rather than realizing that the upheaval they sponsored in the Middle East empowered Muslim Brotherhood radicals, they lied repeatedly...

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,...

Huckabee: Benghazi will drive Obama from office By MACKENZIE WEINGER | 5/6/13 2:50 PM EDT Mike Huckabee on Monday predicted that President Barack Obama won’t finish out his second term in light of the “cover-up” of the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the former Arkansas governor called the affair “more serious than Watergate.” “I believe that before it’s all over, this president will not fill out his full term. I know that puts me on a limb,” the former Arkansas governor said on “The Mike Huckabee Show.” “But this is not minor. It wasn’t minor when...

For a story that the White House ("happened a long time ago") and our last two Secretaries of State ("what difference does it make?" / "more important things to worry about") insist is basically over, the Benghazi attack continues to make headlines. CNN is reporting that at least three Al Qaeda operatives took part in the 9/11 raid. The administration knew within the first few hours of the assault that it was the work of radical Islamist terrorism. How long have they known that the specific organization that attacked America in 2001 was directly involved? Several Yemeni men belonging to...

On September 12, 2012, Obama stepped out into the Rose Garden and told the millions of Americans watching at home, “We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.” More than half a year has passed since then and justice is nowhere in sight. The perpetrators of the attack openly walk the streets of Benghazi long after the FBI team sent there has gone home. It may well be a coincidence that the first major successful terrorist attack comes as the administration plots a...

(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at about 10 p.m. on the night of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told CNSNews.com. That was more than six hours after the attacks started, more than an hour before Tryone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed–and about the time that Clinton first released a statement linking the attacks to “inflammatory material posted on the Internet,” a reference to an anti-Muslim video on YouTube. “Like every president before him, he has a national security adviser and deputy national...

According to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, as reported at The Weekly Standard, President Obama was completely aloof from the events in Libya on September 11. He neither asked nor ordered anything. He did not respond to information sent to the White House. He was not involved at all, during the seven-plus-hour attack that resulted in the deaths of four American government employees, including an ambassador. A few months back, when, for the sake of argument, we were all giving Obama the benefit of the doubt on being human, albeit wretchedly so, I felt compelled to qualify a critique of the...

Panetta: Obama Absent Night of Benghazi Daniel Halper February 7, 2013 12:05 PM Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testified this morning on Capitol Hill that President Barack Obama was absent the night four Americans were murdered in Benghazi on September 11, 2012: Panetta said that Obama left operational details, including knowledge of what resources were available to help the Americans under siege, "up to us." In fact, Panetta says that the night of 9/11, he did not communicate with a single person at the White House. The attack resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Panetta said...

Obama: U.S. has good leads on who carried out Benghazi attacks 9:06am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has some "very good leads" about who carried out the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans including the U.S. ambassador in September, President Barack Obama said in an interview broadcast on Sunday. Obama told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the United States would carry out all of the recommendations put forward in an independent review of the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed. "We're not going to pretend that...

Retired Lt. Col discussing standard operating procedures on how this would have worked its way up the chain... Rush military caller says beyond shadow of doubt Obama knew about Benghazi attack and ordered no response quote: This is an amazing phone call from a retired Lt. Col. and Special Operations Planner for 15 years who knows the inside baseball of what goes on in the White House. He told Rush that protocol dictates that as soon as the situation room got the email about the Benghazi attack, someone marched up to the president and informed him of the attack. He...

On the White House Web site, the president’s calendar for September 10, 2012 — the day before the Benghazi, Libya, attack — is blank and and the daily press guidance says “The President has no public events scheduled.” But the president did have an important meeting that day. In an e-mail exchange over President Obama’s record of skipping his daily intelligence meetings, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor wrote me the following: I’d also note that this focus on just the PDB and not the countless other NSC meetings the President has each week really misses the point. For example,...

Via the Daily Caller, Newt Gingrich thinks that the Benghazi scandal might blow wide open over the next two days, thanks to e-mails that he claims two networks now possess from the office of the National Security Advisor, Tom Donilon. According to a "reliable Senator" who tipped him to the information, Gingrich says that the e-mails came in response to the request to aid the consulate in Benghazi after the attack began, and asserted that the attack wasn't a terrorist action and therefore didn't need a response:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO “There is a rumor — I want to...

Seven weeks later, the White House still hasn't explained what President Obama did and didn't do during the seven hours of the attack on Benghazi on September 11. And there's been no response from the White House to questions asked by senators or THE WEEKLY STANDARD or David Ignatius in the Washington Post. We have, to be sure, heard from some government officials. But the information they've provided raises still more questions. CIA director David Petraeus authorized a statement pointedly saying that "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to...