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Benghazi Creeps Closer To Hillary Clinton

Scandal: The decision to place U.S. personnel in Benghazi with substandard security was made at the highest levels of the State Department by officials who have so far escaped blame over the Sept. 11 attack.

BENGHAZI CREEPS CLOSER TO HILLARY CLINTON

An indication that the Orwellian-named Accountability Review Board (ARB) investigating the terrorist attack on our diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, was an effort not to assign responsibility for the disaster but to enable those responsible to escape blame is the fact that ARB never bothered to interview the likes of Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy.

ARB co-chair Thomas Pickering told CBS' Bob Schieffer on "Face the Nation" in May that he and his colleagues had ample opportunity to question Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself but concluded that conducting an interview with her was not necessary. "We knew where the responsibility rested," he said.

In defending the ARB's findings on Benghazi, Pickering, who co-authored its report with former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen, had no use for whistle-blowers like Gregory Hicks, the No. 2 official in Libya at the time of the strike that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Hicks had told the House Government Oversight Committee he believed the ARB report "let people off the hook."

"They've tried to point a finger at people more senior than where we found the decisions were made," Pickering said, citing specifically Clinton and Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy.

His mind was made up, and he didn't want to be confused with the facts such as the testimony of Mark Thompson, deputy coordinator for operations in the State Department's counterterrorism bureau. Thompson told the House committee that Secretary Clinton attempted to cut the bureau off from communications about the attack.

"(The ARB) has decided to fix responsibility on the assistant secretary level and below," testified Eric Nordstrom, who was regional security officer. "And the message to my colleagues is that if you're above a certain level, no matter what your decision is, no one's going to question it." The fix was in.

The disgraceful cover-up afterwards is rivaled by the disgraceful lack of security provided to the mission, which was set up to be a permanent diplomatic post at which Clinton would arrive to celebrate the triumph of the Obama administration's Middle East policy.

Ambassador Stevens was in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, the day he died in the terrorist attack, because Clinton ordered him there. Hicks said Stephens wanted to have the Benghazi complex upgraded to a permanent constituent post so Clinton could make this announcement in her planned visit to Libya before the end of 2012.

Benghazi Creeps Closer To Hillary Clinton
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/062413-661238-patrick-kennedy-approved-lax-benghazi-security.htm

John Hames