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by seemslikeadream » Fri Aug 02, 2013 3:55 pm
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald 20h
Jake Tapper reveals classified information about CIA in Benghazi - should his sources go to prison? Should he? http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/01 ... zi-attack/ …
Matt Yglesias @mattyglesias 22h
Does this reporting show @JakeTapper doing great journalism, or is he Aiding The Enemy? http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/01 ... zi-attack/ …
by justdrew » Fri Aug 02, 2013 4:08 pm
by stillrobertpaulsen » Fri Aug 02, 2013 4:58 pm
seemslikeadream » Fri Aug 02, 2013 2:55 pm wrote:Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald 20h
Jake Tapper reveals classified information about CIA in Benghazi - should his sources go to prison? Should he? http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/01 ... zi-attack/ …Matt Yglesias @mattyglesias 22h
Does this reporting show @JakeTapper doing great journalism, or is he Aiding The Enemy? http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/01 ... zi-attack/ …
by justdrew » Fri Aug 02, 2013 6:09 pm
by stillrobertpaulsen » Fri Aug 02, 2013 7:28 pm
by seemslikeadream » Sun Aug 04, 2013 11:00 pm
CIA 'running arms smuggling team in Benghazi when consulate was attacked'
The CIA has been subjecting operatives to monthly polygraph tests in an attempt to suppress details of a US arms smuggling operation in Benghazi that was ongoing when its ambassador was killed by a mob in the city last year, according to reports.
CIA running arms smuggling team in Benghazi when consulate attack: The U.S. Consulate in Benghazi is seen in flames during a protest by an armed group in this file photo taken September 11, 2012.
The U.S. Consulate in Benghazi is seen in flames during a protest by an armed group, September 11, 2012. Photo: REUTERS
Damien McElroy
By Damien McElroy
11:06AM BST 02 Aug 2013
Up to 35 CIA operatives were working in the city during the attack last September on the US consulate that resulted in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, according to CNN.
The circumstances of the attack are a subject of deep division in the US with some Congressional leaders pressing for a wide-ranging investigation into suspicions that the government has withheld details of its activities in the Libyan city.
The television network said that a CIA team was working in an annex near the consulate on a project to supply missiles from Libyan armouries to Syrian rebels.
Sources said that more Americans were hurt in the assault spearheaded by suspected Islamic radicals than had been previously reported. CIA chiefs were actively working to ensure the real nature of its operations in the city did not get out.
So only the losses suffered by the State Department in the city had been reported to Congress.
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"Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency's missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency's workings," CNN reported.
Frank Wolf, a US congressman who represents the district that contains CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, is one of 150 members of Congress for a new investigation into the failures in Benghazi.
"I think it is a form of a cover-up, and I think it's an attempt to push it under the rug, and I think the American people are feeling the same way," he said. "We should have the people who were on the scene come in, testify under oath, do it publicly, and lay it out. And there really isn't any national security issue involved with regards to that."
A CIA spokesman said it had been open about its activities in Benghazi.
"The CIA has worked closely with its oversight committees to provide them with an extraordinary amount of information related to the attack on US facilities in Benghazi," a CIA statement said. "CIA employees are always free to speak to Congress if they want," the statement continued. "The CIA enabled all officers involved in Benghazi the opportunity to meet with Congress. We are not aware of any CIA employee who has experienced retaliation, including any non-routine security procedures, or who has been prevented from sharing a concern with Congress about the Benghazi incident."
by seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 06, 2013 6:10 pm
U.S. Files Sealed Charges in Benghazi Attack
Move Marks First American Response to Assault That Killed U.S. Ambassador to Libya
By DEVLIN BARRETT CONNECT
WASHINGTON—The Justice Department has filed sealed criminal charges against a number of suspects in the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others, according to people familiar with the matter.
The exact nature of the charges wasn't clear, nor was the number of suspects named in the case. A Justice Department spokesman, Andrew Ames, said the investigation is ongoing.
"It has been and remains a top priority," he said, declining to comment further.
The lack of public charges has led critics of the Obama administration, particularly Republicans in Congress, to challenge the administration's handling not just of the immediate response to the attacks, but of the long-term response as well. Some conservatives have accused the administration of covering up its failures on the night of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, and beforehand—accusations the administration has strenuously denied.
In May, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released images of three men who were at the compound and who were being sought for questioning. It's unclear if any of those facing criminal charges are the same as the ones in those FBI images.
The question of when to charge individuals in the Benghazi attack—and whether to make such charges public while the FBI engages in a worldwide hunt for suspects—has been the subject of internal debate among counterterrorism officials in the months since the attack, according to multiple people familiar with the case.
Some officials wanted charges filed earlier, and made public earlier, to reflect the progress investigators believe they have made in the case, those people said. Others argued for a more cautious approach, in part out of concern that revealing too much about the probe could hurt its chances of gathering more evidence and apprehending potential suspects.
Write to Devlin Barrett at devlin.barrett@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
The U.S. filed sealed charges against a number of individuals related to last year's attack on U.S. diplomatic posts in Benghazi, Libya. A headline on an earlier version of this article incorrectly said the U.S. filed sealed indictments.
by elfismiles » Mon Oct 07, 2013 3:28 pm
Benghazi’s Al Qaeda Connection
by Eli Lake Oct 7, 2013 2:42 PM EDT
The Obama administration has been loathe to draw any connections in public between al Qaeda and the Benghazi attacks on September 11, 2012. A new State Department designation of an Egyptian terrorist however makes that link. Eli Lake reports.
U.S. government is now acknowledging, at least indirectly, a significant al Qaeda connection to the 9-11 anniversary attacks on the U.S. mission and CIA station in Benghazi.
The U.S. Consulate in Benghazi is seen in flames during a protest on September 11, 2012. (Esam Al-Fetori/Reuters)
On Monday, the State Department designated the Mohammed Jamal Network (MJN) and its founder, Mohammed Jamal as terrorists. The Wall Street Journal first reported on October 1, 2012 that fighters affiliated with MJN participated in the Benghazi attacks. The Daily Beast and other news outlets have since confirmed the report.
Seth Jones, the associate director for the international security and defense policy center at the RAND Corporation, told the Daily Beast, “There was at least one member and may have been more members from the Mohammed Jamal network on the compound for the attack on Benghazi along with members of Ansar al-Sharia and members of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.”
The designation released Monday from the State Department does not mention the network’s role in Benghazi. It does state that Jamal has been in close contact with al Qaeda leaders since he traveled to Afghanistan in the late 1980s. When Jamal returned to Egypt in the early 1990s he became the operational commander for Egyptian Islamic Jihad. At the time the group was led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is currently the leader of al Qaeda.
Jamal’s relationship with al-Zawahiri continued until at least 2012. When he was arrested, Egyptian authorities found correspondence with the al Qaeda leader on Jamal'ss laptop computer. The designation says in this correspondence “Jamal asked for assistance and described MJN’s activities, including acquiring weapons, conducting terrorist training, and establishing terrorist groups in the Sinai.” The contents of the seized laptop was first reported by an Egyptian newspaper and later confirmed and published by the Long War Journal, a website that closely monitors U.S. counter-terrorism activities.
Jones said the Jamal network’s relationship to al Qaeda had been widely known in counter-terrorism circles. “What’s new is that the government is making it explicit and public that the Jamal network is linked to al Qaeda,” Jones said.
The State Department’s designation says Jamal formed the network in 2011 after he was released from an Egyptian prison during the country’s revolution. It says that his network received funding from al Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate and that Jamal himself has used that affiliate to “smuggle fighters into training camps.” It also says suicide bombers have trained at MJN traning camps and that Jamal has “established links with terrorists in Europe.”
The Obama administration has been reluctant to publicly draw a direct connection to al Qaeda and the assault on September 11, 2012 that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. It took nearly two weeks for the White House to acknowledge the attacks were terrorism.
The unclassified version of the State Department’s Accountability Review Board, the only official assessment of the attacks from the Obama administration, makes two mentions of al Qaeda in the report. On page 15 it says the attacks took place as al Qaeda’s influence was rising in eastern Libya. On page 2 it says, “The Benghazi attacks also took place in a context in which the global terrorism threat as most often represented by al Qaeda (AQ) is fragmenting and increasingly devolving to local affiliates and other actors who share many of AQ’s aims, including violent anti-Americanism, without necessarily being organized or operated under direct AQ command and control.”
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah whose House subcommittee has investigated the Benghazi attacks for more than a year, said the designation Monday “draws the link closer to al Qaeda.” He added, “For a long time the Obama administration would not even acknowledge al Qaeda’s presence in Libya, obviously they were there and they were active. I am glad he is now designated as a terrorist.” But he said it begs the question why Benghazi was not mentioned in the designation of Jamal and his network.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... ction.html
by seemslikeadream » Fri Nov 01, 2013 1:04 pm
60 Minutes Benghazi Report Takes A Huge Credibility Hit
Blog ››› 2 hours and 25 minutes ago ››› MATT GERTZ
60 minutesThe Benghazi "witness" featured in a CBS 60 Minutes report that galvanized new discussion of the administration's response to the attack previously said he never got near the diplomatic compound on the night of the attack, according to a report from The Washington Post.
The revelation comes just days after Fox News reported that they had previously been using the same man as a source, but broke contact after he asked the network for money. Two days after the CBS report aired, Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon and Schuster that "specializes in conservative non-fiction," published the supposed witness' book, The Embassy House: The Explosive Eyewitness Account of the Libyan Embassy Siege by the Soldier Who Was There. According to the Post, the book "largely comports with the 60 Minutes account."
Together, these details paint a damning picture of the credibility of the supposed eyewitness -- and that of the CBS report which promoted his story.
During the October 27 report, which was based on a year-long investigation by correspondent Lara Logan and producer Max McCellan, Logan described the man, identified as "Morgan Jones, a pseuodonym he's using for his own safety," as "a security officer who witnessed the attack." She explained that during the attack, "Jones scaled the twelve-foot high wall of the compound that was still overrun with al Qaeda fighters"; during an interview, he told her he had personally struck one of those terrorists in the face with his rifle butt. After the attack, "Jones" claimed in the report that he went to the Benghazi hospital and saw Ambassador Chris Stevens' body.
"Jones" also told CBS' audience that he had been worried about the compound coming under attack, and that Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, who died in the assault, had shared similar concerns with him.
But according to the Post, "Jones," whose real name was confirmed as Dylan Davies, revealed none of those details in the incident report to his security contractor employer that he wrote following the attack. Instead, he wrote that he never got near the compound that night and learned of Stevens' death from a colleague. From the Post:
In Davies's 21 / 2-page incident report to Blue Mountain, the Britain-based contractor hired by the State Department to handle perimeter security at the compound, he wrote that he spent most of that night at his Benghazi beach-side villa. Although he attempted to get to the compound, he wrote in the report, "we could not get anywhere near . . . as roadblocks had been set up."
He learned of Stevens's death, Davies wrote, when a Libyan colleague who had been at the hospital came to the villa to show him a cellphone picture of the ambassador's blackened corpse. Davies wrote that he visited the still-smoking compound the next day to view and photograph the destruction.
The Post reports that Davies' co-author told them that he was unaware of the incident report "but suggested that Davies might have dissembled in it because his superiors, whom he contacted by telephone once he was informed that the attack was underway, told him to stay away from the compound." A CBS spokesman told the paper, "We stand firmly by the story we broadcast last Sunday."
The 60 Minutes report, which also attempted to revive the long-answered "lingering question" about why no U.S. military forces from outside Libya came to the aid of Americans in the compound, was widely praised by conservative media and received 47 minutes of coverage on Fox News the day after it aired. In response to the CBS segment, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he would block the confirmations of all administration nominees until Benghazi witnesses testify to Congress.
by seemslikeadream » Fri Nov 08, 2013 11:06 am
CBS Reporter On '60 Minutes' Benghazi Program: 'We Made A Mistake' (VIDEO)
CATHERINE THOMPSON – NOVEMBER 8, 2013, 8:42 AM EST4147
CBS correspondent Lara Logan apologized to viewers Friday for a disputed "60 Minutes" report on the Benghazi attack and said the program would issue a correction.
"Today the truth is that we made a mistake," Logan said on "CBS This Morning."
At the center of the dispute is Dylan Davies, a British security contractor who under a pseudonym gave "60 Minutes" a heroic account of his involvement in the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. After the program aired, the Washington Post and the New York Times discovered contradictions between the account Davies gave "60 Minutes" and the descriptions of the attack the contractor gave to his employer and to the FBI.
Those reports raised questions about whether Davies was actually present at the Benghazi compound on the night of the attack, casting doubt onto the contractor's credibility as a source. CBS issued a statement Thursday that said the network had learned of "new information" undercutting Davies' account and was looking into the matter.
Logan told viewers that the program took Davies' vetting "very seriously," but that the contractor "misled" them.
"We were wrong to put him on air," Logan said.
"We will apologize to our viewers and we will correct the record on our broadcast on Sunday night," she added.
Watch the apology, courtesy of Media Matters:
by norton ash » Fri Nov 08, 2013 1:40 pm
by seemslikeadream » Fri Nov 08, 2013 2:05 pm
FRIDAY, NOV 8, 2013 10:12 AM CST
CBS’ erroneous Benghazi debacle explodes
60 Minutes finally looking into new information undercutting Benghazi "exclusive"; Story removed from CBS News site
BRAD FRIEDMAN
CBS' erroneous Benghazi debacle explodes
This post originally appeared on The Brad Blog.
A full week after serious doubts were raised concerning 60 Minutes’ report on a supposed eye-witness to the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, CBS has finally issued a terse two paragraph statement to announce they are “currently looking into” whether they were “misled” by their star witness.
Here’s the full statement:
60 Minutes has learned of new information that undercuts the account told to us by Morgan Jones of his actions on the night of the attack on the Benghazi compound.
We are currently looking into this serious matter to determine if he misled us, and if so, we will make a correction.
The statement coincides with new information that appears to further undercut the 60 Minutes report…
As initially reported by Karen DeYoung at the Washington Post, “Morgan Jones” is actually the pseudonym of Dylan Davies, a man who worked for the Wales-based security firm, Blue Mountain. Davies was reportedly a British supervisor of security guards protecting the U.S. mission during the attack last year. In an October 27 report this year, said by 60 Minutes to have been a full year in the making, he told CBS reporter Lara Logan that on the night of the attack he scaled the 12-foot wall of the compound, confronted an attacker “with the butt end of a rifle” and later saw U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens dead in the hospital.
That account, however, as DeYoung first reported, is at complete odds with an incident report filed by Davies with Blue Mountain on the day after the attack, when he said he had been at his seaside villa throughout the siege that resulted in the deaths of four U.S. personnel, including the Ambassador, whose charred body, Davies allegedly told his employer, he had seen in a photograph sent to him by a colleague.
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CBS has, until now, refused to acknowledge the conflicting stories, saying only that they “strongly” stand by their reporting. They admitted only — just earlier this week — that they made a mistake by not disclosing that Davies’ book was being published by a CBS subsidiary. Other than that, they stood by their story, even after Davies told The Daily Beast that he had lied to his employer initially in that next-day incident report.
According to The Daily Beast interview, however, Davies said the account on 60 Minutes and in his book was the same one he supplied “to the FBI and various other U.S. agencies in the wake of the attack”.
Now, that part of the story also seems to be collapsing, and that is likely why 60 Minutes is finally beginning to question its own reporting.
In a report filed by the New York Times this evening, Bill Carter and Michael S. Schmidt are reporting that Davies “told the F.B.I. he did not go [to the diplomatic mission] the night terrorists attacked it on Sept. 11, 2012″…
The information he provided in an F.B.I. interview was described Thursday by two senior government officials as completely consistent with an incident report by the Blue Mountain security business, which had been hired to protect United States interests in Benghazi. The officials who spoke said they had been briefed on the government investigation.
…
Jeff Fager, the chairman of CBS News and executive producer of “60 Minutes,” said Thursday, “We’re surprised to hear about this, and if it shows we’ve been misled, we will make a correction.”
Until Thursday night, CBS and reporter Logan had all vigorously defended both their report and Davies, claiming they were “proud of the reporting that went into the story.”
Davies had also been undercut by no less than Fox “News”, which has been trumpeting some form of a “scandal” at Benghazi for more than a year. Their reporter, Adam Housley, had said, the day after 60 Minutes‘ report, that he stopped speaking to Davies over the past year, “when he asked for money.”
We initially covered the questions about the 60 Minutes report last week, after Media Matters for America’s David Brock, author of the book, The Benghazi Hoax, penned a letter to CBS demanding a retraction of the story and a full investigation into what appeared to be a fabricated story by Davies.
Brock cited CBS’ response to questions about 60 Minutes‘ 2004 story on questions about George W. Bush’s Air National Guard service (which turned out to be true, though the provenance of one of the documents used in the report was never able to be verified as authentic.) Following that report by Dan Rather, CBS quickly launched a full investigation into the matter. “Similar standards must be applied in this case,” Brock said in his letter last week to CBS News chairman Jeff Fager and its president David Rhodes.
Last Sunday, the show aired letters praising its Benghazi report, but they failed to note any of the controversies that had arisen in its wake.
On the KPFK/Pacifica Radio BradCast this week we interviewed Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert who described the mess as a “slow motion train wreck”. He struggled to explain the difference between the quick action taken by CBS and 60 Minutes after the Bush/Rather report, versus the complete silence they had offered in regard to their star witness’ conflicting stories in the two weeks following their Benghazi report.
The Bush/Rather story “absolutely exploded,” he said, noting that it was front page news at both the New York Times and Washington Post two days after it initially aired and that “CBS was putting out a statement almost every day for the first five days.” The CBS Evening News, he said, was addressing it themselves night after night.
“It was full-on crisis management and eventually, about ten days later, CBS threw in the towel, slash, threw Dan Rather under the bus. And the political pressure, not only from the Rightwing media, but from the Bush campaign, the entire Republican establishment was crushing CBS at the time,” he explained.
Four CBS producers and Dan Rather all eventually lost their jobs after the investigation.
“This has been a much different timetable,” Boehlert observed, “primarily because it’s liberals who are upset. It’s primarily because it’s Democrats who are calling out CBS News. So what does the mainstream media do when they’re under attack from the Left? They just ignore it.”
Perhaps. But it appears that both CBS and the bulk of the mainstream media will have trouble ignoring the apparent failures of the story at this point. As of Thursday night, the main page for the Benghazi story at the CBS News website appeared to have been removed without explanation, offering only a “page cannot be found” error to visitors.
by Pele'sDaughter » Tue Nov 12, 2013 6:34 pm
by Nordic » Tue Nov 12, 2013 6:58 pm
by seemslikeadream » Sun Dec 29, 2013 10:01 am
Benghazi US mission attack: 'No direct al-Qaeda role'
Remains of cars destroyed during the 11 September 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi
Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans died in the attack
Al-Qaeda had no direct involvement in the September 2012 attack on the US consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi, according to a New York Times investigation.
The US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, was killed when gunmen stormed the compound and set it on fire.
Some US Republicans accuse the Obama administration of failing to admit the involvement of terrorist groups.
But the New York Times (NYT) says a local Islamist militia leader was key.
The paper bases its report on months of interviews with local residents who have extensive knowledge of the events of 11 September 2012 and American officials linked to a criminal investigation.
Initially, Washington said the attack grew out of violent protests against an anti-Islam video produced in the US.
Later findings suggested that it was an organised attack planned by local militias.
Some Republicans accused al-Qaeda of launching the assault to mark the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the US.
'Murkier'
The NYT reports that the reality was "murkier". The assault was neither "meticulously planned", nor "spontaneous", though "fuelled in large part" by anger at the video.
The paper's investigation "turned up no evidence that al-Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault".
In the aftermath of the attack, Republicans repeatedly criticised the Obama administration for blaming the video protest instead of a deliberate terrorist attack.
An investigation commissioned by the US state department found in December 2012 that security at the consulate had been inadequate but that there had been "no immediate, specific" intelligence pointing to threats.
The NYT says the attack was led by fighters who had benefited from Western support during the uprising against long-time Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi.
It says a central figure was "an eccentric, malcontent militia leader, Ahmed Abu Khattala".
Mr Khattala denies involvement, but witnesses describe him "strolling calmly through the chaos" at the compound, according to the NYT.
He is also alleged to have directed local fighters in the attack. Mr Khattala, whose exact whereabouts are unknown, was charged by US investigators in August.
Charges have also been filed against an unknown number of other alleged attackers.
Ambassador Chris Stevens was one of four Americans to die. The others killed were another state department worker and two former Navy Seals.
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