Evidence suggests that the security failures at Benghazi likely went straight to the top — meaning, very possibly, Hillary Clinton herself:
The decision to keep 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, according to a review of recent congressional testimony and internal State Department memos by Fox News.
Nine months before the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, State Department Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy signed off on an internal memo that green-lighted the Benghazi operation.
The December 2011 memo from Jeffrey Feltman — then-Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) — pledged “to rapidly implement a series of corrective security measures.” However, no substantial improvements were made, according to congressional testimony to the House oversight committee from Regional Security Officer Eric Nordstrom.
The essence of the story is that Hillary had a goal of establishing a permanent presence in Benghazi — something completely unknown to Thomas Pickering of the inappropriately named “Accountability Review Board,” which held nobody accountable, conducted an insufficient review (not even interviewing Clinton), and which I suspect may not have even been a “board.” (What with the dishonesty of the first two words of this thing’s title, why would we believe the third is truthful?!)
You see, a permanent consulate is required by law to have certain security standards. Posterior-covering talking points in panicked emails after the slaughter warned not to refer to Benghazi as a “consultate,” presumably so that nobody would point out the inconvenient discrepancy between legal security requirements for consulates and the lack of security for this, er, “mission” or “diplomatic post.”
But the lack of security deeply troubled one State Department official:
Nordstrom repeatedly expressed his deep security concerns and noted Benghazi was still “undefined” in emails with his superiors seven months before the attacks.
In February 2012, he wrote that “while the status of Benghazi remains undefined, DS (Diplomatic Security) is hesitant to dev[ote] resources and as I indicated previously, this has severely hampered operations in Benghazi.”
He said that he “only had two DS agents on the ground. … and been advised that DS isn’t going to provide more than 3 DS agents over the long term.”
The connection to Hillary lies not merely in her ambitions to make Benghazi a Consulate that Shall Not Be Called a Consulate, but also in the level of approval that would have been needed to maintain the consulate without sufficient security. The Mustache himself says Hillary’s involvement was likely:
While other media reports have made passing references to the action memo signed by Kennedy and Feltman in the context of ongoing security issues, former State Department officials tell Fox News that the document is significant because Kennedy would not set policy on his own. Kennedy was ultimately responsible for overseas building operations deals with building leases and security, which should have followed strict OSPB standards.
“I find it very hard to believe that he (Kennedy) would sign this memo without having talked to Secretary Clinton or at least Deputy Secretary (William) Burns,” former ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton told Fox News after examining the December 2011 memo.
“Keeping this position open in Benghazi is a policy decision. It’s a policy decision that overrides normal security considerations. And I think that’s significant enough that a careerist like Undersecretary Kennedy would not do it on his own.”
Cue the Outrage Trump Card.
WHAT DIFFERENCE, AT THIS POINT, DOES IT MAKE?!?!?!
