Benghazi: What would Sherlock Holmes deduce?
Mrs. Bill Clinton’s 11-hour Benghazi testimony was almost as long as the 13-hour Battle of Benghazi, during which time rescue forces from outside of Benghazi were forbidden to go there. Someone in Washington, yet unknown, forbade attempts at rescue. Was that someone in the official military chain-of-command? Or, was it some civilian with zero authority to issue such an order? Unfortunately, no committee member asked Mrs. Clinton: Who gave the "stand down" order?
Mrs. Clinton insisted on an open hearing because she knew she could not be questioned in public about the highly classified operation the Obama White House and the CIA were running out of the CIA Annex. Whatever the facts, clandestine operations cannot be mounted in foreign lands without the approval of the Secretary of State. And, mind you, everyone on the Benghazi Select Committee, both Democrat and Republican, had open-source intelligence that the CIA and our NATO allies had been running guns to the rebels who overthrew Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi.
Moreover, the so-called Super-Eight members of Congress had to have been briefed in advance on the details of the White House/CIA operation in Benghazi. Ergo: many months before the Benghazi attack, the White House proponents of the Benghazi operation must have gathered Congresspersons: Rogers, Ruppersberger, Burr, Feinstein, Pelosi, Boehner, Reid and McConnell inside the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) located in the Capitol and laid out the plan to lease the CIA Annex, staff it with CIA operatives, and contract for a small security team to protect the CIA compound. The funds for this "black" operation had to have been approved by the Super-Eight. Or, if the Super-Eight were not told about Benghazi, Congress has a prima facie case to impeach President Obama.
Was the martyred Ambassador Stevens helping the CIA collect left-over weapons and ship them via Turkey to the Sunni Islamists trying to overthrow Alawite-Shia President Assad in Syria? Given Vladimir Putin’s vital interest in the Syrian seaports of Tartus and Latakia and with Putin’s war planes currently dropping bombs in Syria in support of Assad, Sherlock Holmes might deduce that Putin engineered the destruction of a CIA gun-running operation in Benghazi. Holy smoking gun! That would be an act of war.
At 8:30 p.m. local time, the Turkish Ambassador to Libya and Ambassador Chris Stevens concluded a round of secret discussions. But what was so urgent that Ambassador Stevens left the relative safety of the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli on 9/11, 2012, to confer with the Turkish Ambassador in the obviously poorly secured U.S. Mission in Benghazi? Shortly after the Turkish Ambassador departed, well-organized attacks succeeded in killing Ambassador Stevens and his aide, then the attackers turned their guns and mortars on the CIA Annex and killed two more Americans.
Mrs. Bill Clinton and her unsecure e-mail server aside, the hearings may reveal a hidden switch in U.S. policy from supporting our allies, -- the secular Muslim leaders in the Middle East -- to supporting the al-Qaeda- and ISIS-allied rebels, seeking to create an Islamic Caliphate across Crescent of Islam. Even worse, what if the Committee finds Vladimir Putin ordered the attack on Ambassador Stevens and the CIA Annex? Stay tuned. This story may be far from over.
Nationally syndicated columnist, William Hamilton, is a laureate of the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame, the Colorado Aviation Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma University Army ROTC Wall of Fame, and is a recipient of the University of Nebraska 2015 Alumni Achievement Award. He was educated at the University of Oklahoma, the George Washington University, the U.S Naval War College, the University of Nebraska, and Harvard University.
©2015. William Hamilton.
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