Meanwhile The Obama Campaign is focused on Big Bird….
The State Department is coming under more scrutiny ahead of anticipated hearings scheduled for tomorrow. Request for additional security fell on deaf ears, and despite State Dept claims there were no protests in front of the consulate in Benghazi. The Democrats are petrified of the impact on the election, desperate to protect President Obama, and are attempting rabid obfuscation:
The Congressional Hearing will be streamed live tomorrow at noon on the web – AVAILABLE HERE
(Reuters) – A U.S. security officer formerly stationed in Libya has told lawmakers he sent two cables to the State Department requesting more security agents for the American mission in Benghazi but received no response.
The officer, Eric Nordstrom, also said that a State Department official, Charlene Lamb, wanted to keep the number of U.S. security personnel in Benghazi “artificially low,” according to a memo summarizing his comments that was obtained by Reuters.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Nordstrom’s statements.
Nordstrom was interviewed by a congressional committee investigating the attack last month on the U.S. mission in Benghazi in which the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed.
The top U.S. intelligence authority, the office of the Director of National Intelligence, says the four Americans were killed in an organized terrorist assault, but the attackers have not been identified.
A brief summary of Nordstrom’s interview with the Republican-controlled House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was contained in a memo prepared by the committee’s minority Democratic staff. (read more)
WASHINGTON DC – Prior to the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi late in the evening on Sept. 11, there was no protest outside the compound, a senior State Department official confirmed today, contradicting initial administration statements suggesting that the attack was an opportunistic reaction to unrest caused by an anti-Islam video.
In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, two senior State Department officials gave a detailed accounting of the events that lead to the death of Amb. Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The officials said that prior to the massive attack on the Benghazi compound by dozens of militants carrying heavy weaponry, there was no unrest outside the walls of the compound and no protest that anyone inside the compound was aware of.
In fact, Stevens hosted a series of meetings on the compound throughout the day, ending with a meeting with a Turkish diplomat that began at 7:30 in the evening, and all was quiet in the area.
“The ambassador walked guests out at 8:30 or so; there was nobody on the street. Then at 9:40 they saw on the security cameras that there were armed men invading the compound,” a senior State Department official said. “Everything is calm at 8:30 pm, there is nothing unusual. There had been nothing unusual during the day outside.”
The official was asked about why senior officials said in the immediate aftermath of the attack that it was related to the anti-Islam video and the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo earlier in the day.
“But putting together the best information that we have available to us today, our current assessment is what happened in Benghazi was in fact initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo, almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, prompted by the video,” U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice said Sept. 16 on NBC’s Meet the Press.
“That was not our conclusion,” the State Department official said. “We don’t necessarily have a conclusion [about that].”
Rice has since attributed those statements to information given to the administration by intelligence officials.
On Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee will hold its much-anticipated hearing on the administration’s actions leading up to and following the attack. The hearing, entitled, “The Security Failures of Benghazi,” will feature testimony from Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Programs Charlene Lamb, Regional Security Officer Eric Nordstrom, who was stationed in Libya before the attacks, and Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, a Utah National Guardsman who was leading a security team in Libya until August. (more)