Obama Not Familiar With Benghazi Whistle-Blower Threats
IBDEditorials.com
Accountability: Administration officials actually need to lawyer up to reveal the truth about the Benghazi disaster that left our ambassador and three others dead. This from "the most transparent administration in history."
Benghazi is a huge scandal waiting to engulf the Obama administration if the eyewitness-backed facts of incompetence and negligence ever make it into public view. But when asked about it, the president, speaking to reporters on Tuesday, insulted the intelligence of the American public.
Pressed about "people in your own State Department saying they've been blocked from coming forward, that they survived the terror attack and they want to tell their story," and asked if he would "help them come forward," the Smartest Guy In The Room condescendingly feigned ignorance.
"I'm not familiar with this notion that anybody's been blocked from testifying," Obama claimed. "So what I'll do is I will find out what exactly you're referring to."
Yeah, get back to ya on that one.
The president knew full well what was being asked. But it's never good to reveal knowledge of what his underlings are doing to make him happy.
As Fox News reported Monday, "At least four career officials at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have retained lawyers or are in the process of doing so, as they prepare to provide sensitive information about the Benghazi attacks to Congress."
One unnamed State Department official has even felt the need to tap aggressive former Senate Intelligence Committee Republican counsel Victoria Toensing.
She revealed Monday that threats have been made by administration officials against the whistle-blowers "specifically about Benghazi ... and not just the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA."
Toensing said her client will reveal information about the months leading up to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Libya, during which requests for intensified security were denied at a high level of the State Department, the eight hours of the attack itself, and the aftermath during which the White House falsely pointed to an amateur American video as its cause.
According to Toensing, administration officials have been "taking career people and making them well aware that their careers will be over" should they reveal what they know.
It's easy for the White House to have a section of its slick website devoted to "Transparency and Open Government," with over 400 lofty words from President Obama himself.
"My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government," Obama promises. "My administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use."
It's another thing when its own officials wish to testify before the public's elected representatives in Congress to expose a scandal in the Obama administration that left four Americans dead at the hands of terrorists.
In that case, threats become more useful than transparency.