Hillary - Benghazi

(Politico) -- The State Department has released a new chronology adding perspective to how the diplomatic agency, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other elements of the U.S. government scrambled to respond to the attacks on the U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.

The first note of the attacks is recorded in military time, just after 4 p.m. on that Tuesday afternoon.

Clinton was connected with Libyan National Congress President Mohamed Magriaf at 6:49 p.m., and President Barack Obama was connected with Clinton at 10:27 p.m., the logs show. Testimony at a House Benghazi Committee hearing with Clinton last month established that she was at home by the time of the latter call. The logs show Clinton next contacting the operations center at 7:15 the following morning.

The death of Ambassador Chris Stevens appears to have been reported to the operations center at 2:55 a.m. on Sept. 12. Three other Americans also died in the attacks.

The watch logs do not show all the calls Clinton made that night, but a State spokesman said many calls are not routed through the operations center. The logs also do not appear to reflect an interagency secure video teleconference in which Clinton took part that evening.

(Factcheck.Org, Original 10/26/12] But, at this point, we do know that Obama and others in the administration were quick to cite the anti-Muslim video as the underlying cause for the attack in Benghazi that killed four U.S. diplomats, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. And they were slow to acknowledge it was a premeditated terrorist attack, and they downplayed reports that it might have been.

We call attention in particular to these key facts:

There were no protesters at the Benghazi consulate prior to the attack, even though Obama and others repeatedly said the attackers joined an angry mob that had formed in opposition to the anti-Muslim film that had triggered protests in Egypt and elsewhere. The State Department disclosed this fact Oct. 9 — nearly a month after the attack.

Libya President Mohamed Magariaf insisted on Sept. 16 — five days after the attack — that it was a planned terrorist attack, but administration officials continued for days later to say there was no evidence of a planned attack.

Magariaf also said the idea that the attack was a “spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous.” This, too, was on Sept. 16. Yet, Obama and others continued to describe the incident in exactly those terms — including during the president’s Sept. 18 appearance on the “Late Show With David Letterman.”

Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, was the first administration official to call it “a terrorist attack” during a Sept. 19 congressional hearing. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did the same on Sept. 20. Even so, Obama declined opportunities to call it a terrorist attack when asked at a town hall meeting on Sept. 20 and during a taping of “The View” on Sept. 24.

Sept. 11: The Attack

6:07 p.m.:

The State Department’s Operations Center sends an email to the White House, Pentagon, FBI and other government agencies that said Ansar al-Sharia has claimed credit for the attack on its Facebook and Twitter accounts.

(The existence of the email was not disclosed until Reuters reported it on Oct. 24.)

About 10:00 p.m.: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issues a statement. Her statement, which MSNBC posted at 10:32 p.m., made reference to the anti-Muslim video.

Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet.

11:12 p.m.: Clinton sends an email to her daughter, Chelsea, that reads:

Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an al Qaeda-like group:

The Ambassador, whom I handpicked and a young communications officer on temporary duty w a wife and two young children. Very hard day and I fear more of the same tomorrow.” (The email was discovered in 2015 by the House Select Committee on Benghazi. It is written to “Diane Reynolds,” which was Chelsea Clinton’s alias.)

Sept. 12: Clinton delivers a speech at the State Department to condemn the attack in Benghazi and to praise the victims as “heroes.” She again makes reference to the anti-Muslim video in similar language.

Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior, along with the protest that took place at our Embassy in Cairo yesterday, as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet.

Sept. 12, 3:04 p.m.: Clinton calls then-Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil and tells him,

We know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack — not a protest.

An account of that call was contained in an email written by State Department Public Affairs Officer Lawrence Randolph that summarizes the call between the two leaders. The email was released by the House Benghazi committee (2015).

Sept. 13: Clinton meets with Ali Suleiman Aujali — the Libyan ambassador to the U.S. — at a State Department event to mark the end of Ramadan. Ambassador Aujali apologizes to Clinton for what he called “this terrorist attack which took place against the American consulate in Libya.” Clinton, in her remarks, does not refer to it as a terrorist attack. She condemns the anti-Muslim video, but adds that there is “never any justification for violent acts of this kind.”

Some seek to justify this behavior as a response to inflammatory, despicable material posted on the Internet. As I said earlier today, the United States rejects both the content and the message of that video.

Sept. 21: Clinton, speaking to reporters before a meeting with Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, calls it a “terrorist attack” for the first time.

What happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack, and we will not rest until we have tracked down and brought to justice the terrorists who murdered four Americans.

(Foxnews) -- Smith's uncle, Michael Ingmire, told FoxNews.com.

Mrs. Clinton is a serial liar.

Tyrone Woods' father, Charles, recalled meeting Clinton when his son's body arrived at Andrews Air Force Base two days after the attacks.

"I gave Hillary a hug and shook her hand and she said,

We are going to have the filmmaker arrested who was responsible for the death of your son.

Woods said, reading the account from his journal.

That was a complete bald-faced lie

he told FoxNews.com Friday. "The day after the attack, she was talking to the Prime Minister of Egypt and she said the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the video."

(WSJ) -- Thanks to Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi testimony on Thursday, we now understand why the former secretary of state never wanted anyone to see her emails and why the State Department sat on documents. Turns out those emails and papers show that the Obama administration deliberately misled the nation about the deadly events in Libya on Sept. 11, 2012.

The administration instead immediately presented the attack as a spontaneous mob backlash to an anti-Muslim YouTube video. At 10:30 on the night of the attack, Mrs. Clinton issued a statement about the violence, blaming the video. She repeated the charge in a speech the next day. President Obama gave his own speech that day, referring to the video and refusing to use the word “terrorism.”

That same evening, Mrs. Clinton spoke on the phone with Libyan President Mohamed Magariaf, around 8 p.m. The notes from that conversation, in a State Department email, describe her as saying:

We have asked for the Libyan government to provide additional security to the compound immediately as there is a gun battle ongoing, which I understand Ansar as Sharia [sic] is claiming responsibility for.

Ansar al Sharia is al Qaeda’s affiliate on the Arabian Peninsula. So several hours into the attack, Mrs. Clinton already believed that al Qaeda was attacking U.S. facilities.

(National Review) -- In Thursday’s hearing, Clinton said, “When I was speaking to the Egyptian prime minister or in the other two examples you showed, we had been told by Ansar al-Sharia [a militia group] that they took credit for it. It wasn’t until about 24 more hours later that they retracted taking credit for it.”

So when Ansar al-Sharia retracted taking credit for it, September 13, why did she then conclude that it was NOT a terror attack at all, and a protest over a video? Why did she find it so unthinkable that it was a terror attack – particularly when no one on the ground had ever reported any protest — and why did she go back to the immediate video explanation?

(ABC News) -- The second email is from Clinton to Diane Reynolds, an alias used by Chelsea Clinton, on Sept. 11, the day of the attack, in which she wrote,

“Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an al Qaeda-like group:

The Ambassador, whom I handpicked and a young communications officer on temporary duty w a wife and two young children. Very hard day and I fear more of the same tomorrow.”

This email also shows she was making a direct assessment, at least in private, that this had to do with al-Qaeda and not a protest. This is important to Republicans and will serve to further their belief that much of the response to the Benghazi attack was calculated to protect Obama politically.

Clinton had a clear response: “When I was speaking to the Egyptian prime minister or in the other two examples you showed, we had been told by Ansar al-Sharia [a militia group] that they took credit for it. It wasn't until about 24 more hours later that they retracted taking credit for it," she said.

(Reuters) -- Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show.

The first email, timed at 4:05 p.m. Washington time - or 10:05 p.m. Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission allegedly began - carried the subject line "U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack" and the notation "SBU", meaning "Sensitive But Unclassified."

A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07 p.m. Washington time, carried the subject line: "Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack."

The message reported: "Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli."