Interview with Hillary Clinton about Benghazi

“Somebody’s lying,” I said to Hillary Clinton. “Who is it?”

“Well, it’s not me,” she answered. “That’s all I can tell you.”

Tom Eastman, Mark Guerringue, Hillary Clinton

This was last Wednesday when Hillary’s huge entourage returned to The Conway Daily Sun’s office for another interview. She’d been there in 2007 during her first presidential campaign but I was still teaching then and I missed it. This time I really wanted to be there, so I drove twenty-five miles in a snowstorm, hoping she wouldn’t cancel. She didn’t.

Few journalists are able to pin her down because she controls who gets to ask her questions as well as what those questions will be. I don’t think she was expecting any tough ones at the Sun interview. Sun publisher Mark Guerringue’s opening comments included a reference to the Benghazi attack and her conflicting claims about what caused it. She referred to several congressional investigations, saying: “If people don’t want to accept the facts, there’s nothing I can do about that… and for people to use [Stevens’] death, Seans’s death, and the death of the two CIA contractor’s for political purposes really dishonors them and… their whole purpose is to somehow derail me. And I understand it’s nothing but politics to them but it’s not just politics to me.”

I inserted myself at this point, saying: “I have a specific question about that if I could interject.”

“Sure,” said Mark.

Turning to Hillary, I said, “You mentioned the families of the Benghazi victims and the discrepancy Mark brought up about your email — or conversation maybe — with your daughter…”

“Um-hmm,” said Hillary.

“…about it being an al Qaida-like group, Ansar al Sharia. Then you told an Egyptian diplomat in a phone conversation that it was a planned attack and not a protest. Umm, but then, when the bodies were brought back, you spoke to the family members and you told them, they say that you told them, this was a spontaneous demonstration. And then George Stephanopolous asked on This Week: “Did you tell them it was about the film?”

Hillary on This Week

“Um-hmm,” she said.

“And you said, ‘No.’ Now, somebody’s lying…”

“Well first let me say,” she interjected, but I pressed on.

“…Who is it?”

“Well, not me. That’s all I can tell you,” she continued. “But, you know, people were incredibly emotionally distraught. Let, let’s give everybody a little bit of breathing room here and recognize that, [pause] There — I mean I-I’m trying to remember what is in the public record and what isn’t. Let’s just say that some of the families didn’t even know that their sons were working for the CIA and were in Benghazi. This was a huge emotional blow, and I’m very sympathetic to that. I can only tell you what the facts were. That period when I talked to the Egyptian Prime Minister was in that bubble when we thought there was a terrorist group taking credit for it, and that’s what we said. And when they withdrew, and when the intelligence community, led by the CIA, basically said we don’t know yet. Because remember, the CIA and the intel community was guiding us about what they thought happened and we had to rely on that. We didn’t have any independent information or verification. All this material was coming in. The CIA was sorting it out.”

There were several places here where I wanted to interrupt her, but I restrained myself and let her go on.

She went on, saying, “And if you look at the reports that were done, ah, by the minority on the Benghazi Committee, because it’s a much more reliable source than the Republican majority. They go through, chapter and verse, timing, about what happened, when, and the bottom line is what happened is that people were doing the best they could dealing with information that was changing, and the CIA wrote and approved the talking points that were used, ahh, and it was also true that from Egypt, to Tunisia, to Pakistan, the video was the primary spark that was sending people into protesting against our facilities. All of this was happening simultaneously. It wasn’t either/or as much as people want to get to the bottom of it. It was an amalgam of information and action.”

“I’m sure those people were distraught,” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Three different people — Tyrone Woods’ father said — about you — that you said, ‘We’re going to have those people arrested who were responsible for the death of your son.’ Sean Smith’s mother reported, ‘She [Hillary] said that it was because of the video.’ And then Glenn Doherty’s sister said that, “You chose to, in that moment, to basically perpetuate what you knew was untrue.’ So, all three of them say you told them that.”

“Well,” she said.

I ignored her and continued, “And you say you didn’t tell them that.”

“I can only tell you what I know happened,” she said. “I can’t, I can’t speak to them. I can tell you what Chris Steven’s family believes. I can tell you what Sean Smith’s wife believes. I can tell you what other family members believe, because yes,”

“But you didn’t tell them that,” I said.

“I did not tell them that, but, I can’t recite for you everything that was in a conversation where people were sobbing, where people were distraught, where groups of us — the president, the vice president — we were all making the rounds, talking to people, listening to people, and I was in a very difficult position because I had not yet said that two of the four people dead were CIA. Because we were under, ah, very strict directions, from the CIA, not to reveal that yet. So this was — this was — again, part of the fog of war. And, you know, I regret that anybody [pause] has a [pause], you know, an attitude or feeling that I do not [pause] think [pause] is accurate, but I’m not going to do anything other than express my sympathy for them because, I think they deserve it. They were, people who lost their children. They have every right to believe whatever they want to believe, but the facts don’t bear it out.”

Being part of a team I dropped it there, not because I wanted to — especially when she said, “the CIA wrote and approved the talking points that were used.” — but because I could not dominate the interview with about twenty others present who also wanted to question her.

Carly Fiorina

Coincidentally, that very morning I did a telephone interview with Carly Fiorina, the other woman running for president, and told her about the pending Clinton interview. I said if you could ask Hillary one question, what would it be? Without hesitation, Carly said: “Why did you lie? Why did you lie to American people the morning after the Benghazi attack?” I told her that’s exactly the question I chose. Carly’s interview deserves its own column, which is coming up next.

For three years, I’ve been angry that Hillary Clinton, President Obama, Susan Rice, and others, claimed it was a spontaneous demonstration over a video that killed four Americans at Benghazi and not a radical Muslim terrorist attack. I wrote about it several times including here and here. They knew different, and they said what they knew was not true. That’s lying — but I never heard any journalist or member of Congress ever use that word to Hillary’s face — and that’s what I was determined to do when I had the chance.

I did, and the Sun’s account of the interview, containing an accurate but abbreviated mention of my exchange with Hillary, was linked by The Drudge Report. From there it was picked up by dozens of media outlets. My intent here is to give readers a complete and accurate account our five-minute exchange.

Podcast of interview

Too Much Power in Washington

At a dinner party last week a friend said, “I’m going to say one word and I’d like you to answer in one word.”

“Okay.”

“Snowden.”

I had to think for several seconds. “Ambivalence,” was my response.

Edward J. Snowden shocked me with revelations of the extent to which government spies on us. It upset me and forced me to readjust my understanding of the threat to our Constitution government surveillance has become.

The Constitution limits government; that’s its primary purpose. Our Founding Fathers considered government a necessary evil to be constrained as a threat to liberty. As originally ratified, our Constitution says government may have only these powers and no others. Two years later, the Bill of Rights was added to spell out constraints more specifically.

Snowden showed me that’s all at risk now. The Fourth Amendment is violated when government collects all our phone calls and all our emails. We’re assured government won’t read them unless we’re communicating with a foreign terrorist.

Do I believe that? No. Do you? The Obama Administration uses the IRS to harass conservatives. Can we trust it not to read our emails or listen to our calls? Who would doubt it will continue to spy on - and leak information about - its political adversaries?

So now what? The federal government knows more about us than I ever would have believed and I’m a fairly well-informed person. I was relatively confident of my ability to sniff out paranoid conspiracy theories about secret cabals like the Trilateral Commission, or Bilderberg, or the Illuminati controlling the world. However, other things I’ve learned this year are worrying me more than they did when I first heard about them - all because of Edward J. Snowden.

What things? Department of Homeland Security buying 2700 mine-resistant, armor-protected vehicles and 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition for one. Inserting an “indefinite detention” proviso in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) allowing government to suspend our right to due process is another. Then there’s defining people reverent of individual liberty as terrorists, and that definition would include this writer. All this had the support of Republican congressional leaders as well. Where then, are the constitutional checks and balances designed by our Founding Fathers?

When Obama ignored the War Powers Act, thereby violating Congress’s constitutional authority to declare war in his attack on Libya, he was assisting rebels linked to al Qaeda. After they killed Ghaddafi, those rebels killed our Ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi. Though President Obama promised repeatedly to get to the bottom of what happened, all his efforts have been to cover it up. Republicans in Congress with the power to subpoena witnesses, have so far let him get away with all this. Are they complicit? Tacitly so, at least.

 There are reports here and here and here and elsewhere that Obama’s CIA was shipping weapons such as Gaddafi’s shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missiles to Syrian rebels from Benghazi at the time of the attack. There are reports by his own former justice minister that Gaddafi also had sarin nerve gas. There reports that sarin gas was used - not by Basher Assad - but by al Qaeda-affiliated rebels in Syria last May to kill innocent civilians. In June, Syrian rebels were caught with sarin over the border in Turkey.

President Obama and then-Secretary of State Clinton both lied repeatedly about what caused the Benghazi attack. They claimed to be repeating the best intelligence available at the time, but no intelligence about an obscure movie ever existed. Both knew that.

Having squandered credibility, President Obama painted himself into a corner in Syria with his “red line.” American and world opinion has forced him to defer to congress for constitutional authorization. American citizens now must wade through misinformation and fashion at least a tentative understanding with which to lobby our congressmen and senators as they debate a military strike. I recommend: "When our enemies are killing each other, don't interfere."

Four-plus years of Obama foreign policy shows me that our president is both incompetent and deceitful. Snowden’s revelations show me that neither Democrats nor Republicans have lived up to the oath they took to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States” when they were sworn in. All, however, are reflections of the citizens who elected them. Us. Again, I must quote Pogo, who said: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

We’re bad enough, but there are greater enemies out there. Edward J. Snowden has shown us what we need to see, but he has also betrayed his country - our country - to those greater enemies who wish to destroy us. What’s nagging at me now is columnist Mark Steyn’s often-repeated question: “[Have we become] too stupid to survive?”

The Tenth Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people,” but Congress and the White House act as if it didn’t exist. It needs to be taken out of mothballs and applied vigorously. The federal government must be scaled back drastically.

Riding High In April, Shot Down In May

Somebody in our high command let two former Navy SEALs die fighting off eighty radical Muslims. They fought bravely for seven hours and they could have been saved, but someone made a political decision that they should be left to die. Was that our commander-in-chief? Looks to me that it was, but soon we’ll have a full-scale investigation to answer that forty-year-old question: “What did the president know and when did he know it?” This isn’t what I started writing about for my weekly column but after watching our indignant president’s arrogant performance at the press conference Monday, my blood was boiling.

Uh-oh. We're screwed

We know he’s a political animal. All presidents are. A huge ego is necessary to even go after the job, but most maintain basic human values and decency while functioning in the Oval Office. Did President Obama? He was running for a second term and election day was six weeks away. He’d been bragging about killing Osama Bin Laden and putting al Qaida on the run. Then, on the anniversary of the September 11th attacks, an al Qaida group murdered an American Ambassador the president himself had appointed. Ambassador Stevens’ body was photographed being dragged through the streets, and there are unconfirmed reports that it was degraded in other ways before and after death.

It can’t be proven yet, but it’s obvious to millions of Americans that President Obama made a political decision that it was bad for his campaign for al Qaida to draw American blood again on the anniversary of September 11th, and on his watch. So, he tried to make it seem like it was something other than a terrorist attack, and hoped to ride it out until after election day. With the cooperation of our lapdog Mainstream Media, who either believed or pretended to believe his lies, he did.

This writer is not foreign policy expert or a White House correspondent. I’m a retired history teacher, but I knew right away it wasn’t a “demonstration” against a Youtube video. It was a full-scale terrorist attack by radical Muslims bent on killing Americans. People don’t bring rocket-propelled grenade launchers to demonstrations. So, when I watched as President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lied to the families of the slain Americans next to their coffins at the airport, I was enraged. When I watched UN Ambassador Susan Rice go around the Sunday morning talk shows, I knew she was lying too. Right away I got on my laptop and started typing to give vent to my anger. The next day, September 17th, I posted it on my web site and it ran in the newspapers the following Thursday, the 20th.

For weeks afterward, I had to listen to President Obama tell the same lie on several television programs and at the United Nations. I vented my increasing rage again in a web post September 25th, which ran as another column the following Thursday in various newspapers. I watched as the Mainstream Media jumped all over Mitt Romney for even commenting on the attack. I watched as CNN’s Candy Crowley helped President Obama keep the lid on his lies during the second presidential debate which she moderated. Then I watched Romney wimp out on Benghazi in the third debate - and Obama cruised to victory.

Now, finally, it’s unraveling. The Mainstream Media is being shamed into covering the emerging scandal they’ve studiously ignored for eight months. They know they can’t ignore the testimony of the three, brave whistleblowers last week. Monday I watched their faces at the press conference as their hero embarrassed himself with his continued, arrogant stonewalling. They weren’t going to be his lapdogs anymore, but he hasn’t realized it yet.

The president also denied knowing anything about his Internal Revenue Service officials targeting conservative groups and pro-Israel Jewish groups for harassment until it was reported as a Friday-afternoon story three days before. I don’t believe that, and, as I watched their faces during the press conference, it looked like those reporters didn’t believe it either. They knew that history was about to repeat itself as members of the House of Representatives - controlled by the opposite party - will soon form up and ask the same question over and over: “What did the president know and when did he know it?” According to our Constitution, the House has sole power of impeachment.

The worst part of this, however, is the brave soldiers who died at their posts because someone twice gave the order for their rescuers to “stand down.” Then there’s Sean Smith, the State Department computer expert who died with Ambassador Stevens. His mother commented Sunday: “I want to wish Hillary a happy Mother's Day,” she said. “She has her child. I don't have mine because of her.”

Talk Is Cheap

Things ordinary people learn growing up in the neighborhood help to understand international relations. It’s obvious now that President Obama was bluffing when he warned Syria not to use chemical weapons, and the world knows it too. Syria called his bluff - crossed his red line. As the late Margaret Thatcher would put it - the president is going wobbly - and in doing so, making the world more dangerous. It would have been better if he’d kept his mouth shut, but talking is all he knows how to do.

Growing up we learned the toughest people didn’t talk much, whereas those who talked a lot tended to be the ones who wimped out at crunch time. Talkers lacked inner strength and were afraid others would detect that, so they chattered on about how tough they were. These are basic lessons men learn about other men. Those who come to power apply them.

Can you remember a president who talks as much as Obama does? When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail. Early in his presidency, Obama want on an apology tour of Europe and the Middle East making speeches about how he was different from other presidents. His foreign policy was to show Muslims how nice he was, that he wasn’t like those other guys. Then he really expected Muslim leaders would all want to make nice. It hasn’t worked out that way of course, and now our president doesn’t know what to do next. He has no other tools in his toolbox.

When a bully goes into a bar, he’s not going to pick on the toughest-looking guy in the place. But if he suspects the toughest-looking guy is really a wuss, the bully will definitely poke at him to see what reaction he gets. When he discovers the guy has a jelly spine he’ll pile on the humiliation. Just so, when the bullies and crazies of the world think superpower America has a wimp in command, they’ll keep pushing to see what they can get away with. It’s their nature. North Korea is doing it. Iran is doing it. The radicals in Benghazi were doing it. Now Syria is doing it.

It’s not going to stop.

A connection ties Benghazi, Syria and Iran and Obama together. First, Obama denied the Benghazi attack was terrorism, made up a story about it being caused by a mysterious movie few ever heard of, and ordered his officials to push the lie. His Mainstream Media lapdogs went with it and refused to look into it any further. Other sources offer explanations for what Ambassador Stevens was really doing in Benghazi: running weapons from radical Muslim rebels there to other radical Muslim rebels in Syria via Turkey. We know Iran has boots on the ground in Syria to support fellow dictator Bashir Assad and they knew what Ambassador Stevens was doing.

Now back to Obama’s bluffing: The day after the Benghazi attack Obama said: “And make no mistake, we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people.” On October 26th, he said: “[M]y biggest priority now is bringing those folks to justice and I think the American people have seen that’s a commitment I'll always keep.”

Umm, no, Mr. President, we haven’t seen that. It’s been seven months and nobody has been arrested or captured or “brought to justice” as you keep promising. All we’ve seen are lies, cover-ups, and evasions by you and others in your administration.

Regarding Iran’s efforts to build nuclear weapons he told the world: “Make no mistake . . .” the US will “do what we must” to prevent it, and “all options are on the table.” But was Iran dissuaded? Obviously not. They continue on their merry way with assistance from North Korea, China, and Russia - none of whom take Obama seriously either.

He’s commander-in-chief of the strongest military the world has ever seen, but he has little idea how to use it. It’s as if Obama is the remote control device for an awesome military machine but he has no batteries inside him - no courage - and now the world knows it.

And don’t tell me about how “brave” Obama was to authorize the hit on Osama Bin Laden. The SEALS who carried out the mission were the brave ones. Insider accounts describe the president as indecisive and dithering until then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta took control of the situation because the Obama and his closest confidant,Valerie Jarrett, kept postponing the decision.

And the “tough” drone strikes? To community organizer president, watching intelligence videos of al Qaeda leaders hiding in Pakistan or Yemen and then shooting them with Hellfire Missiles is like playing video games with the "Choom Gang" back in Hawaii.

The worst thing is, truly brave American soldiers under his command know all this too. Why can’t the president tell us what really happened in Benghazi? “The FBI is investigating,” he says. Of course, the FBI investigated Major Hasan the Fort Hood shooter and the Boston Marathon bombers too and cleared them both. Will Obama do something about Syrians using chemical weapons? Nope. Monday he told us he wants more investigation. As the LA Times put it: “Obama’s Red Line on Syria Grows Softer.”

Outgoing Secretary Of The Statement

“What difference does it make?” That’s the mantra of the Obama Administration now, and it’s not just about what happened in Benghazi. It’s about many things, like twice taking an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God - and then ignoring it. “What difference does it make?”

 It’s about quadrupling our deficits for the last four years after promising to cut them in half. What difference does it make? It’s about using the Federal Reserve to print trillions of dollars with nothing to back them up. What difference does it make? It’s about infringing on the right to keep and bear arms in spite of the Second Amendment. What difference does it make? It’s about making “recess appointments” when the Senate isn’t in recess and appointing “czars” to make policy without congressional confirmation or authorization. What difference does it make?

Guess we could call Hillary Clinton our outgoing “Secretary of the Statement” since she made that infamous remark in the form of a rhetorical question. After shedding crocodile tears about her friend “Chris” and the other three dead Americans whose bodies were flown back to America, Mrs. Clinton pounded the table in feigned indignation yelling: “Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for walk one night who decided they’d go and kill some Americans?” It was neither of those things Madame Secretary, but as you said: what difference does it make?

What difference does it make that you (ignored) didn’t receive your friend Chris’s repeated pleas for more security? What difference does it make that you and/or President Obama and/or the Secretary of Defense (refused) didn’t know enough to send help to the former Navy Seals who, thinking for seven hours that help was on the way, died bravely trying to defend surviving Americans? What difference does it make that you all sent out UN Ambassador Susan Rice to lie to the American people about it five times the next Sunday morning?

What difference does it make that our Secretary of State just wants to go on her way without being accountable to questions about her competence, questions concerning her lies about some video being the cause of the attack, or questions about her lack of accountability to the US Senate that confirmed her? What difference, at this point, does it make?

What difference does it make if our soldiers’ morale plummets after realizing their commander-in-chief cares more about an election than about the very lives of brave soldiers under his command? What difference does it make that our president talked tough about the terrorists - promising to “bring them to justice” but hasn’t done a thing, even after one of the terrorists talked about it with a New York Times reporter at a cafe? What difference does it make when the same terrorists with the same weapons are so unafraid of President Obama that they took American hostages when attacking an oil rig in Algeria a couple of weeks ago?

What difference does it make when the Obama Administration censors any references to Islam or jihad from government documents about the war in which we’re engaged? What difference does it make that we’re afraid even to call our enemy by its true name? What difference does it make that our enemies think President Obama is a wuss and that America is a paper tiger?

 What difference does it make that Iran doesn’t take seriously President Obama’s promise that “The United States will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” What difference does it make that Israel doesn’t take our president seriously either and so will be forced into a pre-emptive attack on Iran to save itself? What difference does it make if that drives up the price of oil to $500 or $1000 a barrel and sinks the whole world’s economy? What difference does it make if a nuclear war breaks out in the Middle East and we’re led by a cowardly, incompetent administration?

Hard to see why any of this would be a big deal.

Obama: One and Done

Spinning is one thing. Lying is another, and the Obama Administration is telling whoppers. They knew right away it wasn’t a film protest that killed Ambassador Stevens but they said over and over that it was. Forced to admit the truth two weeks later, they lied about what they knew and when they knew it. They’re still lying as I write this. The president is lying. His press secretary is lying. The vice president is lying. The secretary of state is lying. Our UN Ambassador is lying. I knew the second day what the truth was and so did thousands of other Americans who pay attention to what’s going on in the Middle East. We don’t have security clearances, but we’re not stupid. I wrote about it here and here.

Both the Obama campaign and the Mainstream Media know people like me see through their lies, and that we’ll speak out loudly against them. But they know their media reach, though diminishing steadily, is still much broader than ours and they count on that.

So why do they lie? Why not just tell the American people that it was a terrorist assault from the beginning? The same reason most people lie: to avoid consequences. What consequences? Voter perception, seven weeks before the election, that Obama’s foreign policy is a complete failure - that al Qaeda is growing even if Bin Laden is dead. They need someone else to blame, as usual, so they blamed and arrested a third-rate filmmaker no one ever heard of and violated his First Amendment rights. It was a way to avoid investigating Obama’s scandal/coverup while maintaining their pretense of objectivity.

But it’s unraveling, so now they’re hiding behind “the FBI investigation.”

The Obama campaign - which is indistinguishable from the Obama Administration - intends to ride out the three weeks until the election pleading ignorance until they get “facts” from “The FBI Investigation.” When that’s complete, they’ll find out what “really happened.”

But we already know what happened, don’t we? What else would they want to find out? Do they want to learn the identities of the terrorists who murdered Stevens, the two SEALs and the other guy? We knew this within 24 hours of the attack. Are they trying to find out how the Obama campaign/administration screwed up? That’s a ha-ha. The FBI is under the command of Eric Holder, Obama’s racist, right-hand man whose cover-up abilities have been sharpened by burying the Fast and Furious debacle - that other scandal the MSM assiduously ignores. “The FBI investigation” is nothing but a delaying tactic - but it might not work.

It gets tougher every day for the MSM because of sworn testimony by intelligence officials and State Department officials, and military officials who insist that they warned their higher-ups - repeatedly and for months - prior to the attack, but were ignored. The MSM desperately wants to keep Obama in the White House for another term, but it’s much harder to keep him there than it was to put him there four years ago. He has a record now and long speeches with lofty platitudes aren’t cutting it anymore. Voters saw how incompetent he is in the first debate. They saw that the Hope and Change guy the media created doesn’t exist - and never has.

No. He didn't.

The second MSM debate moderator - Candy Crowley of CNN - ran interference for Obama just as Romney was skewering him on Benghazi. Lying again, Obama said he called the attack an act of terror immediately - and Romney was calling him on it when Crowley leapt in to cut Romney off. What Romney could have said then and didn’t, was: “Why then, Mr. President, did you send out your surrogates to repeatedly lie to the American people for you and insist that it was a film protest?”

Pretense of Objectivity

This will all come up in the third debate next week which will focus on foreign policy.

Use whatever analogy you want: “the emperor has no clothes”; “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”; or whatever. Voters saw. Polls shifted. Obama is in trouble. If and when the Benghazi cover-up falls apart, Obama is toast. Not only that, but Hillary - that other allegedly brilliant Democrat constructed and protected by the media - will be toast also. Her 2016 dreams will be over.

Even if Obama wins reelection, the House of Representatives will likely remain Republican with subpoena power to force testimony under oath - and the power to impeach both the president and the secretary of state. She is likely to resign after the election, but her reputation will be forever tarnished by exposure of her lies.

The Obama campaign and their Mainstream Media ancillaries obviously think voters are too stupid to understand all this. Are they right? We’ll know before midnight on Tuesday, November 6th, less than three weeks from now.