Whistleblowers: Hillary Clinton Did Not Convene Counter-Terrorism Group During Benghazi

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ‘sought an end-around‘ the Counterterrorism Security Group during the Benghazi terror attacks on the eleventh anniversary of September 11th.

On Wednesday, three whistleblowers are slated to testify to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and give testimony that may shed light on why the Obama administration deliberately withheld intelligence and military assets from aiding U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens when he came under attack at a diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

In addition to Stevens, State Department diplomat Sean Smith was murdered in the al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist attack, and CIA security personnel Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed after nearly 13 hours of a protracted siege.

The three witnesses to the Obama administration’s clear mishandling of the terror attack who will testify Wednesday are Mark I. Thompson, a former Marine and deputy coordinator for operations in the agency’s counterterrorism bureau; Gregory Hicks, deputy chief of mission for the U.S. in Libya; and Eric Nordstrom, the former lead security official for the State Department in Libya.

James Rosen of Fox News reports that Hillary Clinton and her assistant Patrick Kennedy appear to have purposefully cut the Counterterrorism Security Group out of the loop. “You should have seen what (Clinton) tried to do to us that night,” Thompson is said to have told colleagues in October.

When pieced together with demonstrable attempts by the Obama administration to whitewash references to al Qaeda and terrorism for narrow political purposes, such as was recently reported by the Weekly Standard, as well as the delicately phrased Rose Garden speech that avoided outright calling the Benghazi attack an act of “terrorism,” it is clear the White House was in full spin-control over the national security matter.

Even Democratic Rep. Steven Lynch admitted the White House’s ensuing talking points “absolutely… were false,” on Fox News with Chris Wallace. The much-referenced Sunday show appearances by Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice were thus based on carefully crafted and fallacious talking points.

The testimony of witnesses to the attack will add depth of humanity to the bloodless and political manner the Benghazi terror attack has been widely discussed in the news media. A CBS report provides some glimpse of this with its characterization of Americans on the ground at the diplomatic mission feeling “helpless and abandoned.”

“We relied on Washington for dispassionate assessment,” one eyewitness told CBS News. “Instead, they [Washington officials] were asking us what help we needed. We answered: ‘Send reinforcements!’”

But no reinforcements came, and hopefully, the testimony provided on Wednesday will help Americans find out why. Regardless, Hillary Clinton is now linked by name to the decision-making process about how the Benghazi attacks were handled in real-time.

Previously, in her testimony on Benghazi provided in January, Clinton had refused to even admit pertinent decision-making responsibility for why additional security wasn’t provided to Ambassador Stevens and his diplomatic staff before the terrorist attack. At one point during the testimony, she even threw up her hands and exasperated, “What difference at this point does it make?”

Sharyl Attkinson of CBS News concluded that Hillary Clinton lied under oath when she claimed that she had not seen diplomatic cables of Stevens’ diplomatic mission requesting additional security, and Clinton is believed by House Republicans to have been directly involved in actually cutting security.

For a complete picture of the House report on Benghazi released in late April, read: “House Report on Benghazi Attack: An Administration That Failed to Act.” It contains a bullet-point overview and the full document for reading or downloading.P

Originally published at IJReview.com. Kyle Becker’s fiction novel Envirotopia is on sale at Sony, Amazon and Kobo.