A hacker going by the name ‘Guccifer’ has intercepted emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to a former Clinton administration assistant, Sidney Blumenthal; some pertaining to the attack in Benghazi. Let’s set aside that Blumenthal holds no official office and that Clinton was discussing this with him rather than with someone who should be involved, like perhaps Leon Panetta or the President, and focus on the zeroing in on the YouTube video.
Breitbart reports:
Russia Today has released excerpts of what are said to be highly sensitive emails sent from a former Clinton administration staffer to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton following the September attacks on the consulate in Benghazi, obtained this week by a hacker known as “Guccifer.”
“Guccifer” claims to have obtained the emails by compromising the AOL account of Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant to President Bill Clinton. If authentic, the emails appear to contain information about the Benghazi attack, and were leaked by the hacker to a number of select news outlets and other individuals, including many members of Congress.
The Breitbart piece links to the Russia Today article, that contains this paragraph:
According to the Blumenthal memos, though, even the US secretary of state was being fed disinformation directly after the attack. In the email dated Sept. 12, Sec. Clinton is told that the anti-Islamic film was likely the catalyst for the assault.
“A senior security officer told [interim Libyan President Mohammed Yussef] el Magariaf that the attacks on that day were inspired by what many devout Libyans viewed as a sacrilegious internet video on the prophet Mohammed originating in America,” the memo reads. “The Libya attacks were also inspired by and linked to an attack on the US mission in Egypt on the same day.”
Elsewhere in the first memo, Blumenthal tells Clinton that another source had even more to say about the assault:
“According to a separate sensitive source, el Magariaf noted that his opponents had often tried to connect him to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) through the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), a group established in opposition to former dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi, which el Magariaf led in the 1980s. In the opinion of this individual el Magariaf believes that he can survive potential negative publicity in this regard, but if this situation continues to develop in this manner it will complicate his efforts to establish an orderly administration in the country. Again, he stated that the attacks on the US missions were as much a result of the atmosphere created by this campaign, as the controversial video.”
We’re back to the obscure YouTube video as an excuse for ignoring multiple warnings, including several from Ambassador Stevens, in the days prior to the attack. This ‘source’ Blumenthal was talking to was clearly not correct, as we see the quote below regarding being warned about a pre-planned attack.
Via The Independent:
But President Megarif told the American station National Public Radio: “We firmly believe that this was a pre-calculated, pre-planned attack that was carried out specifically to attack the US Consulate. A few of those who joined in were foreigners who had entered Libya from different directions, some of them definitely from Mali and Algeria.”
So we are draw the conclusion that this warning from Megarif was discarded and the YouTube video slipped in there to cover it up? One might believe so given that even the Libyan Militia gave warnings up to three days prior.
Also from The Independent:
A senior official of the biggest militia in Benghazi, the February 17th Brigade, told CNN that he had warned US diplomats of a rapidly deteriorating security situation in Benghazi three days before the attack. “The situation is frightening, it scares us,” he said he had stressed during the meeting. Mr Stevens had been back in Libya for only a short time before US security officials decided it would be safe to make the journey to Benghazi during the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
So, in Mrs. Clinton’s own words – ‘What difference does it make?‘
It makes a big difference. The fact remains this administration chose to employ a falsehood about a YouTube video being the cause of the attack in the face of multiple warnings from on the ground sources and the Ambassador himself prior to said attack. This administration decided to cover their ass and the ass of Megarif by way of a video that was being touted as the cause of riots in Egypt. The video, however, was not the cause of the riots but rather just an excuse. A convenient excuse this administration picked up and ran with.
Nakoula unavailable for comment.
