Aviation Update

Once again an aviation tragedy gets turned into a political football.   But this isn't all about Trump. 

Yes, the Donald showed poor judgment in jumping on the terrorist bandwagon as soon as the news reports came in on EgyptAir 804.  While that might have been everyone's gut reaction, a president cannot always operate off gut reactions.  Imagine Trump in the White House reacting this way then later the crash is blamed on a mechanical issue.   And that's no endorsement of Hillary, who also got on the bomb theory bandwagon albeit after unnamed US officials leaked what might amount to the same suspicions everyone else had.


Of course those US officials were echoing Egyptian officials in the early terror pronouncement.   And yes, the media has already started a whitewash campaign to pretend that Hillary really didn't endorse the terrorism angle on day one just like Donald, and will use it as a cudgel against him.   But he allowed it.

Meanwhile, those same initial reports indicated there was no distress call from the jet to Egyptian air traffic control after it was 'handed off' from Greek controllers. Some news stories suggested there was no contact at all--the plane just went down.  That's presumably what got many in the US media going down the terrorism road.     

Now today it was reported that there was actually an extensive conversation between Egyptian ATC and the doomed plane as it made an emergency descent due to a fire.  Wow, how did that get lost?  So that begs the question: were early reports from Cairo bungled or was it a deliberate deception?  Perhaps that's why someone on the inside leaked ACARS reports to Avherald that showed the onboard fire.  

Does all this mean the Donald goofed up and there was no terror attack?  Yes and maybe no.  Yes, he goofed up by jumping the gun, but yes it might still be an attack.  We know there was a fire, it started somewhere/somehow.  Terrorists these days are likely using small incendiary devices they can get past security--recall the Daallo Airlines A321 event where the idiot succeeded in blowing himself out of the jet and killing nobody else. The plane landed safely.  He smuggled the device in on his wheelchair.  So just because the aircraft didn't suffer a complete hull failure and immediately fall from the sky doesn't mean it wasn't attacked by someone. 

Also, just because the fire might have started in the electronics bay or lavatory doesn't necessarily mean there was no sabotage involved-- see the New York Times story today about what EgyptAir employees scrawled on the outside of that very same aircraft after current president Al-Sisi couped out Muslim Brotherhood terrorist sympathizer Mohammed Morsi two years ago.  That might amount to Jihadi sabotage, which most people would consider the same as Islamic terrorism. 

Still, all this new information certainly tips the scales of likely cause away from terrorism and more towards mechanical failure.   The question then becomes why the Egyptians allowed the erroneous information to percolate in the world media for days?   Was their concern legal liability or were they seriously trying to deflect while giving them time to comb their airports for Morsi/ISIS sympathizers?  Is the submarine they are sending in meant to locate the wreckage or maybe manage it?

Whatever the case, it behooves politicians and other officials to reserve judgments on these kinds of events for at least a few days.      

MORE  5/23/16

In another example of how most media outlets shouldn't be trusted to even report on a 3td class presidential race, much less important worldwide events, now they are saying there was no extended conversation.   And no, it doesn't mean that was deception or misdirection, it was likely some media twit misunderstanding the source. 

Also, on CNN's coverage this evening they were saying that whole 90 degree 360 degree turn thing might be fiction as well, since that information was presumably gleaned from primary radar only.  If the leaked ACARS messages indeed ended abruptly only minutes into the event, along with the secondary radar transponder track, then it seems we are back to Trump's original speculation.  At least right now.  The only definitive way to settle this will be the old-fashioned way, analyzing the recorders and wreckage.   But politicos don't have time to wait.   

Of Naked Pictures and Emperors

Some in the media are actually beginning to notice that our president's grand RtP policy in Libya might be springing a leak..

Libyan militia members have apparently turned the abandoned U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, into a water park, judging by amateur video posted to YouTube on Sunday. The video, which reflects the anarchy that currently reigns in Libya's capital, shows fully clothed men diving into and swimming in a pool.

To those who say the embassy was abandoned so this means nothing--consider this: while the State Dept may consider it a vacant building the Islamists certainly do not and will broadcast their frolicking around the pool to the Arab Street as a powerful symbol of US decline in the face of fundamentalism. Coupled with the murdering of our ambassador in Benghazi, they've got a point.  

By the way, there are rumors the other captured American journalist held by ISIS, Steven Sofloff, was taken in Libya, not Syria.  And of course as mentioned on this blog numerous times CNN reported that AQ in Iraq (ISIS) fighters were present for the attack in Benghazi.   There appears to be a nexus. 
 
So recapping.....we have a failed policy in Libya after US air power intervention, a failed policy in Egypt trying to prop up the Muslim Brotherhood only to see it upended by a military coup and new dictator, a loss of all our progress in Iraq with the advent of a Saddam regime-led insurgency army using captured US military hardware who have killed an American, and a black eye over Syria, where the leader of the free world set a red line then allowed WMDs to be used without harsh consequences.

Is it any wonder why Mr. Flexible, Vlad Putin, is about to invade Ukraine after "helping" our president on the red line problem while being a cog in the nuke negotiations in Iran?  Is it shocking that a Chinese fighter jet did di-do's around one of our surveillance planes in international airspace now claimed by them, immediately following a visit to Vietnam by Joint Chiefs Chairman Dempsey?

No.  But worry not, Bush's military-security apparatus constructed after 9/11 will continue to keep presidential fundraising and golf safe, negating the need for any immediate strategies against ISIS that might put the mid-terms in jeopardy.  First things first--winning the war against the real terrorists. 

Meanwhile the press is certainly outraged--about nekkid pictures of Jennifer Lawrence pilfered off 'the cloud'.  Outrageous!   The cloud is supposed to be safe!   This must be stopped!    Hey--they should all be thankful they aren't waking from a coma like Joan Rivers. 

More Benghazi Memos

For 'case closed' we sure are getting a lot of new information.

Now we find out that at 911pm eastern time on 9/11/12 the administration, without any outside confirmation from intelligence agencies or State officials in theater, blamed the "Innocence of Muslims" video clip for the Benghazi attack.  They even mentioned the video in their condolence letter dated Sept 12 to the family of Sean Smith the next day... 

Another State Department document, this one labeled “sensitive but unclassified” and dated Sept. 12, also refers both to the video and to a group linked to al Qaeda in explaining the cause of the attack. “At least 20 armed extremists, members of Ansar al-Sharia, set fire to the Principal’s office, allegedly retaliating for videos posted on the internet of a film deemed insulting to Islam,” the memo reads, providing an early State Department summary of what happened.

Bizarrely, the White House is using this formerly undisclosed email to make their case that they thought it was the video all along, ie, this proves they didn't invent it.  Well yes, unless it proves they exploited it to deflect from what actually happened.  Nobody thinks the video wasn't at least responsible for some of the Cairo protests, and eventually other cities.  But the Obama folks want it both ways--they want us to believe they blamed the terrorist attack (cue Candy Crowley) on the video.  That way both bases are covered.

But what they don't want people to think is that it was a 'pre-planned' attack with 'foreign fighters', which came from the president of the Libyan Congress on the same day Rice blitzed the Sunday shows with the video explanation. After all, a pre-planned attack with foreign fighters makes it sound less like some hooligans walking around who got ticked off by something in Cairo and grabbed their RPGs and mortars. 

A pre-planned attack with foreign fighters also goes a little close to the whole "free the Blind Shiekh" thing, which was being pursued by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt leading up to the event.  The brother of the leader of AQ was behind the initial Cairo protest, which turned into a riot after a local Salafist leader used the video to rile up the protesters.  One of the terrorist militias in eastern Libya that was fingered in one of the previous attacks on the mission is called the Omar Abdel Rahman Brigades (video here). CNN knows all this--they initially reported it--but have since lost their notes, along with any notes about the Stevens diary. 

A pre-planned attack with foreign fighters also looks a little like retribution for the killing of Core AQ Number Two Abu Yahya al-Liby.  AQ Number One had just urged the faithful to take revenge, announced publicly early on 9/11.  In Cairo the protesters were shouting "Obama, Obama we are all Osama".  They were shouting it at Obama, not Bacile.

So an administration that usually treads carefully when it comes to laying blame for terror acts, preferring to let law enforcement come to conclusions first, was good with blaming an American Coptic Christian filmmaker before the attack was even over despite countervailing evidence and a lack of overall knowledge of the situation.  One can only presume such a reaction was an attempt to get out ahead of the 'pre-planned attack with foreign fighters' reality to redirect blame away from Obama (as the Rhodes instructions tried to do) knowing it was a political vulnerability after what had just been said at the convention. So the Democrats are right in the sense that this IS all about politics--and it still is--all ginned up by the Democrats. 

Something for the Select Committee

Ask Hillary about the diary.

Ambassador Stevens's diary.  He had a seven page bound diary with him at the mission, which was found by a CNN reporter on September 14th, on the same day the CIA talking points were getting massaged by State and WH political/media peeps, and two days before the infamous Susan Rice TV blitz.  The diary contained a reference to the ambassador being on an "AQ hit list' or something similar.



Why is the diary important?  Because if Stevens was indeed on an AQ hit list then later killed by the extremists during an attack on the anniversary of 9/11 it works to dilute the idea that the mission was simply overrun by random protesters pissed off at a movie trailer as portrayed by the administration.   It also opens the question as to why the mission wasn't fortified beforehand.

So who knew about this beforehand?   It certainly appears the State Dept knew.  From these pages back in 2013:

CNN said on its website that it notified the Stevens family "within hours" that it had the journal. The Stevens family then reached out to the State Department, which arranged a telephone conference call between members of the family and CNN.

In that call, the family asked the news organization to return the journal and to not publish or broadcast any of its contents, according to a Stevens family member and State Department officials. Family members and State Department officials said CNN agreed during the Sept. 14 conference call to hold off on using the diary until the family had a chance to review its contents.

No, it doesn't say "Hillary knew", but one might think such a development would have been passed to the top cat pretty quickly. So if Madam Secretary knew about a diary on the 14th, why did she tell ABC News this on the 20th:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today there is "no information" the American ambassador killed in a brazen attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya was on an al Qaeda hit list. Clinton said she had "no reason to believe that there's any basis for that," apparently referring to a report by CNN in which an unnamed source "familiar with Ambassador [Christopher] Stevens' thinking" said that the ambassador believed he was on such a list.

Admittedly, those are weasel words from a lawyer. But to the average person it comes off as a big fat lie.

That denial set off a very weird chain of events.  CNN had reported on the hit list the day before without mentioning the diary, as per the agreement.  So they knew Hillary knew.  This prompted Cooper to take the unprecedented step of defying the White House and announcing on his show the next day that yes dammit, Stevens did say he was on a hit list and we had the diary to prove it.

“This was not broadcasting gossip from the pages of someone’s diary. This was not reporting salacious details of someone’s private life. This was reporting information that could impact the national security of the United States and the safety of U.S. installations in other countries… We think you need to know what happened to U.S. personnel in Benghazi.”

This betrayal led to some hard feelings in the nutroots and the State Dept., prompting Hillary's goon Phillipe Reines to blast Cooper and CNN for bad journalism, which led the late Michael Hastings to blast Reines/State for media intimidation, which led Reines to email Hastings to "F off and have a nice life". Except he didn't abbreviate using just the F.  About a year later Hastings died in a car crash big coincidence just saying.

This stuff is a little complicated and doesn't fit on a short sound bite, which means it's probably going nowhere. But in summary, here's what appears to have happened:

1.  Hillary likely was aware of Stevens' concerns well beforehand.  She almost certainly knew he had said he was on AQ hit list on the 14th when the diary came to State's attention.  Yet on the 16th she allowed Susan Rice to go on five networks and downplay any ties to a coordinated, organized, pre-planned terrorist attack.  Why? 

2.  After the Sunday shows Anderson Cooper decided the public needed to know a little more (or he just had a scoop he couldn't stand to keep under wraps) and reported on the hit list by confirming it with a few of Stevens' colleagues back in Tripoli.  This almost surely raised concerns in certain quarters because it acted to undermine the new narrative just rolled out by Rice.  Apparently State thought CNN was just going to cover up the information due to 'privacy'. 

3.  On the 20th Hillary responded to a question about the hit list by fibbing and claiming she had no information about such a thing.  In other words, Anderson Cooper is making stuff up.  

4.  Steamed because they were being knee-capped, Cooper and CNN reported on the 21st that yes he did say this because they found the diary and read it.  So there Hillary--it's your fault we broke our agreement. 

5.  This set off some ballistics in State, where Hillary aide Reines accused CNN of low-ball journalism for reporting a legitimate news story that Romney may be able to use (paraphrasing). 

6.  This was followed by Michael Hastings, of Rolling Stone/McChrystal fame, lambasting Reines for media mistreatment, which earned him an email F bomb in reply.

Epilogue:   Reines later moved on from State to Beacon Global Strategies, which eventually hired CIA second honcho Mike Morrell, who recently testified that he changed the talking points and favored a view by Langley analysts that the attack stemmed from an out of control protest, despite most of his 'ground truth' reports from Libya telling him otherwise.  

Sounds like a fairly big story but almost nobody in the press--including CNN--followed up during the months going forward. McCain danced around it a bit during the January hearings, but questions still remain such as when Hillary knew and why the arrangement was made to suppress information.  So, how about some sunshine on the matter.

What if all of it was Pre-Planned?

The administration's talking points on the Benghazi talking points--and Benghazi in general--is that a video sparked a riot in Cairo that sparked a complex terrorist attack in Libya.  Although the attack's genesis was later untied from the protests (because there wasn't one), their excuse was they were only operating off the best intelligence assessments given them by the CIA, who changed stuff just because.

The Rhodes memo then came out, via a court order, which showed without doubt that the admin talking heads were instructed to blame the outrage in the Muslim world on the hateful video, not on Obama's policies.  The new pushback is that Benghazi is just a wild GOP conspiracy theory and a waste of taxpayer money and Congress' time.

But here's another wild conspiracy theory--what if the protests in Cairo, which sparked protests all over the Muslim world, were themselves pre-planned and timed for 9/11 just like the terrorist attack in Benghazi?  What if the protests were being organized by a brother of AQ's leader in an effort to get a terrorist released from US prison?  What if the video was just fuel thrown on a fire that was already set to burn?  And what if the administration knew that ahead of time?  In other words, it was all about US policy. 

That would pretty much blow their entire defense for Benghazi.   Maybe the Democrats are afraid that may come out.

NOTHING IF NOT PREDICTABLE  5/5/14

As Benghazi gets stirred back up there will be some diversions and hatchet jobs.  A couple of strange stories have already showed up.  One is a video of Eric Holder passive-aggressively warning big bankers that they are not "too big to jail".    Hmm, apparently populism rules when the going gets tough?  The video is almost an accidental comedy, with Holder's blank look starting into the camera while threatening businesses.  This the same guy in contempt of Congress.  He is even personally following some of these cases, as if to say they are super double serious.  Anyway, this lines up well with Obama's mid-term initiative about paycheck unfairness and gender unfairness.  It's sort of a formal Occupy Wall street.  We will be hearing a lot more about this.      

Another story popping up is a hit piece on Lara Logan, formerly of 60 Minutes, by the New York Magazine.  Lara Logan of Benghazi fail fame.  And what a coincidence!   So a courageous female reporter who Ed Bradley once said had "tits and balls" is now a victim of the war on women.  Next perhaps Media Matters will run a story from anonymous sources purporting that Sharyl Attkisson used to wear a pointy hood when not chasing down Karl Rove for the latest scoop.  

The Democratic Party can always count on their big media friends to circle the wagons in times of crisis.  Tomorrow there will be a big presidential push on climate change.  The climate has been changing here in Memphis-- 12 of the last 15 months have been below normal.  Apparently that's either due to dirty coal trains or Lara Logan--guess we'll find out tomorrow.

More staged events designed to give the legacy elites something to fill their headlines with other than Benghazi is a good bet going forward.  What?  They are already covering it?  Well yes--most of the reports now are focusing on how the investigation is like totally partisan, dude!  It's also a good time for a big AQ operative take-down somewhere.  Which would actually be a good diversionary tactic.  Maybe they can take out the guys who killed our forgotten civilians in Algeria.   Oh wait, they were only petroleum workers helping to create global warming, plus it's BP's fault.

WINDING RHODES  5/6/14

Breitbart has a story about David Rhodes, president of CBS News, addressing an audience on 9/12/12 and saying..

"Our government thinks that there's a really good chance this was not just a spontaneous mob reaction to what some thought was an offensive film, but actually a coordinated effort timed to the 9/11 anniversary".

That's a pretty big wow, since Rhodes is admitting something (coming from government sources) on 9/12 that it would take the administration weeks to finally grudgingly admit, sorta kinda, after spending weeks blaming everything on the video.

Not only that, but his 60 Minutes franchise had interviewed the prez for a 60 Minutes feature that very same day, which was set to play the following Sunday evening.  During the interview Obama really didn't blame the video or protests specifically, matter of fact he was pretty vague as to whether it was a terrorist attack or not.  Steve Kroft picked up on that, asking why he'd gone to great lengths to not mention terrorism. Obama did not disagree with Kroft's assertion, he replied that it was too early to tell.

Then CBS clipped out that part of the interview for their Sunday broadcast--the same day Rice was on all the networks talking about the video being the 'best available' intelligence.  Amazing how that best intelligence changed from when Rhodes was told about it Wednesday to what Rice passed along Sunday, after several iterations of talking points and memo-passing.

Of course everything culminated with Candy Crowley's famous Obama assist in the second debate during a discussion about that very same thing--Obama's use of an "act of terror" as opposed to saying terrorism--or the very same question Kroft posed to the prez that CBS snipped into oblivion.  Romney made the grave grammar mistake of suggesting that Obama did not say "act of terror" when he did, which as Kroft pointed out was a complete dodge when he said it, but it was too late.  Had Romney simply said "you never called it a terrorist attack" he might have won the election. 

Anyway, with the election wrapped up CBS finally laid out the full transcript a few days before election day so they couldn't be called complete hacks and Mitt couldn't push back anymore.  So it certainly appears that Rhodes' fear that Romney might score some political points off the attack based on pointing out Obama's feckless foreign policy, which is what he told the audience there on 9/12, was turned into direct action.

Why Talking Points?

Re the Rhodes revelation, it's basically a Captain Renault moment.  Sharyl Attkisson was run out of CBS for trying to connect a dot that tied the "CIA" talking points to someone in the White House--the someone  who briefed Rice. But answers bring more questions. 

For instance, feel free to ask Jay Carney why the memo was heavily redacted the first time it was sent to the Congress--redacted because according to Jay Carney it didn't pertain to Benghazi, even though it mentioned Benghazi.  Feel free to ask why it was classified after the fact.  Or why the White House later sent an un-redacted version of this formerly classified unrelated document to conservative nutcake Larry Klayman in response to his specific FOIA demanding documents pertaining to.....Benghazi.   Ed Henry from Fox News asked, and was told he was involved in a vast right wing conspiracy or something. 

If there's a conspiracy it's probably centered around why they released the damn thing now after not releasing it for so long.  The easy answer is that it was to protect Hillary by getting it out of the way now instead of 2016. Since State handled the request it's tempting to go there but rumor has it Kerry wants to run for president, too.  So just sayin.

Of course if either of the above are true that might mean the White House was knee-capped by someone in State.  Watching Carney overreact to the few tough questions he's getting is a tell--clearly he's flustered by this coming back up by the way he's furiously generating counter-attacks on the GOP like a wind-up toy.  His comical pushback now is that the Rhodes memo addressed the big ball of turbulence known as protests across the Muslim world while ignoring that little F5 tornado hidden in the middle of it at Benghazi, the same tornado Susan Rice was sent on 5 Sunday shows to explain.   

That dog is not hunting in conservative circles, but it shouldn't hunt anywhere.  First off, somebody should ask Carney why they picked one scenario over the other as 'the best intelligence available', a scenario that just happened to comport with Obama's political goals, while ignoring the other 'best evidence' coming from people on the ground--and the president of Libya--who were saying it wasn't about a protest or video at all.  The biggest lie is their choice of narratives as representing the best intelligence when it clearly didn't.

Maybe somebody could also ask Carney why they needed any damn talking points in the first place.  Why didn't they get someone to come on TV familiar enough with the attack to explain it straightforwardly instead of sticking to a pre-approved script?  Someone like oh, the Secretary of State?  Or Prez Man himself. Oh, right, the SoS doesn't like Sunday shows.  Using that excuse should be grounds for having your ass banned from any future positions of leadership.  In the real world at least. 

Meanwhile the media circus flails while bigger questions remain unanswered.  Why did State deny the extra security to their ambassador?  Has that ever truly been answered?  He said he was on an AQ 'hit list'. What was CIA doing in the 'annex' other than looking for shoulder-fired missiles?  No, we will not be told for decades, but did it have anything to do with Mohammed Zawahiri?   He was the one CNN pegged as starting the Cairo protests in an effort to get the Blind Sheikh released.  Interesting that Cairo threw out the Brotherhood a year or so later, putting both Morsi and Mohammed back in jail and straining relations with the US.

Why was Stevens in Benghazi on 9/11 talking to a Turkish diplomat with a light detail?  Researching a John LeCarre storyline for a future book?   Or were the findings of this group relevant?  Questions not asked.

A reporter did bother asking Carney what the administration knows about the attack now, ie, who do they think perpetrated it and how close are they to bringing anyone to justice, which Carney again deferred to Justice because "it's an ongoing investigation".

So after all this time we still don't know very much except that the administration tried to spin a narrative to protect something, likely politics due to the election, unless it was something worse.  And we don't know who did it or when they might be caught.  And any questions about it are shut up, Fox News, racist loon and 'dude, it was like two years ago'.

Conspiracy Update

Today is the 21st anniversary of the first attack on the World Trade Center by Muslim terrorists in 1993.  Some consider it the unofficial beginning of the GWoT.

Oddly, on the same day a story has emerged that brings even more fuzziness into the entire War on Terror narrative. 

Backtracking to 93, the perpetrators were not thought to be part of AQ, rather, they were loosely associated with the Egyptian Islamic Group attached to the Blind Shiekh Omar Rahman and/or the rootless, stateless variant known to include KSM. Bin Laden was considered a minor player at the time.

But the players have always been a bit of a mystery.   The most notable was Ramzi Yousef, who was born in Pakistan.  Called "Rashid the Iraqi" by his terror buds, he was locked up and forgotten before AQ became a force.  Another was Abdul Yasin, an actual Iraqi who has never been found (after fleeing to Saddam's Iraq after the attack).  Egyptians made up the bulk of the rest of the gang.   The hate for infidels is noted, but why would they have reason at that time to knock over the towers and kill 200,000 New Yorkers?  After all, we had liberated Afghanistan, Kosovo, allowed the Blind Shiekh safe harbor and had just cut the legs out from under Saddam Hussein, a noted whiskey drinking apostate.   

Over the years the focus morphed to UBL and AQ.  But journalists had long ago uncovered that the FBI was running an asset on the inside of the plot, an Egyptian named Emad Salem, who was bizarrely pulled from the inside some months before the attack.   That was a bit embarrassing, but it never became a huge public story as time passed and people forgot, except the 9/11 truthers, who consider it evidence of the grand plot.   

After 9/11 interest spiked again, but the 9/11 Commission decided not to go delve back too far into history in their review for some reason.  Had they done so they might have uncovered a new revelation surfaced today about the history of the FBI and UBL:

In a revelation missing from the official investigations of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the FBI placed a human source in direct contact with Osama bin Laden in 1993 and ascertained that the al Qaeda leader was looking to finance terrorist attacks in the United States, according to court testimony in a little-noticed employment dispute case.

No doubt this will light the conspiracy world on fire.  Perhaps it should--considering that the FBI has been able to keep this out of the limelight for over 20 years now.  If they can suppress something for 20 years it's not hard to think they could have suppressed info about something like a plane crash off the coast of Long Island.

But is this really a big deal?  In 1993 UBL was living in the Sudan. That's likely where this Egyptian asset met with him and found out about the Los Angeles plot.  The Times story does not say what happened to the source after 1994--he seems to have vanished--just like the notorious Ali Mohammed, star character of several Peter Lance books (but someone who's not known by the majority of Americans for some strange reason) who also disappeared.

Apparently this source was not reached soon enough to help prevent the 1993 WTC attack, but the public is left to puzzle on why, if the FBI had a source in the WTC plot, a source in Ali Mohammed (who was working with UBL) and presumably another mystery person (assuming it's not Mohammed), did the attacks continue during the 90s culminating in 9/11?  Did the government not come clean because Mohammed betrayed us as a double agent?  Is that why nobody seems to know where he is now, despite being in US custody after 1998?  Or was it just as Michael Moore and the Looser Changers have imagined, ie, ole Ali was an asset who helped Halliburton set up the GWoT so we could plunge for oil and treasure? 


Here's the kind of thing conspiracists will seize upon (emphasis added)...

Like Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Zelikow said he does not recall ever being told by the FBI about the 1993 source and that Mr. Curran’s disclosure appeared to involve “valuable intelligence gathered in 1993 and 1994.”

But Mr. Zelikow cautioned against reading too deeply into the revelation, asserting that bin Laden’s activities that long ago would be viewed as “pretty attenuated in relation to 9/11.”

Pretty attenuated? Is he kidding? This is the guy who blessed 9/11. We were told he was a non-factor during the first bombing. If he was directing terrorist attacks in America years before the government claims he was that's a pretty big thing because it means they either missed him, dismissed him, or were trying to suppress him. Continued stonewalling on stuff like this will only make things worse. 

And make it political.

For instance, right now there's a story on the wires about Clinton administration documents being held in the Clinton Library and not released as scheduled on January 1st, 2014.  Could there possibly be anything incriminating in those documents about the War on Terror they'd rather keep sealed before Billary is safely back in the White House?  Or did former Clinton official Sandy Berger take care of this problem when he pilfered documents in his socks from the National Archives before the 9/11 Commission could get to them?

And what of the Republicans and Bush? Was there a tie-in to George H.W. Bush that his son didn't want revealed during the investigation of 9/11?  If the source was indeed Ali Mohammad and Bin Laden was more important than we were told that would seem to leave some blame for 9/11 on 41, since they were figures in the jihad before Clinton came into power.  Mohammad was welcomed into the US Army, after all.

Or was that the reason the Bush administration went so easy on Berger for doing something that would have landed the average citizen in the Supermax beside Yousef?  He was protecting their legacy, too? 

Maybe time will tell. Until then there's rank speculation.  Right now the money speculation is not that this story proves a massive conspiracy hatched by American politicians to attack their own country ala Fahrenheit Loose Change Zeitgest 9/11.  They are generally too stupid and the circle of knowledge is far too wide.  People eventually talk, yet leaks from Wikileaks, Stratfor and Snowden have turned up nothing.

Rather, it's more likely a case of politicians, bureaucrats, and individuals covering their asses after a massive failure.  As we seen, it's not hard for the FBI to hide a covert operation for 20 years when the circle of knowledge is small (and careers/pensions are on the line).  It's just as likely that lousy dot-connecting and bureaucratic snafus were responsible as opposed to some massive, premeditated plot perfectly engineered and orchestrated flawlessly.  Hindsight is always 20/20.  As the old guard begins to retire and certain political figures die off maybe the truth will begin trickling out.  

But certainly these kinds of revelations don't endear confidence or trust in the authorities.

MORE  2/27/14

Not surprisingly Captain Ed at Hot Air basically downplayed this story as he is wont to do these days, choosing not to find much shock in the FBI suppressing something of this nature for 20 years amidst the climate of post 9/11 investigations. He also didn't question whether the FBI, though former director Loius Freeh, told the president (Clinton) or whether anyone in that administration, such as board member Jamie Gorelick, was derelict for not coming forth with such information, which could have possibly changed some of the 9/11 commission conclusions.  Remember, Sandy Berger was supposedly pilfering documents about the thwarted "Millennium" terror plot in 1999 where Ahmed Ressam was arrested before he could blow up LAX.  Was there anything in those docs that pointed back to this information?  

At any rate, Ed seems to be swayed by this NBC story, which portends to answer the questions the Washington Times report left hanging.  No, the AQ mole wasn't Ali Mohammed, but rather a guy who wound up dumping his mole duties for the FBI and hitching himself to the CIA, which supposedly got him killed by AQ operatives in Bosnia in 1995, which might explain his disappearance off the FBI radar scope in 1994. As to how the FBI learned of the mole's disappearance..

The FBI did not know at the time that its informant had started working for the CIA, or why he had disappeared. His former handler, Bassem Youssef, who by then was working undercover in Los Angeles as a supposed member of al Qaeda, began asking his al Qaeda sources what had become of the driver.

They told Youssef that the driver had gone to Bosnia, and that al Qaeda operatives there had killed him because they believed that he was a mole for the CIA. Later, Youssef was able to confirm that the al Qaeda operatives’ suspicions were justified, and that the driver had been working for the CIA.

So why wasn't this in the Times story yesterday?  NBC seemed to get it pretty quick--did they call the FBI and ask?  Did the Washington Times not bother?   Something else? 

Whatever the case it appears to be information designed to wrap a bow on the story and squelch any lingering questions, ie, the mole is dead now, nothing to see, move along.  Look over there--gay marriage! 

Except we've seen a lot in this one story.

1.  We've seen the Feds had bin Laden on their radar in 1993 and didn't report that to the 9/11 Commission.
2.   We've learned an AQ terror cell was based in Los Angeles well before the 1999 Ressam bombing plot, none of which was fully reported.
3.   We've learned there was a thwarted terror attack at an LA Masonic Lodge in 1993, engineered by bin Laden. 
4.   We've learned UBL was a money man for the Blind Shiekh network before anyone claimed it was occurring.  Why wasn't this reported?  Did bin Laden family connections to the Bush family have anything to do with it?  
5.  We know the FBI knew about a terror cell in San Diego years before the two 9/11 hijackers arrived in America and took roost there.  Had the FBI stopped surveillance on this cell or did they know about these two plotters?   The story to date has been that CIA refused to tell FBI about the hijackers, otherwise the plot may have been prevented.  This is what Richard Clarke keeps telling people.  Did Clarke know about this AQ cell in LA/mole story when it was happening?  If not, why not?  Was he right about a cover-up, but simply wrong about the agency?     

Yet NBC just puppets what their anonymous push-back sources told them:

Sources told NBC News, however, that they weren’t sure the informant was relevant to the 9/11 Commission, because by 2001 his short, albeit productive, relationship with the U.S. government – and his life – had been over for six years. In a statement, the FBI said that the FBI “made all relevant information available to the 9/11 Commission.”

Not a missile. Not relevant, nothing to see, move along.

And yes, the above sounds more than a little 9/11 trutherish. It's not.  9/11 was too big and too broad to be a conspiracy, much less a government conspiracy. It's one thing to keep a little self-serving secret like this story, it's another to keep someone from ratting out a politician attacking his own country.

No, it's just an example of how a rigid bureaucracy, internecine turf wars, raw politics, a misplaced sense of security, and a feeling that the mujahadeen who helped us beat the Soviets in Afghanistan were still on our side led to failure and that terrible day.  It's doubtful anyone did anything to purposely get people killed, other than the Islamoterrorists, who are still terrorists and must be eradicated. But a little truth wouldn't hurt every now and then.

AND FURTHERMORE  2/27/14

Bill O'Reilly has completed his journey from a questioning newsman to complete and utter dope. Poor Laura Ingraham had to gently hand him his backside on a pillow to keep it from cracking on air and hurting someone.  His self-congratulation and ass-kissing are past the point of embarrassment.  Megyn Kelly is now the alpha journalist on prime-time Fox.  This has nothing to do with this post, just had to get that in.

ANOTHER UPDATE  2/27/14

Guy Taylor from the WaTimes reports that the House will be looking into this.  Frank Wolf seems like one of the few straight-shooting congressmen, he's going to be taking charge...

Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican and chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds the FBI, said the panel would take a close look at what came of the human source that the FBI’s Los Angeles field office cultivated in 1993.

The source’s contributions, which included helping thwart a terrorist plot in Los Angeles, were never mentioned in the more than 500-page official report published in 2004 by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

In an interview with The Times on Wednesday evening, Mr. Wolf said the details surrounding the source represent “exactly the type of activity” that the newly established panel will examine. The panel, which is also being dubbed a “commission,” was created in late January under language Mr. Wolf crafted for Congress‘ 2013 omnibus appropriations bill that President Obama ultimately signed into law.

The question is whether there really are any true straight-shooters left. Maybe we'll see. Maybe we won't.

MORE  2/28/14

Some additional reporting...

ABC's Note makes it sound like the FBI is questioning former Special Agent Curran's story.  Their story title actually contains a question  mark.  FBI officials "could not recall" an asset meeting with UBL that early.  So they acknowledge the mole to NBC, claim he went to the CIA and they got him killed in Bosnia, but don't remember what he did back in 1993.  

As usual, the Daily Mail went out and found pictures of the FBI guys in their story, which pretty much summarizes other reporting.

But here's some partial paydirt--from Mother Jones.  They did a feature on Youssef in 2009, before the testimony, which fills in some holes..

The FBI's highest-ranking Arabic-speaking agent is a ghost. He goes to work each day, but walks the halls like an empty suit. Fellow agents whisper about his loyalty and talk about throwing him "off the roof." Bassem Youssef, after all, is the whistleblower at the center of two of the FBI's biggest ongoing scandals: its rampant abuse of national security letters to access confidential information on US citizens, and its failure to recruit Arabic-speaking agents. He's sued the bureau for discrimination and has been sidelined to a paper-pushing job. Yet he won't quit—he remains determined, he says, to fight the war on terror, even if he has to battle his bosses to do it.

The article is worth reading for perspective, especially when it describes Youssef's status during the mid 90s:

It wasn't always so. In the mid-1990s, if you were to call the FBI and ask for Bassem Youssef, the switchboard operator would tell you there was no such person. Known in those days by his alias, Adam Shoukry, Youssef was a star counterterrorism specialist, one of only a few agents in bureau history whose work was deemed so sensitive that the attorney general allowed him to go undercover within the FBI itself.

Almost a full decade before the 9/11 attacks, he managed to penetrate "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel-Rahman's Islamic Group, which carried out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. (Some of its key members later joined Al Qaeda, which Youssef identified as a threat long before it was on most intelligence agents' radar.) The details of Youssef's service during this period remain classified, but his value as an agent was such that, in November 1994, he received the Director of Central Intelligence Award, a high honor reserved for the intelligence community's most skilled operators.

Fascinating.

So, who is it?

Odd, but with a purpose:

The case of an American citizen and suspected member of al-Qaida who is allegedly planning attacks on U.S. targets overseas underscores the complexities of President Barack Obama's new stricter targeting guidelines for the use of deadly drones.

The CIA drones watching him cannot strike because he's a U.S. citizen. The Pentagon drones that could are barred from the country where he's hiding, and the Justice Department has not yet finished building a case against him.

Four U.S. officials said the American suspected terrorist is in a country that refuses U.S. military action on its soil and that has proved unable to go after him. And Obama's new policy says American suspected terrorists overseas can only be killed by the military, not the CIA, creating a policy conundrum for the White House.

Two of the officials described the man as an al-Qaida facilitator who has been directly responsible for deadly attacks against U.S. citizens overseas and who continues to plan attacks against them that would use improvised explosive devices.

The question is, whose purpose?  The WaPo's version of the story weighs heavily on Congressman Rogers' comments regarding a sense that Obama counter-terrorism policy is handcuffing efforts to get the bad guys. This suggests the leak didn't originate in the White House.  Indeed AP (ABC) quotes "four US officials", which suggests they weren't "administration officials".  Jay Carney would not confirm when asked for comment today, but he didn't deny it either.  

Media outlets were using the story to highlight the new, improved "targeted killing policy", ie, Obama Kill List.   Imagine Bush being associated with anything remotely like it, and the reaction.  It's funny that Obama told Hollande at Monticello today, "I can do anything I want".  Yes, a joke, but not far from the truth as he again changed Obamacare today and if he were to contradict his own targeted killing policy by eliminating a US citizen suspected terrorist, who's going to impeach him?  John Boehner? 

So on to the speculation.  Some say a trial balloon designed to gage public reaction to targeted killing of a US citizen.  Hey, they poll everything nowadays. 

Others speculate it was designed to smoke said terrorist out of his hidey hole by indicating that one of his coming days may end poorly should the President decide to go all Obamacare on his targeted killing rules. 

Some speculate it's about letting the country in question know we know, while others look at this as career outsiders prodding the President to act before it's too late.  

Whatever the case a lot of politics could be played, such as mentioning that top secret info was given to the press amidst an administration that has prosecuted more leakers than all the other administrations combined.   Will Holder go after someone here or will his reluctance telegraph the leak's origin?  Will a Fox News reporter be wiretapped for good measure?   Surely the leader of the country in question is already under surveillance.

But seriously, how best to decipher this riddle.  How about taking the above paragraphs one at a time, keeping in mind they were presumably written by an AP reporter and not the White House--bold added for effect:

The case of an American citizen and suspected member of al-Qaida who is allegedly planning attacks on U.S. targets overseas underscores the complexities of President Barack Obama's new stricter targeting guidelines for the use of deadly drones.

The target is undoubtedly a US citizen because there was no qualifier language included.  He is a suspected member of AQ, allegedly planning attacks on OVERSEAS targets according to the writer, but maybe not the government.  Anyway, the 'homeland' is not assumed to be under threat.  Onward...

The CIA drones watching him cannot strike because he's a U.S. citizen. The Pentagon drones that could are barred from the country where he's hiding, and the Justice Department has not yet finished building a case against him.

So there are CIA drones operating over the country in question.  Story doesn't say whether the country in question knows this or not; allows it; or simply can't stop them.  Wherever it is they do not allow US military operations, at least drones.  Finally, if the Justice people haven't written up a full case then it's unlikely he's one of the luminaries on the Rewards for Justice most-wanted terrorist site, since most of them have been around awhile.  But based on the leak of the story they believe he's about to do or direct something. 

Four U.S. officials said the American suspected terrorist is in a country that refuses U.S. military action on its soil and that has proved unable to go after him. And Obama's new policy says American suspected terrorists overseas can only be killed by the military, not the CIA, creating a policy conundrum for the White House.

That's interesting, since it suggests the country might not be hostile to the US, just that it cannot or does not allow US military action. Sometimes that is done to assuage the local population. Since Obama changed the world and everyone loves us now, it's hard to figure out who it could be.  But the language also suggests the country could be hostile and just will not go after this AQ belligerent against our wishes.  Which brings in Putin! 

Two of the officials described the man as an al-Qaida facilitator who has been directly responsible for deadly attacks against U.S. citizens overseas and who continues to plan attacks against them that would use improvised explosive devices.

So he's a facilitator, not an operative or combatant.  He's been around long enough to be responsible for the deaths of Americans OVERSEAS, but as earlier comments indicated the Justice people don't have a case on him yet so he must be a relatively newer discovery.   Since they mentioned IEDs that suggests a war zone like Iraq or Syria but IEDs can be used anywhere. 

So that's it.  They didn't specify if the guy was "Core" or with one of the affiliates, which doesn't help much, but we do have a few American citizens on the Rewards for Justice wanted list.  These two come to mind first:
1. Adam Gadahn, aka Azzam the American, aka, Adam the Assclown
2. Abdul Rahman Yasin.  Whether he's considered AQ or even still operating is unclear.  He was one of the bomb mixers of the first WTC attack who boogied to Baghdad after the attack and hasn't been seen since the invasion.  Saddam seemed to be hiding him so bringing him up might be inconvenient.   


There's also:
3. Jehad Mustafa, a Wisconsin native now working for al-Shabaab 

Some may think about Adnan Shukrijumah, aka, Jafar the Pilot (a very very HVT) due to his extensive time living in the United States.  But he's not a US citizen.

Stumped at the moment, but it's Monday.   

Do have some closing observations/questions.  Is it a coincidence that the WaPo released a video of the extraordinary rendition capture of Anas al-Libi today?  Not sure if that was authorized by the admin either.  If not, what's the point?   Finally, is it a clue that all passengers booked on Caribbean Airlines flights from Guyana to the United States from today through Tuesday were told to make alternative plans due to threats received?  "Jafar the Pilot" is a citizen of Guyana, by the way.  

Times to the Rescue

Suddenly the New York Times is covering the Benghazi story. And wonder of wonders, they are essentially protecting the cover story of two female Democratic stars, Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice. The lede is all one needs:

The reality behind the attack on American outposts in Libya is murkier and more complex than initially believed, but months of investigation turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda had any role in the assault.

The hearty among us, or bloggers wanting to comment on it, will read the whole thing, only to find no mention of people on the ground in Libya who've testified before Congress, such as Greg Hicks.  His testimony was in fact part of the what the Times is refuting in their story.  Their newfound "reality" is that the video clip was a factor after all, something which can only help certain favorites.  Gotta love how they pretend to set the record straight once and for all, shut up.

So, does it matter that their newly announced reality was largely gathered by talking to taxi drivers and street vendors with the occasional jihadi leader thrown in (who of course would never lie)?  Does it matter that they mentioned, then discounted the Ambassador's own diary, found by CNN, which stated his fears over being on AQ 'hit lists'?  Does it matter that jihadists had already hit the embassy months prior to the "Innocence of Muslims" clip being shown on Egyptian TV? Does it matter that Fox has already pushed back with a piece of their own, countering most of the fantasy contained in the new reality?

Not a whit.

This is about building an immunizing wall around Rice and Clinton to keep out the GOP Benghazi hoards by rebranding Benghazi as just another wild conspiracy theory.  Rice herself was already featured on 60 Minutes just a few weeks ago, wherein she was asked about Benghazi and called it a "false controversy".

This is the same 60 Minutes who ran Lara Logan's piece then later pseudo-fired her due to a questionable source--questionable based on anonymous sources in the federal government who never released the FBI 302 forms to back up their claims.  Meanwhile, CBS memory-holed an entire interview segment, which also included Lt Col Andy Wood, whose testimony suggested the administration was warned about attacks from jihadists well beforehand:

Andy Wood: I made it known in a country team meeting, "You are gonna get attacked. You are gonna get attacked in Benghazi. It's gonna happen. You need to change your security profile."

Lara Logan: Shut down--

Andy Wood: Shut down--

Lara Logan: --the special mission--

Andy Wood: --"Shut down operations. Move out temporarily. Ch-- or change locations within the city. Do something to break up the profile because you are being targeted. They are-- they are-- they are watching you. The attack cycle is such that they're in the final planning stages."

The Times may counter that his comments above line up with their story insofar as the jihadists were warning the State Department as well (which begs a question of why CBS spiked them) but Wood did not equivocate about the nature of the enemy, even mentioning Abu Anas al-Liby (as core as one can be--wonder what our HIG team learned about Benghazi from him).  So contrary to the Times view these were not just locals riled up by a video, they had an 'attack cycle' and some foreign backing, which lines up with Stevens' own fears.  Yet Wood's testimony on the show has been thrown into the same trash heap as the presumed lies from Davies, never to be seen again. 

Hey, this ain't rocket science. There is no bigger cause for concern on this for Media Matters.  David Brock will be slinging poo on this til the votes of the last dead voters are counted--they know how serious this is.

It remains to be seen whether another Candy Crowley debate moment will occur in 2016, ie, a leftwing moderator holding up the NY Times article and waving it around on cue from Hillary or Rice when the GOP candidate brings up the subject (depending on the kind of nominee the GOP picks).  It sounds unbelievable to think such a stunt would work a second time after four years, but we live in a new reality.  If the left can effectively turn Benghazi into a weak GOP conspiracy ("false controversy") akin to birtherism then they've got a decent chance of burying it forever.  Yes, that would be craven beyond imagination, but in our new reality, anything is possible.

CRAVEN   12/30/13

Following the Times' historical revision nonsense the State Dept showed up today in their press briefing and said why no, we don't consider the Benghazi killers part of 'Core AQ'.   So there it is again, the equivocation between AQ and 'core' AQ, which is supposed to be the people in the caves who attacked us on 9/11.   In other words, this wasn't the real AQ because the real AQ is decimated.   This despite the ties illustrated by Thomas Joscelyn between likely actors in the attack and Ayman al-Zawahiri, a founding member of 'core' AQ.  

Clearly the Pajama Boys in the White House strategy room are using this sillyass distinction not for national security reasons, but to protect the 'we got bin Laden' legacy while maintaining the 'AQ on the run' narrative while trying to keep Hillary in play by tacitly supporting the New York Times.  It means nothing as it relates to the Global War on Terrorism, but the Pajama Boys know that the Times and State are authoritative sources and will be used as benchmarks to knock down any GOP 'phony scandals' or 'false controversies'.     

National Journal piece on "the next Bin Laden"

Michael Hirsh from National Journal has a long report about small wars terrorist Abu Musab al-Suri, otherwise known as Setmariam Nasar, or the "Red Headed Terrorist". Hirsh wonders aloud if al-Suri is 'the next bin Laden'. The column is worth some analysis.

First, on al-Suri's whereabouts.  Reports surfaced in the early days of the Syrian civil war that Bashar Assad had released him as sort of a punishment to the west.  Hirsh finds some problems with that:

Yet even the senior diplomatic, intelligence, and defense officials who run the U.S. government's "Rewards for Justice" program, which offers money for tips leading to top terrorists, are unsure whether al-Suri is at large: A State Department official told National Journal this week that defense and intelligence agencies are still discussing whether to put him back on the wanted list.

Interesting, most assumed he was on the loose.  But hold on a sec, how can the State Dept talk to the NJ about deliberations regarding putting al-Suri on the list--a guy who some say might be the next UBL--but won't comment to Fox or AP on whether they've even deliberated over placing any of the Benghazi suspects on the list?  Then come back later and say they are actually on the list but in stealth mode due to 'sensitivities' with the investigation?  Bin Laden was pretty sensitive.  Perhaps it has to do with Nasar himself--maybe he moved to Libya or has been directing arms flows into Syria from elsewhere.  Oh to be a fly on the wall of the secret interrogation of Abu Anas al-Libi.  

Anyway, Hirsh sets up al-Suri as an ideological foe of UBL, saying Binny was "deeply opposed" to his ideas of small guerrilla jihad (UBL wanted spectacular attacks). Yet in the same article Hirsh admits that al-Suri's perfect attack would end in the use of WMDs, which sounds pretty darned spectacular, even if on a small scale.   We know UBL was not opposed to the use of WMD nor is the current Numero Uno, who tried to get an anthrax program launched in the years before 9/11.

Interestingly enough, al-Suri was never a member of AQ and did not pledge allegiance to the big guy. He was involved in the radical arm of the Muslim Brotherhood and allegedly took part in the 1982 uprising against Bashar Assad's father in Syria, which was reportedly crushed by using chemical weapons.  He then fled Syria and went, well, somewhere..

He then joined the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood organisation in exile, receiving training at their bases and safe houses in Iraq and Jordan.

The idea he was in Iraq is somewhat controversial for obvious reasons, since it brings in the possibility that Saddam knew about it and looked the other way. Saddam certainly wasn't BFF with the Assads despite their shared Ba'athist philosophy for many reasons, the most obvious being their Iranian connections. Would it be surprising to learn that Iraq approved of the Syrian Brotherhood's 'safe houses' in their country?  It's not like they hadn't been dabbling in the affairs of Lebanon during the time of the uprising.  And all were Sunnis.  Enemy of my enemy stuff. 

But OK, al-Suri is the new breed of international terrorist, favoring Boston bombing or Kenya Mall style attacks. How can these be stopped? 

And the consensus of senior defense and intelligence officials in the U.S. government is that NSA surveillance may well be the only thing that can stop the next terrorist from blowing apart innocent Americans, as happened in Boston last April. "Al-Qaida is far more a problem a dozen years after 9/11 than it was back then," Arquilla says.

Interesting, considering that neither the Boston or Nairobi attacks were smoked out by the NSA trolling.  Continuing, Hirsh quotes former NSA Director Hayden on the cause-effect of Congressional or constitutional interference in data trolling:

Says Michael Hayden: "People have to understand these actions [against the NSA] will have consequences." He adds that the U.S. intelligence community believes that it is mostly on top of the "big, complicated, multiple-actor, slow-moving plot [like 9/11]. But [the terrorists] are not doing that now. They're into much lower-in-threshold things. Which again demand very good intelligence, very comprehensive intelligence" that casts as wide a net as possible around the world.

But if they are on top of the big 9/11 plots then it seems anything smaller done by the terrorists, like Boston, should be 'manageable' and handled with law enforcement.  Do we want to throw our liberty out the window to possibly thwart small attacks?  Speaking of which:

Obama administration officials say they know about the mushrooming new threat and insist they did not mislead the American public by claiming success against core al-Qaida.

Only in the world of Obama can AQ be "mushrooming" as they run off to the horizon clinging to the end of their ropes.  But these are the same guys who said if you like you policy you could keep your policy, period.  Right now a blue ribbon panel is discussing the NSA collection methods (the preferred method of kicking a scandal down the road) and will probably report back around Christmas Eve that the NSA collection program is pretty awesome and should be increased.  Meanwhile,

Obama administration officials hope many of these new jihadist groups will remain mostly engaged in local fights, as against the Syrian regime. And that if they do attack U.S. interests at home or abroad, they are expected to focus on small-scale terrorist acts, like the Marathon bombings.

That's why Obama says the United States should stop calling the conflict with radical Islamists a "war" and view it instead as it was seen pre-9/11, as an inevitable, but manageable, law-enforcement problem.

Following that logic?  AQ is decimated but mushrooming, so we should treat them the same as liquor store robbers but we must use a nationwide dragnet against the population to stop this.  Does the NSA get involved in trolling the phone lines of future liquor store robbers?  After all, four people might die in the holdup or an ensuing high speed chase.  And God forbid Obama ever have to consider using drones or bombers to stop AQ terrorists in Iraq, who appear to be free to operate without fear of retribution as long as they focus on Syria.

Of course this is not like liquor store robberies at all, it's still a GWoT run by fanatics who aren't afraid to die and who want to create as many mass casualties as possible.  Liberals have always wanted it both ways--Kerry ran on the law enforcement approach in 2004--because a global war/threat must be addressed with all our assets, including far-flung military resources, which drains tax monies from their domestic spending agendas amidst a 17.5 trillion dollar debt.  Can't very well decrease the military spending in favor of food stamps if Setmariam Suri bin Laden is waiting around the corner to release chemicals on Times Square or a Navy ship or one of our embassies.

It's clear from reading the piece it's a veiled defense of the current NSA surveillance program. Not everyone is automatically opposed to such methods to defend the nation, by the way.  Some believed president Bush when he said the program was designed to track terrorists making phone calls to people in the United States and vice versa.  That turned out to be a lie--it was much larger.  The irony is that Hirsh hobnobbed in the same liberal circle of those who thought Bush's program was unconstitutional yet now seems to be defending an even larger program during Obama because national security.  That old fear of overreach is much more nuanced now..

Yes, there is ample reason to think the NSA has overreached in recent years—as even Secretary of State John Kerry has conceded—by prowling for diplomatic and economic information from rival and even friendly powers rather than focusing narrowly on counterterrorism. German Chancellor Merkel's cell phone and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's conversations may be a SIGINT bridge too far, causing unnecessary disruption of diplomatic relations and global stability for meager intelligence returns.

Spying on external targets is the mission of the NSA. Funny how that now represents the "bridge too far" when during the previous administration the far bridge was merely listening to the phone calls of people who might be dialing up the likes of an al-Suri.  Here's the closing comment:

But the very real danger now is that, in seeking to prevent the NSA from conducting such operations in the future, Congress may throw out the baby with the bathwater. And the world of omnipresent terror that Abu Musab al-Suri wants to create could become a far more perilous one for Americans.

Actually some are concerned that the "baby" is actually the founding document, or as some liberals once claimed Bush called it, that 'GD piece of paper'.

Look, if we could trust the NSA to just collect phone call records of Americans, available for review if a warrant were issued with requisite probable cause--based only on their legal snooping of foreign persons--that may be acceptable to some degree. We are still threatened.  And if they are correct about al-Suri, we are threatened with terrible weapons, even if on a smaller scale.

But as the Snowden leaks point out it's too easy for the protectors to go too far.  Who watches the watchers?  If we lose the country we lose the war.  If indeed the jihadist threat has been minimized to the local scale, within the capabilities of law enforcement, then perhaps it's time for the constitutional scholar-in-chief to have an adult conversation with Americans to discuss the cost of protecting our liberties.  But if the trans-national threat is still as bad as it was on 9/10/01--or even close--then maybe that conversation should be about the trade-off of giving away some liberty to gain a little temporary security.  

Yeah, sounds naive.  We can't really handle brutal honesty. 

Well Hillary, What Difference Does it Make?

Here's the best Secretary of State since Jefferson speaking in Buffalo, NY, and getting the GOP treatment:

During a speech at the University at Buffalo, Clinton first ignored the man’s shouts as she spoke of Buffalo as a model for problem-solving through cooperation. “Because we can’t move from crisis to crisis, we have to be willing to come together as citizens to focus on the kind of future we want,” she said.

As the shouts grew louder from an upper section of bleachers, she added, “which doesn’t include yelling. It includes sitting down and talking.” The 6,500 people in attendance reacted with a sustained standing ovation as the heckler was led out.

The future doesn't include yelling? Really?

Well, it shouldn't be surprising that the local CBS affiliate didn't bother to tell its readers what the heckler was heckling her about. It was Benghazi.   That would never happen if the roles were reversed, because in those stories the hecklers are speaking truth to power. Take the Code Pinkos who recently heckled Ted Cruz:

Sen. Ted Cruz struggled to finish his speech at the Values Voter Summit in Washington today as hecklers repeatedly interrupted his remarks. Protesters interrupted Cruz more than six times, some yelling questions about why Cruz does not support a pathway to citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally.

Here's another:

One of the hecklers Cruz faced called on him to support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

No commentary in either story about how Cruz "turned the tables" on his opponents by the way, as the CBS affiliate in Buffalo described Hillary's reply.  That will be standard fare going forward.

But try as they might the media will not be able to Whitewater whitewash Bengahzi.  She will eventually have to face it.  Fox News has been hammering the White House and State Department about new revelations lately about the Benghazi suspects having ties to AQ "core" (getting virtually no airplay on other networks allowing them to pigeon-hole Fox as making Benghazi a partisan play).

Here's the Fox State Department reporter grilling Marie Harf yesterday about why the Benghazi terror suspects are not on "Rewards for Justice".  Read along as the spokeslady at first tries to deny that RfJ is even associated with the State Department, refers him to the FBI several times (who will not comment on it) then chastises him for even daring to question whether they want the terrorists brought to justice. All these replies are obviously gamed out in rehearsals.

QUESTION: Marie, as you may or may not be aware, there’s new evidence linking two Benghazi suspects to senior al-Qaida leadership. Does the State Department have a reaction to that?

MS. HARF: I think for any of those questions, I’d refer you to the FBI. I know they’re the ones handling the investigation and that part of it, so --

QUESTION: Okay. Yesterday, Chairman Mike Rogers said that the Intelligence Committee has been – who is studying the attacks said that planning went on for weeks. Is there any reaction to that? To Benghazi.

MS. HARF: Oh. Again, I’d refer you – the FBI, I know, is looking into all of this right now.

QUESTION: Does the State Department own the Reward for Justice program?

MS. HARF: Own it in what way? Run it? I believe so, yeah.

QUESTION: Why is it --

MS. HARF: But let me double-check on that, though.

QUESTION: Okay. Why is it --

MS. HARF: Where is this question going? I’m not sure.

QUESTION: I’ll tell you. Why does the State Department refuse to put any of the Benghazi suspects on the Reward for Justice program?

MS. HARF: Let me go back to our folks and see how – (A) if it’s actually run out of here – I believe it is, but let me double-check – and (B) what the process is for putting people on that list. I just don’t know the answer.

QUESTION: Okay. It is --

MS. HARF: But I’m happy to look into it for you.

QUESTION: Okay, because it is – your email address is on the bottom of the Reward for Justice program.

MS. HARF: Well, then, it’s probably – I’m probably right that it’s ours, Lucas.

The reporter comes back several times and tries to get her to answer, probably a tactic designed to rattle the fresh-faced Ms Harf, a fresh face probably put there to make it seem less hostile when she eventually doesn't answer any questions.  She finally shows a little crack in the armor:

QUESTION: However, I just wanted to ask you, what signal does it send the world when, on those Reward for Justice programs, we rank the – our adversaries according to their importance – their kill, capture, their importance. But when the suspects of the Benghazi attacks are not on the list, what message does that send?

MS. HARF: Again, Lucas, I said this isn’t – this doesn’t represent the entirety of the way we look at the terrorist threat out there. We have designations. We have the Reward for Justice program. I have stood up here and said we are committed to bringing the Benghazi terrorists to justice, period. I don’t know what crystal – more of a crystal clear message I can send to them than that, and I’m happy to say it every day until we do.

Notice she never answered the principal question--why aren't those suspects on the list.  She claimed there was a process and she would get back, but that's clearly a BS answer.  They likely don't want hose terrorists on the list because it would bring attention to the story and perhaps even result in finding someone, bringing more attention to the story.  They probably have a desire to treat the story like her husband treated the Khobar Towers bombing-- yell "bring them to justice!" on day one followed by burying the case for the rest of his term (the terrorists were finally convicted during the Bush administration to almost zero fanfare).  That may not be only for politics sake depending on what was actually occurring in Benghazi.

According to James Rosen there may be some interest in the Benghazi story from other networks, presumably CBS (perhaps Sharyl Attkisson?). He told O'Reilly that 60 Minutes may do a feature on it as soon as this Sunday, of course, it's unclear whether it would be a hit piece or a clever explanation piece designed to run cover for Hillary just like they did for her and her husband back in 1992. We will see.

HERE IT IS..  10/25/13

CBS previews their Sunday 60 Minutes segment on Benghazi.   Not with Sharyl Attkisson, but their veteran security reporter Lara Logan.  Should be interesting. 

Same as it Ever Was

In 1948 the Egyptian Prime Minister dissolved the Muslim Brotherhood in his country:

In December 1948, the Egyptian government released a decree ordering the dissolution of the Society. The police had discovered caches of bombs and other weapons accumulated by the secret apparatus, and though the Brothers insisted that these were for use in the Arab-Israeli war, the government suspected that the Brothers were planning revolution; it was also keen to remove what it saw as one of the main causes of the general political unrest that had become increasingly violent, and increasingly threatening to its authority, since the end of the Second World War.

Moreover, because the Brotherhood had its own hospitals, factories and schools, as well as an army in the form of the secret apparatus, the government saw it as a potential parallel state, which Egyptians might come to see as more legitimate than the official one

Several years later Nasser pretty much finished them off, at least for awhile. What followed was an underground movement that gave many AQ terrorists their starts in Islamism. The Brotherhood returned by decrying violence and showing themselves as a moderate political entity.  But they are what they are. 

Which leads to today, against the fading backdrop of an Arab Spring, as a new Egyptian ruling military government has banned the Brotherhood again:

An Egyptian court on Monday ordered the Muslim Brotherhood to be banned and its assets confiscated in a dramatic escalation of a crackdown by the military-backed government against supporters of the ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.

Where is Morsi, by the way?

At the same time the banning of the Brothers in Egypt may open a can over recent reports in the Libyan press about possible Egyptian Brotherhood connections in the Benghazi attack, illustrated by Walid Shoebat.

In other words, if Morsi was somehow operating the puppet strings or had ordered MB proxy groups to kidnap Christopher Stevens so they could trade him for someone like the Blind Sheikh (Morsi's backers were pressuring him over this) that might explain a lot of things.  Meanwhile the arrest of Clinton pal Gehad Haddad sure does nothing to dispel the crazy suggestions of congressman Gohmert and Michele Bachmann, who mentioned Hillary's Gal Friday Huma Abedin.   But the left will probably live on in their blissful world where enemies and 'hate groups' are all of a domestic flavor.