Monday, May 6, 2013

Benghazi 'Whistleblower' to Testify Hillary Clinton Sought to Cut Out Security Experts

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Whistleblower Mark I. Thompson intends to testify that Hillary Clinton and a key aide attempted to cut the State Department’s counterterrorism bureau out of the chain of planning and reporting in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.
Set to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reforms Committee on Wednesday, Thompson became the Deputy Coordinator for Operations in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism in 2006.
According to Fox News, Thompson plans to testify that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy sought to remove the Bureau of Counterterrorism from the equation in the wake of the attack on the American mission which left four dead, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Another official from the Bureau of Counterterrorism lodged a similar complaint about Clinton and Kennedy in October of 2012.
Spokespeople for Clinton and the State Department have denied Thompson’s allegations.
Thompson is one of three whistleblowers from the State Department who will testify this week. Gregory N. Hicks, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya at the time of the attacks and Eric Nordstrom, a diplomatic security officer who was the regional security officer in Libya, will also testify that more could have been done when the mission came under siege to protect Americans.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., head of the oversight committee, said Hicks will testify that a rescue mission to save Stevens and others was thrown out in the midst of the siege.
Nordstrom testified before the oversight committee last year.
“For me the Taliban is on the inside of the [State Department] building,” he told the hearing in October of 2012. Nordstrom is the only one of the three counterterrorism officials who does not consider himself a “whistleblower.”
According to their attorney Hicks and Thompson have been subject to intimidated from their superiors in order to silence them from telling the truth about what happened in the Libya attacks.
Jen Psaki, spokeswoman for the State Department called the three officials’ claim “100 percent false.”
Clinton testified in January that the attack in Benghazi was not the violent act against the U.S. after an anti-muslim video was published to Youtube. “[We] also saw violent attacks on our embassies in Cairo, Sanaa, Tunis, and Khartoum, as well as large protests outside many other posts where thousands of our diplomats serve,” she testified.
Issa told a GOP audience at the annual Lincoln-Reagan dinner on Friday that Hicks received terrified phone calls from Ambassador Stevens “begging for help.”
"Nobody knew the dangers better than Chris, first during the revolution and then during the transition," Clinton testified in January. "A weak Libyan government, marauding militias, even terrorist groups … a bomb exploded in the parking lot of his hotel, but he didn’t waver. Because he understood that it was critical for America to be represented in that pivotal place at that pivotal time.”
Sources: Fox News, Daily Mail

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