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Monday, May 6, 2013

More arrests in U.S. Consulate attack, Libyan official says

By the CNN Wire Staff

updated 10:57 AM EDT, Mon September 17, 2012

Pakistani demonstrators beat an effigy of Florida pastor Terry Jones during a protest against an anti-Islam film in Lahore on Monday, September 24. More than 50 people have died around the world in violence linked to protests against the low-budget movie, which mocks Islam and the Prophet Mohammed, since the first demonstrations erupted on September 11. See more of CNN's best photography.

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

The president of Libya's parliament says around 50 people are arrested
Another senior official disputes that number and says 50 have been questioned
There are differing views on whether the Tuesday attack was planned

Editor's note: Read a version of this story in Arabic

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- Libyan authorities have made more arrests in connection with the attack on the U.S. Consulate that left the U.S. ambassador and three others dead, the president of Libya's parliament said Sunday.

Mohamed al-Magariaf, the head of Libya's General National Congress, said around 50 people have been arrested, though another senior government official said the number was not that high.

Slain ambassador returns

Ambassador's stepfather shares memories

Investigating the Benghazi attack

Issue behind Egypt protests has morphed

The official said as many as 50 people have been brought in for questioning but not all of them were arrested. They were people who were at a protest outside the consulate but there was no indication yet that they took part in the violence, he said.

Ambassador's last moments

Al-Magariaf told CBS' "Face the Nation" that a "few" of those arrested are foreigners, some of them from Mali and Algeria. The others are affiliated with al Qaeda or are sympathizers, he said.

Al-Magariaf said he has "no doubt" the fatal attack was planned and not a result of the anti-American demonstrations that began that day -- the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

"Definitely it was planned by foreigners, by people who entered the country a few months ago, and they were planning this criminal act since their arrival," he said.

The senior Libyan government official said there is no evidence yet that the attack was planned or that al Qaeda was involved.

U.S. officials believe extremists carried out the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, but that they did it after a spontaneous protest began outside the building, said Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

"We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned," Rice told "Face the Nation."

Zakaria: Protests don't tell the whole story

The FBI is investigating the attack but has yet to enter the country because of volatility there. In the meantime, FBI agents are interviewing witnesses outside Libya, federal law enforcement officials said.

The United States has, however, deployed warships and surveillance drones in its hunt for the killers, and a contingent of 50 Marines has arrived to boost the security of Americans in Libya.

Militants stormed the consulate in Benghazi on Tuesday, killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

The protest in front of the consulate was over a film, made in the United States, that mocks the Prophet Mohammed.

Egypt's Prime Minister: Some were paid to protest

Anti-Islam filmmaker questioned

Violence eases, but tensions remain high

First Alleged Excerpts From Hacked Hillary Clinton Benghazi Memos Revealed — Do They Explain the Video Story?

Mar. 20, 2013 1:44pm Erica Ritz

Russia Today Leaks Alleged Hacked Hillary Clinton, Blumenthal Benghazi Memos

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks after receiving awards from Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey during a ceremony at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, February 14, 2013. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

A hacker known only as “Guccifer” reportedly distributed confidential memos earlier this week between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her former political adviser Sidney Blumenthal. The documents were said to contain information shedding light on the September 11 Benghazi attack.

The catch? The memos were sent to various politicians and members of the media, but none of them wanted to share what they’d received.

Now, Russia Today is spilling part of what they received but, as Forbes writes, the information from the “propaganda arm of the Putin regime” should be taken with a grain of salt.

Russia Today begins:

The emails that RT received include four memos that Mr. Blumenthal sent to Mrs. Clinton about the attack, all marked “Confidential” and all containing references to sources speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sheer seriousness of the material. The most recent memo included in the trove is dated February 16, 2013, and includes intelligence that comes “from extremely sensitive sources and should be handled with care.”

The oldest memo sent to RT is dated September 12, 2012 — mere hours after four Americans were killed in a deadly assault on the US consulate building in Benghazi. Chris Stevens, an ambassador for the United States, was among those killed.

An image of one of the purported emails follows, detailing how the Libyan president was “shaken” by the attacks, and gave permission to security forces on the ground to fire over the heads of protesters.

(Photo via Russia Today. The hacker reportedly modified the font and background from the original document.)

But after that comes what many Americans have been curious about since September. Why did the administration seize upon a video as the cause of the attack, and why did they stick with the story for days? Well, if the memos are to be believed, it seems Mrs. Clinton may have been receiving memos blaming the video through at least September 12.

Russia Today describes alleged correspondence from the day after the attack (all subsequent emphasis added):

“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.”

The next memos date to roughly five months later, February 16, and discuss the connection between the Amenas, Algeria and Benghazi attacks:

“This individual adds that this information provided by the French service indicates that the funding for both attacks originated with wealthy Sunni Islamists in Saudi Arabia. During July and August 2012, these financers provided funds to AQIM contacts in Southern Europe, who in turn passed the money into AQIM operatives in Mauritania. These funds were eventually provided to Ansar al Sharia and its allied militias in the Benghazi region in support of their attack on the US consulate. The money was used to recruit operatives and purchase ammunition and supplies.”

[...]

According to the Feb. 2016 memo, the source says that Algerian intelligence agency believe that al-Qaeda and their allies “will continue to strike at Western facilities in the Maghreb [northwest Africa], taking advantage of countries where the security structure is disorganized following the uprisings of the Arab Spring in 2011-2012.”

The hacker “Guccifer” has yet to be identified, but two IP addresses connected to the hacker’s online maneuvers to the Russian Federation, according to The Smoking Gun. However, this could simply be a way to mask his trail — the emails also seem to have been sent from the (hacked) AOL account of the wife of a Hollywood actor.

Forbes concludes with a warning:

The reader should be warned that these are first and partial accounts of hacked emails that may be fabricated by someone with a hidden agenda. Time will tell whether they have any credence. The RT selection of excerpts appears to fit into Putin’s agenda. Unhappy with the overthrow of Kaddafi, Putin would want to emphasize the sinister role played by the CIA in Libya. The second memo refutes Obama’s claim of an Al Qaeda on the run by showing an increasingly coordinated pattern of Al Qaeda sponsored attacks throughout the Middle East.

–

Obama's vision becomes the law of the land On March 23rd, 2010, the 77th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's Enabling Act bill, Obama signed into law H.R. 3590 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare. It's a big bill to say the least. The copy that I read at frwebgate.access.gpo.gov is filled with legal mumbo-jumbo right up until you get to section 5210. In that section there is hidden a little gem called "ESTABLISHING A READY RESERVE CORPS". Obama's private army, a reality. And your tax dollars will pay for it. »Link to the offical government site for the bill: www.govtrack.us/ »Download the full PDF here. Here is how Section 5210 from the ObamaCare bill starts:

Obama's vision becomes the law of the land

On March 23rd, 2010, the 77th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's Enabling Act bill, Obama signed into
law H.R. 3590 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare. It's
a big bill to say the least. The copy that I read at frwebgate.access.gpo.gov is filled with legal
mumbo-jumbo right up until you get to section 5210. In that section there is hidden a little gem
called "ESTABLISHING A READY RESERVE CORPS".

Obama's private army, a reality. And your tax dollars will pay for it.

»Link to the offical government site for the bill: www.govtrack.us/
»Download the full PDF here.

Here is how Section 5210 from the ObamaCare bill starts:

Clinton Sought End-Run Around Counter-Terrorism Bureau on Night of Benghazi Attack, Witness will Say

06 May 2013

Benghazi, Hillary Clinton, Terrorism

by James Rosen, Chad Pergram

Photo Credit: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Creative Commons

On the night of Sept. 11, as the Obama administration scrambled to respond to the Benghazi terror attacks, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a key aide effectively tried to cut the department’s own counterterrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making, according to a “whistle-blower” witness from that bureau who will soon testify to the charge before Congress, Fox News has learned.
That witness is Mark I. Thompson, a former Marine and now the deputy coordinator for operations in the agency’s counterterrorism bureau. Sources tell Fox News Thompson will level the allegation against Clinton during testimony on Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Fox News has also learned that another official from the counterterrorism bureau — independently of Thompson — voiced the same complaint about Clinton and Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy to trusted national security colleagues back in October.
Extremists linked to Al Qaeda stormed the American consulate and a nearby annex on Sept. 11, in a heavily armed and well-coordinated eight-hour assault that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans.
Thompson considers himself a whistle-blower whose account was suppressed by the official investigative panel that Clinton convened to review the episode, the Accountability Review Board (ARB). Thompson’s lawyer, Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney, has further alleged that his client has been subjected to threats and intimidation by as-yet-unnamed superiors at State, in advance of his cooperation with Congress.
Read more from this story HERE.

Benghazi Investigation May Turn Into an Impeachment Proceedings, if House Believes Whistle-Blowers

06 May 2013

Benghazi, impeachment, Obama administration, whistleblowers

by News Editor

The news from the Benghazi whistle-blowers is starting to create the type of firestorm that could spell the beginning of the end of the Obama Administration.
Among the shocking revelations from Rep. Darrell Issa on Face the Nation this weekend, Gregory Hicks, the senior Foreign Service Official at the US embassy in Tripoli, stated that Ambassador Stevens called and told him personally that they were under attack, NOT under siege by demonstrators.

Hicks insisted that he knew from the beginning that the attack was a terrorist attack and he “reported an attack on the consulate.”

And Hicks wasn’t the only one. According to CBS, embassy personnel repeatedly asked,

“Send reinforcements!”
But they were told immediate help wasn’t available.
Embassy personnel say they repeatedly asked the Defense Attache on site in Tripoli for military assistance.
“Isn’t there anything available?” one Embassy official says he asked. “But the answer was ‘no.’”
“What about Aviano?” the official pressed, referencing the NATO air base with US assets in northeastern Italy. “No,” was the answer.

The whistle-blowers that came forward with these firsthand accounts continue to be exposed to intimidation and “threats of retaliation.”
Americans are getting sick and tired of this Administration’s lies, whether they’re about the supposed Benghazi reaction to a stupid YouTube video, or the lies told in an attempt to cover-up Obama’s and Hillary’s responsibility for the fiasco.
So let’s hope the truth comes out in this week’s hearings. Assuming the testimony is consistent with what we’ve heard from the whistle-blowers so far, the House should seriously consider impeachment proceedings. Any president that consciously turns his back on Americans in conflict, when he has available resources and no national security reason to remain passive, must be held to the highest account.

State Department now refusing all questions on Libyan violence

During a Friday afternoon press conference, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland announced that the agency will no longer answer any further questions about the attack in Benghazi which took the lives of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other embassy staff members.
Nuland said: "I'm going to frustrate all of you, infinitely, by telling you that now that we have an open FBI investigation on the death of these four Americans, we are not going to be in a position to talk at all about what the U.S. government may or may not be learning about how any of this this happened -- not who they were, not how it happened, not what happened to Ambassador Stevens, not any of it -- until the Justice Department is ready to talk about the investigation that's its got."
"So I'm going to send to the FBI for those kinds of questions and they're probably not going to talk to you about it," she added.

On Friday, it was also reported that the FBI will delay their investigation, until the violence in Libya calms down.
Of course, this was not the first time the spokeswoman has "frustrated" reporters...
In March, Nuland refused to answer whether or not the Obama administration considers the city of Jerusalem to even be part of Israel, after an official State Department press release seemed to imply that the holy city of Jerusalem did not actually belong to that country.

"We are not going to prejudge the outcome of those negotiations, including the final status of Jerusalem...Our policy with regard to Jerusalem is that it has to be solved through negotiations. That's all I have to say on this issue," Nuland told reporters.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the State Department later "altered" the communication to "erase the fact that it had referred to Israel and Jerusalem as separate entities."

Read more about the Libyan violence directed at the U.S.:

Ambassador was raped before he was murdered

Libyan official: "Deaths are all nothing compared to insulting the Prophet"

Report: U.S. Ambassador was raped before he was murdered

Ambassador Stevens' body being dragged through Benghazi

The Arabic language website known as Lebanon News (Tayar.org) has just reported the horrific claim that the heavily armed mob responsible for the murder of U.S. Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, 52, actually raped him before he was killed.
The Google Translation of the report follows:
-"The U.S. ambassador to Libya was raped sexually before killing by gunmen who stormed the embassy building in Benghazi last night to protest against the film is offensive to the Prophet Muhammad"
-"The sources told AFP said that 'Ambassador was killed and representation of his body in a manner similar to what happened with Gaddafi, such as murder.'"
Ambassador Stevens was killed on Tuesday along with three other embassy staff as a group of terrorists attacked the U.S. consulate office in Benghazi, where Stevens was hold up.
The mob fired countless gunshots and rocket propelled grenades at the U.S. compound, eventually setting the consulate ablaze.
Also on Tuesday, a violent mob scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, replacing the U.S. flag with that of al Queda's.
Over his career, Stevens served two diplomatic tours in Libya, and was confirmed as ambassador to that country by the Senate in May.
Until Tuesday, only five U.S. ambassadors have been killed in the line of duty, according to the U.S. State Department.
Read more about this tragic event:
State Department now refusing all questions on consulate attack
Libyan official: "The deaths are all nothing..."