House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Rejects Benghazi Accusations : Is it a Cover up?

Two days after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2012, a Libyan man walks in the rubble of the damaged Special Mission Compound in Benghazi, Libya.

Ken Dilanian wrote an article entitled “GOP Panel: ‘No Intelligence Failure’ Before Benghazi” which was published in The Miami Herald on November 21, 2014. He explained that after a two-year investigation by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee it has found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack to a U.S. Mission Compound in Benghazi, Libya. Additionally, it stated that the Obama administration officials also acted properly.

Dilanian explained that the panel debunked a series of persistent accusations and allegations regarding wrongdoings and cover ups. The House Intelligence Committee determined that “there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.”

The terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, foreign service officer Sean Smith, and two CIA contractors, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty. A Libyan al-Qaida-linked leader of Ansar al Shariah, Ahmed Abu Khatalla, is facing trial on murder charges after he was captured in Libya and taken to America.

Dilanian pointed out that after the terror attacks, Republicans criticized the Obama administration and its then-Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, for failure to send soldiers before and during the attacks to protect Ambassador Stevens and the three other Americans. People in and out of government have said that a CIA response team was ordered to “stand down” after the State Department Special Mission Compound came under attack and that a military rescue was cancelled.

Several retired high-ranking military officials, retired CIA officers, former senior officials of the Defense Department, reporters from London newspapers, and others have written that Ambassador Stevens and the CIA were involved in a secret operation to send weapons from Libya to Turkey and that most of the weapons ended on the hands of al-Qaida-linked terror groups in Syria. None of that is true, according to the House Intelligence Committee’s report.

Dilanian wrote that the panel found that the State Department Special Mission Compound, where Ambassador Christ Stevens and Sean Smith were killed, was not well-protected and that State Department security agents knew they could not defend it from a well-armed attack. Previous reports have found that requests for security improvements were not acted upon in Washington.

The reporter wrote that Representative Mike Rogers, Republican from Michigan and the Intelligence Committee’s chairman, and Representative C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the ranking Democrat, in a joint statement stated the following: “We spent thousands of hours asking questions, poring over documents, reviewing intelligence assessments, reading cables and emails, and held a total of 20 committee events and hearings. We conducted detailed interviews with senior intelligence officials from Benghazi and Tripoli as well as eight security personnel on the ground in Benghazi that night. Based on the testimony and the documents we reviewed, we concluded that all the CIA officers in Benghazi were heroes. Their actions saved lives.”

Is The House Intelligence Committee report accurate?

Of course not! It is a shameful whitewash and cover-up of the CIA and the Obama administration and a great disservice to our nation for suppressing the truth about Libya. Mike Rogers is guilty of dereliction of duty since as chairman of the Committee, he is the one most responsible for the report. It is this appalling behavior of Rodgers, an establishment RINO Republican, who is acting like a Democrat in protecting and covering up Obama’s role in Libya. It is RINOs like Rodgers who have conservative Republicans and Tea Party members up in arms.

Alex Griswold wrote in the Daily Caller on November 23, 2014, that Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he believed the House Intelligence Committee’s Benghazi report, which vindicated many administration claims, was “full of crap.”
GRAHAM: I think the report’s full of crap, quite frankly.

HOST GLORIA BORGER: Why? Why?

GRAHAM: The Deputy Director of the CIA when I asked him, “Do you know who changed the talking points?” with Senator Ayotte and McCain, and Susan Rice sitting by his side said the FBI changed the talking points, when in came to al-Qaida. Only later did we find out through a lawsuit that Mike Morell was deeply involved in changing the talking points, the deputy director of the FBI, when he was sitting in front of a congressional panel and he was asked, “Does anybody here know who changed the talking points?” He sat silent. So the intel community through him lied.

BORGER: So you’re saying the intel community is lying to the House Intelligence Committee? The administration’s not exonerated…?

GRAHAM: No, I’m saying the House Intelligence Committee is doing a lousy job policing their own.

Kristi Rogers and her role in winning contracts from the Obama administration

Micah Morrison, Chief Investigative Reporter of Judicial Watch, wrote an article entitled “Unraveling Benghazi: Is Mike Rogers Part Of The Problem?” which was published in Daily Caller on June 17, 2014. Morrison pointed out that Kristi Rogers, wife of Congressman Rogers, after years of government service joined the British-based security contractor Aegis Defense Services to help open its U.S. subsidiary. Thanks to Ms. Rogers’ efforts, Aegis won several major contracts with the U.S. administration.

Mike and Kristi Rogers are Washington insiders. A seven-term Republican from Michigan, Mike Rogers, climbed the political ladder to become chairman of the Intelligence Committee in January 2011. Morrison explained that a spokesperson for the House Intelligence Committee said that “strictly observed and enforced” policies required “that there should be no interaction with Mrs. Rogers on any matter relating to the official business of the House” and “no interaction between the Committee and any representative of Aegis.”

Morrison said the following: “there is no evidence of wrong-doing by Rep. Rogers or Aegis. Indeed, the outlines of the story are more suggestive of “right-doing,” Washington-style: an insider’s game of covert operations and corporate profits played out in the gray areas of law and policy.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers

Debunking the House Intelligence Report on Benghazi

Clare Lopez wrote an article with the above title on November 25, 2014 and it was published in Accuracy in Media. Roger Aronoff. editor of Accuracy in Media, wrote the following:

“The report released on November 21, 2014 regarding the September 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has once again brought to the surface this story that will not go away. Not, certainly, until those responsible are held accountable, and a truthful and accurate version of events and motivations in the months and days leading up to this tragic chapter in American history has been established.

The media embraced the report as bipartisan vindication of what the Obama administration has argued: Namely that yes, mistakes were made, we did everything we could to protect our people, and have put into place remedies, and changes in policies, so that nothing like this happens again. But the evidence and the testimony say otherwise.

Accuracy in Media took the lead in creating the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi (CCB) in 2013 primarily to hold the Obama administration accountable—but also Congress and the media—and to do our own independent investigation. Clare Lopez, formerly a CIA officer for 20 years, and a member of the CCB, has written this rebuttal to the just-released House Intelligence report.

There is even more in the Benghazi story that deserves scrutiny and explanation, such as the dereliction of duty in the failure to deploy available military assets during the attacks and the failure of the State Department to provide additional security, or close the compound altogether. The new report states that its focus is on the U.S. Intelligence Community and that it “does not assess State Department or Defense Department activities other than where those activities impact, or were impacted by, the work of the intelligence community.”

We have addressed those issues in the past, and will again in the future, but for now, this article should make clear that for whatever reason, the authors of the report have chosen to ignore volumes of evidence that contradict and disprove their main findings. While this article is exclusive to Accuracy in Media, please feel free to post and distribute this article by Clare Lopez.

Clare Lopez wrote the following:

“House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Ranking Member C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger (D-MD) issued a much-anticipated “Investigative Report on the Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Facilities in Benghazi, Libya, September 11-12, 2012” on November 21, 2014 that has administration supporters crowing — and eyewitness, on-the-ground operators pushing back forcefully. A close comparison of the report and other previously released information about the September 2012 attacks on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi shows that the operators have good reason to cry “foul.” While clever wording just might give Messrs. Rogers and Ruppersberger plausible deniability on a witness stand, the overall intent of the report is clear: exonerate the Intelligence Community (IC), and, by extension, the Obama administration, of responsibility for intelligence failures prior, during, and after the terrorist attack that took the lives of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Information Officer Sean Smith, and CIA contractors Glenn Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

In simple terms, this report is a whitewash of the CIA, which, along with the State Department, was responsible for arming and assisting the very jihadist militia groups that rose to power in the first place during the 2011 rebellion against Muammar Qaddafi, and who later murdered our people in Benghazi. The biggest intelligence failure of all that is never mentioned is the failure to understand the essential hostility of the jihadist ideology of the groups with which our government was dealing.

One of the most riveting revelations from members of the CIA security team who were at the Annex the night of 11-12 September, 2012 concerns the repeated refusal of CIA Chief of Base ‘Bob’ to allow them to go to the rescue of the besieged Americans at the Special Mission Compound (SMC). While the Rogers report is adamant that “…the Committee found no evidence that there was either a stand down order or a denial of available air support” that statement is directly contradicted by accounts of events from Mark “Oz” Geist, Kris “Tanto” Paranto, and John “Tig” Tiegen. These three members of the Annex security team are co-authors of 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi (2014) and have spoken out publicly in multiple media appearances. The Rogers Committee interviewed all three of them, as well as additional members of the Annex staff, so there’s no question about its familiarity with the actual sequence of events that fateful night.

According to Oz, Tanto, and Tig, COB “Bob” specifically used the words “Stand down” and also “Hold up” and “You need to wait” to keep security team members from going to the aid of fellow Americans under terrorist assault at the SMC. Despite repeated and increasingly panicked calls from the SMC, “Bob” refused to allow the Annex security team to depart that compound for nearly half an hour after the first alarm came in—a delay team members firmly believe resulted in the needless deaths of Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith. While “Bob’s” motivations may be debated—concern for the Annex’s own security, and the supposed responsibility of the jihadist 17 February Martyrs Brigade to defend the SMC—the Rogers Committee had a solemn responsibility to report truthfully about events as they happened. In this instance, the HPSCI report failed that responsibility.

Oversight and review of actions by the Intelligence Community constitute the primary mission of the HPSCI. The Rogers report devotes considerable attention and effort to conveying the impression that there was insufficient, or insufficiently specific, warning of an impending attack against the U.S. Mission in Benghazi. Unfortunately again, on multiple counts, this impression is an inaccurate one. The Rogers report Executive Summary on page 2 states that the “Committee finds that there was no intelligence failure prior to the attacks….IC provided intelligence about previous attacks and the increased threat environment in Benghazi, but the IC did not have specific, tactical warning of the September 11 attacks.” The careful wording of this claim may be technically accurate, but it is a far cry from being fully truthful about what the IC knew or should have known in the days and hours leading up to the attacks. Once again, a misleading conclusion is conveyed that whitewashes the IC performance, which was, in fact, lacking on a number of counts.

Congressional and media reporting alike confirm that prior intelligence reporting did detail earlier al-Qa’eda-linked terrorist attacks against other Western targets in and around Benghazi, as well as against the U.S. Mission itself. The implication left with the reader is that the State Department, whose activities the Rogers report does not assess (“other than where those activities impact or were impacted by the work of the intelligence community”), was responsible not only for the failure to properly secure its SMC facility, but for the fact that Ambassador Stevens was in Benghazi at all on such a momentous date for Islamic terrorists—especially given the local security situation, which was known to both him and the State Department.
At least two glaring intelligence failures do stand out, though. The first is the IC failure to warn either the Annex or Special Mission Compound personnel that between September 9th and 11th 2012, Muslim anger in Egypt and the broader Muslim world began to boil over on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter over the “Innocence of Muslims” YouTube video about the life of Muhammad. The book 13 Hours notes that it was left to Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) Greg Hicks at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli to sound the alarm on September 11, 2012 with a text message to Ambassador Stevens to let him know that the U.S. Embassy in Cairo was under assault by violent demonstrators who had breached the perimeter wall and torn down the American flag.

A communications officer at the SMC later telephoned the CIA Annex to convey the same information to them. The question left dangling is why it was the State Department that had to pass breaking real-time threat information to the CIA in Benghazi, when the gathering Islamic anger had been trending openly on social media sites for two whole days. In the end, of course, there were absolutely zero demonstrations or protests in Benghazi or Libya as a whole about that video, but Annex security team members have confirmed they knew nothing in advance about either the video or the online storm it generated. Given that it was their core responsibility to provide security protection to the Annex and its CIA operatives, the IC failure to ensure that they knew this information in a timely fashion left a gap in their overall situational awareness, even though their professional readiness posture to react on a 24/7 basis may not have suffered in any significant way.

The second intelligence failure involves the video that actually did matter in Benghazi: the videotaped message from al-Qa’eda (AQ) chief Ayman al-Zawahiri that went up on jihadist websites on September 10, 2012 and, in retrospect, seems obviously to have been the green light signal for the attack. Al-Zawahiri’s message called specifically on Libyans to rise up and attack Americans as revenge for the CIA drone killing of his Libyan deputy, Abu Yahya al-Libi, a few months earlier. Annex security members have confirmed they knew nothing about what should have been a red alert to the entire U.S. Mission in Benghazi. It should be noted here that even though Annex security team members were not privy to all incoming IC intel reporting, but instead were briefed by the Team Lead (a CIA case officer), they were responsible for protecting Annex and its CIA personnel. An earlier intelligence report, for example, is described on page 51 of the 13 Hours account as being extremely specific about a warning that “ a Western facility or U.S. Embassy/Consulate/Government target will be attacked in the next week”. That one was considered so important that Tyrone “Rone” Woods taped a copy of it up on a white board in the security team room at the Annex, and each member of the team over the following days signed his initials to show that he’d read it. According to the book, once everyone had signed, Tanto took the report down and shredded it…on September 11, 2012.
This report got everyone’s attention (at the Annex at least), but when the commander of AQ issued an attack order that was at least equally as specific to the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, inexplicably, the IC was oblivious. This must be counted as an egregious intelligence failure and should have been identified as such in the Rogers report.

Next, on the question of the identities of the terrorist attackers, the Rogers report once again conveys a very inaccurate impression. The report’s Executive Summary says “…Committee finds that a mixed group of individuals, including those affiliated with Al-Qa’ida, participated in the attacks….although the Committee finds that the intelligence was and remains conflicting about the identities, affiliations, and motivations of the attackers.”

In light of all the threat information about al-Qa’eda, the AQ-linked Ansar al-Shariah, and jihadist 17 February Martyrs Brigade SMC guards that was abundantly available to the entire Benghazi mission, both at the Annex and the SMC, the identity of the Benghazi assault teams hardly could have been in doubt. But even if it’s conceded that the attackers included individuals from a number of different local militias, everyone in Benghazi knew, or should have known, that they were all jihadists, aka AQ affiliates. And while of late it has become unfashionable, not to mention career-threatening, within the U.S. government to mention the jihadist ideology of America’s terrorist enemies, those on the ground in harm’s way don’t have the luxury of such denial. Those in Benghazi on the night of 11-12 September 2012 knew immediately who was attacking them and reported that information up their respective chains-of-command.

There was plenty of other information available—both immediately and within days of the attack. For one thing, the closed circuit TV (CCTV) cameras mounted on the exterior of Annex and SMC buildings not only recorded for the permanent record, but live-streamed events on the ground as they were happening. That live-stream video would have been seen by dozens of U.S. government officials across the IC that night. Everyone watching knew the attackers were Islamic terrorists, well-organized, well-prepared, and well-trained for that assault. For whatever reason, however, the Annex security team members were never allowed to view this CCTV footage.

An additional and critical piece of information is revealed on page 185 of 13 Hours in Benghazi, where Tanto recalls that a member of the 17th February Martyrs Brigade handed him a Blackberry cell phone that had been recovered “outside the front of the villa” (meaning the SMC). Tanto gave the cell phone to COB “Bob” after he and other team members returned to the Annex. This phone more than likely belonged to one of the attackers. The forensic exploitation of its contents would have been completed with speed and urgency, very likely providing the Intelligence Community with a great deal of information about the entire Benghazi-based network of AQ, Ansar al-Shariah, and AQIM terrorists involved in the mission attack within days, if not hours.

Finally, the Associated Press (AP) published an excellent piece of investigative journalism on October 27th, 2012. AP reporters had gone to Benghazi and interviewed the SMC’s neighbors. Their report clearly states that the local eyewitnesses identified the attackers as Ansar al-Shariah by the logos on their trucks as they set up roadblocks around the compound prior to the attack. Obviously, if wire service reporters could get this information, Benghazi CIA officers should have acquired and reported it, too. If they did not, then that too is an intelligence failure.

The next critical element of the Rogers report that needs scrutiny involves the weapons shipments that were sent from Benghazi to Turkey for overland delivery to the Syrian al-Qa’eda-and-Muslim-Brotherhood-linked rebels fighting there against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The relevant passage from the Rogers Executive Summary reads: “…the Committee also found no evidence that the CIA conducted unauthorized activities in Benghazi and no evidence that the IC shipped arms to Syria.” Once again, wording is everything.

According to an August 2012 report from CNN, President Obama signed an Intelligence Finding to authorize clandestine support for Syrian rebels by the CIA and other agencies sometime in early 2012. The same CNN report says that an earlier Finding was signed in 2011 to authorize CIA support to the Libyan rebels. Such Findings carry a great deal of legal weight and likely trump the U.S. Criminal Code ban on providing material support to terrorism. So, even if the IC had been providing arms, funding, intelligence, and other support to AQ in Libya in 2011 and later, in Syria in 2012, it wasn’t, strictly speaking, “unauthorized.”

Furthermore, the Rogers report itself reproduces a question-and-answer session before the HPSCI that featured testimony from Acting CIA Director Mike Morell. On page 87 of the report, Morell plainly admits that arms were leaving Benghazi and going to Syria. Sections of the exchange are redacted, but the clear implication is that the Turks were involved as middlemen in the movement of weapons from Libya destined for the Syrian rebels. Morell’s testimony tried to give HPSCI member Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) the impression that the only CIA role in this gun-running was monitoring that movement, not participating in it. At this point in the session, however, HPSCI Chairman Rogers intervened to shut the conversation down from going any further.

Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge shed further light on the shipment of weapons destined for the Syrian rebels out of Libya by way of Turkey with an important 25 October 2012 story in which she revealed that the Libyan-flagged ship, the “Al-Entisar,” reportedly loaded with weapons from Libya, had been docked in the Turkish port of Iskanderun on September 6th, 2012. Readers will recall that Ambassador Stevens’ last meeting, a mere five days later, on September 11th, was with the Turkish Consul General in Benghazi. Semantics again: the ships didn’t dock in Syria, they docked in Turkey. So, the Rogers report technically can say that the arms shipments didn’t go to Syria—even though Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earlier had seemed shocked during her own Congressional testimony at the suggestion that Libyan weapons shipments might have been going, precisely, to Turkey. Technically once again, it might be said that she knew perfectly well the weapons were destined ultimately for delivery in Syria, not Turkey. In any case, someone needs to reconcile these accounts.

Finally, lending some measure of credence to CIA denials of involvement in the Libya-Turkey-Syria gun-running operation is the State Department’s own in-house magazine, which in its December 2011 issue, describes how Stevens and the Libyan Muslim-Brotherhood-led Transitional National Council worked together and “launched the U.S. government’s cooperative program with the council to collect dangerous weapons such as shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles..” So, it seems possible that the Libya-Syria gun-running operation was directed by the State Department after all. Outstanding questions for the Select Committee on Benghazi might include how many of these so-called MANPADS were collected, by whom, stored where, and how they were shipped out of Benghazi.

To sum up, then, the November 21, 2014 Rogers report on the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi leaves far too many misperceptions to go unchallenged. From IC warnings about the impending attack, to the unambiguous COB “Stand Down” order to the Annex security team, to the AQ terrorist identity of the attackers, and finally to the gun-running operation itself, there is still a great deal to be investigated here. The Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi—which issued our own Interim Report on April 2014—calls on Rep. Trey Gowdy and the entire Select Committee on Benghazi to keep investigating this tragic fiasco until there is full accountability and as much transparency as possible for the American people—and especially, for the families of those who gave their lives in Benghazi.”

Why did Ambassador Chris Stevens go to Benghazi in September 2012?

Tom Fitton’s Judicial Watch Special Investigative Report raised the question as to why Ambassador Chris Stevens went to Benghazi so close to the anniversary of 9/11, a place that had experienced 20 terrorist attacks, including one at the U.S. Special Mission Compound. It is now known that the Ambassador met with the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin on the evening of the attack.

The purpose of that meeting has not been disclosed. Some experts believe that the Ambassador’s work in Benghazi may have been related to the Obama administration’s efforts to transfer arms to Syrian opposition groups. Frank Gaffney, former deputy assistant secretary of state, stated the following: “One of the places in Libya most awash with weapons in the most dangerous of hands is Benghazi. It now appears that Stevens was there-on a particularly risky day, with no security to speak of and despite now copiously documented concerns about his own safety and that of his subordinates-for another priority mission: sending arms recovered from the former regime’s stocks to the opposition in Syria.”

Judicial Watch wrote that the newspaper Times of London published an article on September 14, 2012 entitled “Syrian Rebels Squabble Over Weapons as Biggest Shipload Arrives from Libya.” The Times of London pointed out that the Libyan ship, The Intisaar or The Victory, arrived at the Turkish port of Iskenderun after leaving from Benghazi. It explained that “more than 400 tons of cargo arrived in Syria carrying SAM-7 surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), which Syrian sources said could be a game changer for the rebels.”

Why is House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers suppressing this information? Why does he want to protect President Barack Obama?

The Select Committee on Benghazi must act with force

Regardless of the cover-up of Mike Rodgers’ House Intelligence Committee, we have a Select Committee with the power to subpoena administration officials, including President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. The Select Committee should ask General Carter Ham, Commander of the United States African Command, and Rear Admiral Charles M. Gaouette, who was in charge of Carrier Strike Group Three, which included the aircraft carrier U.S.S. John C.Stennis, to testify. Both of them were forced to retire or fired. Was it because they were trying to send a rapid response team to Benghazi to save our people in violation of the order that they were given to stand down and do nothing? Former CIA director, David Petraeus, should also be sent a subpoena to explain why CIA operatives were involved in a Middle Eastern gun-running operation.

Other high-ranking generals, as well as White House officials from the National Security Council who were aware of what happened at Benghazi, should be sent subpoenas and forced to testify under oath. Only then, will the truth be found out and it could very well be career-ending for Barack Obama.
In an interview with Lou Dobbs, Admiral James Lyons, a member of the Roger Aronoff’s Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, when asked what did he think that went on in Benghazi, he responded: “If I had to speculate, I believe this was a bungled attack-kidnapping, the object being to kidnap Ambassador Stevens, and hold him in exchange for the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, who sits in jail in the United States for his role in planning the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.”

Admiral Lyons explained that in June 2012 both the British Consulate and the International Red Cross had to close their offices due to the assassination attempt on the British Consul General and other assassinations. The bombing outside our Special Mission Compound in Benghazi took place on June 6.

Ambassador Chris Stevens had requested additional security assistance on multiple locations. Secretary Clinton sent home Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wood and the 16-man security force which was at our embassy in Tripoli. The repeated pleas from Ambassador Stevens for additional security were ignored and denied by the State Department. Lyons stated: “Perhaps this was supposed to be part of a kidnapping, hostage situation, holding him in exchange for the Blind Sheikh. Because killing Ambassador Stevens made no sense to me since he was the great facilitator in funneling the arms to the rebels, to other militias, many of which were al Qaeda-affiliated, who have been fighting our troops in Iraq. So why would you kill the golden goose? It made the no sense to me.”

Admiral Lyons was highly critical of the Obama administration for its lack of response to the terrorist attack against our men in our Special Mission Compound and CIA Annex in Benghazi. He explained that we had 130 Marines at our Base at Sigonela, Sicily and another Marine detachment at our naval base in Rota, Spain. We also had F-16 aircraft that could have been there in an hour.

Admiral Lyons also criticized the fact that the Obama administration did not ask for help from the other Western Consulates that had security forces and could have assisted our men. Later, Consul Generals stated that if the United States would have requested assistance, they would have provided it. Lastly, Admiral Lyons stated that what happened at Benghazi would make the Iran-Contra scandal look like child’s play.

Conclusion

The November 21, 2014 Rogers report on the September 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi is a whitewash and a cover up. Senator Lindsey Graham was right when he said that he believed the House Intelligence Committee’s Benghazi report, which vindicated many administration claims, was “full of crap.” Republican Senator Rand Paul also criticized the Rodgers report. It is most important that other Republicans come forth and denounced this report full of inaccuracies. This is not the moment to be silent!

This report is most outrageous since it is full of omissions and false on so many levels. RINO Republican Congressman Mike Rogers is the primary problem. He will be leaving the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee to become a talk show host. What will he do? Spread more lies? As a Washington insider Congressman Rodgers will have no money problems, since his wife’s company has gotten billions in government contracts. It also appears that her former company happened to be part of the security problems in Libya. If true, that is why Rodgers did a cover up.
The Rodgers report that stated that there were no military assets within range to have made a difference was completely absurd as was most of the other findings of his report. Clare Lopez certainly debunked these House Intelligence Committee members debunkers. Former CIA official Lopez stated the Rogers report leaves far too many misperceptions to go unchallenged, specially the gun-running operation. Lopez stated that ,”there is still a great deal to be investigated here.”

How could President Obama and former Secretary Clinton get away with supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda-linked terrorists organizations in Libya and Syria and the way they both violated the Patriot Act and other laws in our nation? How could they get away for engaging in a Middle Eastern gun-running operation and sending tons of weapons from Libya to Turkey to Syria with many of those weapons falling into the hands of al-Qaida-linked terror organizations? How about the cover-up and lies to Congress and the American people?

The Select Committee needs to investigate not only the terrorist attacks in Benghazi but also the assistance of the Obama administration to the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood and jihadists during the civil war. The Select Committee needs to investigate the White House cover-up together with Muslim Brotherhood organizations in the United States and Muslim nations in the world. President Obama entered into a war in Libya violating the Constitution since Congress did not authorize it. Later, Obama was engaged in a Middle Eastern gun-running operation without Congressional authority and in violation of United States laws.

The president violated his oath of office and multiple laws by sending weapons to and working with terrorist groups during the civil war in Libya. He continued to violate laws by later sending weapons from Libya to Turkey knowing that those weapons would eventually fall into the hands of al-Qaeda-link terrorist groups fighting in Libya. Moreover, Obama worked with the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States and Muslim nations to engage in a cover-up. This is astounding and alarming. President Obama is a traitor who should be impeached by the House of Representatives and prosecuted by the Senate.

President Obama committed treason, dereliction of duty, and criminal negligence in Libya during the civil war against Qaddafi and for his refusal to save our diplomats and Navy SEALs in Benghazi. President Barack Obama is unfit to be our commander-in-chief and should be impeached by the House of Representatives and the Senate should hold a trial.

Unfortunately, President Obama may not be impeached for his crimes in Libya and his illegal Middle Eastern gun-running operation as well as for his many other crimes he has committed while in office. Why? One very well-informed person in Washington told me a few days ago that Republicans in Congress fear a civil war, if impeachment charges are filed. Even worse, they fear that Obama may manufacture a crisis and suspend the Constitution.
This is a very sad state of affairs that we find ourselves. Even though Republicans will have in January 2015 a super majority in the House with 247 seats, the largest since 1929, and a likely 54 seats in the Senate, they seemed to be paralyzed by fear. They need to remember that the Truth will set them free. In my opinion the worst thing that could happen to our nation is to allow the architect of the destruction of the United States to leave the White House unpunished for his multiple crimes. Obama will then continue, assuming that he leaves office in January 2017, to undermined our country and continue working with the Muslim Brotherhood to bring our destruction and implement Shariah Law.

I believe that if Representative Trey Gowdy and the entire Select Committee on Benghazi tell the truth about Libya and the established pro-Obama media publish the crimes committed by the President Obama in Libya, the American people will demand impeachment. Obama cannot be impeached, if the American people are ignorant of what he did.

Lastly, the Republicans in Congress and the American people need to remember the words of President Ronald Reagan. He stated the following: “Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance, it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation.”

Our generation needs to defend our Constitutional Republic right now. We must stand and defend freedom regardless of the consequences. If it is proven that the president committed treason, he must be impeached. If Obama chooses to declare martial law and suspend the Constitution, which he has been violating from the very beginning, he will be the one provoking a civil war.

This is not the time to live in fear of what Obama might do or not do. Marxists who come to power are frequently reluctant to abandon power. Just look at what dictator Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and other Marxists in Latin America have done. As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in 1933 but in a different context: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Republicans in Congress need to be brave and remember the immortal words of Patrick Henry: “I know not what course others may take; as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

We need to pray every day to God to protect our beloved nation from its enemies from within and from outside.