by Ben Shapiro
The media allowed the Obama administration to bury Benghazi as an issue for months. By the time it came up again in mid-2013, the Obama administration simply declared it a distraction. White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer informed Fox News Sunday in May 2013 that it was “irrelevant” where Obama was the night of the attacks. He blamed “a series of conspiracy theories Republicans have been spinning about it since the time it happened. . . . The question here is not what happened that night.”127 A few days later, Obama reiterated that “the core of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on the path to defeat. . . . They did not direct the attacks in Benghazi.” He called Benghazi a “localized threat.”128
With President Obama safely reelected, the entire Democratic establishment came to the aid of their New Great White Hope 2016, Hillary Clinton. Despite the fact that State Department regulations clearly place responsibility for employee security on the secretary of state, it now turned out that Hillary was clean as a whistle, a wronged woman desperately pursued by a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) admitted that the “talking points were wrong,” but called Rand Paul’s attacks on Clinton “nonsense.” Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) suggested that Benghazi hearings in Congress were a “political show” and said that Republicans were going “after Hillary Clinton” to stop her nomination in 2016. He said that the investigation was a “witch hunt.” Former Obama secretary of defense Robert Gates said he didn’t think there was any cover-up at all, defending Ambassador Susan Rice in the process.129 Pfeiffer said that Republicans owed Rice “an apology . . . for accusing her of misleading the country.”130
The media took its cues perfectly. Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central, who plays a parodic right-winger, suggested that the Benghazi scandal was just old news, and right-wing paranoia at that: “Since last September, Fox News has been pursuing this story doggedly. To uncover how the administration blew it, when they blew it, why they blew [it], and how they will continue to have blown it. And, most importantly, how is this car still burning? I mean, it’s been eight months? . . .Well, buckle up, folks, click click, because this story is about to take off like a rocket ship to Planet Scandaltown.”131 The night of May 8, after Hicks and two other whistle-blowers testified before Congress, CNN spent four hours and nine minutes covering the Jodi Arias trial and the Cleveland abduction story. They spent eight minutes on Benghazi. Anderson Cooper ignored the story for two hours. So did Piers Morgan.132 On May 10, just to ensure that the media continued to perform lapdog duty, White House press secretary Jay Carney held a “deep background” briefing for fourteen invited press outlets. Deep background, explained White House spokesman Josh Earnest, meant “that the info presented by the briefers can be used in reporting but the briefers can’t be quoted.” And so the propaganda machine rolled on.133
THE AFTERMATH
Throughout the Benghazi events and cover-up, Obama administration officials consistently echoed the same refrain: let’s not focus on what happened, let’s focus on solving the problem. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, on October 12, 2012, Carney said that President Obama was “committed to finding out what happened. He is committed to making sure that those who killed four Americans are brought to justice, and he is committed to ensuring that actions are taken after the Accountability Review Board thoroughly assesses this matter, to make sure that what happened in Benghazi never happens again.”134 Hillary Clinton concluded her disgusting “What difference does it make” routine with a call to fix the issues: “It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again.”135
So, what happened to those involved?
To begin, not a single person was fired from the administration over Benghazi. Eric Boswell, head of the Diplomatic Security Bureau, supposedly resigned in December 2012; Charlene Lamb, deputy assistant secretary responsible for embassy security, was reportedly disciplined, as was Raymond Maxwell, a deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. An unnamed fourth person in the Diplomatic Security Bureau was also supposedly disciplined. But a spokeswoman for Senator Paul’s office said that “our staff has confirmed with Legislative Affairs at State that all four individuals called out by the ARB are still on administrative leave, getting paid, and expected to return to work.” The media initially denied those reports.136 But in August 2013, just eight months after the supposed resignations, new secretary of state John Kerry cleared all four State Department employees. They were all placed back in regular duty and all disciplinary action was revoked. According to a State Department official, “[Secretary Kerry] studied their careers and studied the facts. In order to implement the ARB and to continue to turn the page and shift the paradigm inside the Department, the four employees who were put on administrative leave last December pending further review, will be reassigned inside the State Department.”137
Here’s what happened to everyone else involved:
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland: Nuland, who helped manipulate the Benghazi talking points, was promoted to assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs.138 Republican senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham lauded her as “knowledgeable and well-versed on the major foreign policy issues as well as respected by foreign policy experts in both parties.”139
UN Ambassador Susan Rice: Rice, who actually trotted out those talking points, was originally considered for secretary of state when Clinton stepped down. After Republicans suggested that her involvement in the Benghazi scandal made her a poor choice, President Obama’s congressional allies suggested that Republicans were racists and sexists.140 President Obama eventually appointed Rice his national security advisor, but only after stating that Republicans should stop picking on Rice, since she was an “easy target.”141
State Department staffer G. Kathleen Hill: Hill, who objected by email to Eric Nordstrom’s requests for more security, was awarded the State Department James Clement Dunn Award for Excellence. The award is given for “leadership, intellectual skills, managerial ability, and personal qualities that most fully exemplify the standards of excellence desired of employees at the mid-career level. The winner of the award receives a certificate signed by the Secretary of State.”142 State magazine lauded her for her “courage and vision during the establishment of a new base of operations in Libya and the opening of Embassy Tripoli.”143
Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy: Kennedy, who turned down requests for security and reportedly killed requests for the quick-response FEST team during the attacks, has retained his position. He is currently under investigation by an independent inspector general for allegedly covering up former ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman’s alleged involvement with prostitutes and child sex solicitation.144
CIA director David Petraeus: Petraeus took over the CIA only five days before Benghazi. Petraeus’s CIA drafted the original Benghazi talking points. The CIA ran the annex in Benghazi. The CIA helped run the alleged gunrunning operation. Petraeus was dropped like a hot potato by the administration as soon as the election was over, supposedly over his affair with biographer Paula Broadwell. He quickly told Congress that the events in Benghazi had nothing to do with a YouTube video.145
CIA Director Michael Morell: Morell, who had a chief role in editing the Benghazi talking points, was interim head of the CIA before Petraeus’s appointment and was reappointed interim head of the CIA after Petraeus left. He would eventually leave the administration in June 2013.146
Secretary of Defense and former CIA director Leon Panetta: Panetta, who served as CIA director during the Libya war and during the period in which gunrunning operations allegedly took place, served until February 2013 as secretary of defense. He said he wanted to return to his “walnut farm.” In announcing his resignation, he echoed Obama: “We have . . . decimated al Qaeda’s leadership and weakened their effort to attack this country.”147
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey: Dempse
y, who oversaw the military response to Benghazi, is still in place.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: Clinton left office as the 2016 Democratic presidential frontrunner, and perhaps the most celebrated secretary of state in American history, despite her dramatic failures including Benghazi. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush presented Hillary Clinton with the Liberty Medal from the National Constitution Center in September 2013. “Former Secretary Clinton has dedicated her life to serving and engaging people across the world in democracy,” Bush stated.148 In her resignation letter, Clinton stated, “I am more convinced than ever in the strength and staying power of America’s global leadership and our capacity to be a force for good in the world.” The day before her resignation, she told the Associated Press, “I was so unhappy with the way that some people refused to accept the facts, refused to accept the findings of an independent Accountability Review Board, politicized everything about this terrible attack. . . . There are some people in politics and in the press who can’t be confused by the facts. They just will not live in an evidence-based world. And that’s regrettable. It’s regrettable for our political system and for the people who serve our government in very dangerous, difficult circumstances.”149
President Obama: Barack Obama continues to downplay the events in Benghazi. When asked in August 2013 why nobody had been arrested in the Benghazi attacks, Obama sneered, “I also said that we’d get bin Laden, and I didn’t get him in 11 months.” He then added, “Anybody who attacks Americans, anybody who kills, tragically, four Americans who were serving us in a very dangerous place, we’re going to do everything we can to get those who carried out those attacks.”150
Unless, of course, we’re funding them, handing them guns, and then ensuring that our security is too low to protect sovereign U.S. territory overseas.
In August 2013, the week before President Obama made those statements, the United States received word of heightened terror threats from al-Qaeda. The Obama administration promptly shut down twenty-two embassies around the world.
Bin Laden was still dead. But al-Qaeda was very much alive, thanks in no small part to the Obama administration.
CLOSING ARGUMENT
In 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were put on trial for smuggling nuclear secrets to the Russians. Technically, the United States and the Soviet Union were not at war, so they could not be tried for treason. Nonetheless, in 1953, they were executed under the Espionage Act of 1917, which prohibited transferring to a foreign government any information “relating to the national defense.” Judge Irving Kaufman said, upon giving sentence:
I consider your crime worse than murder. . . . I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-Bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason. Indeed, by your betrayal you undoubtedly have altered the course of history to the disadvantage of our country.151
On September 14, 2001, three days after the devastating terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Congress of the United States passed by a House vote of 420–1 and a Senate vote of 98–0 the Authorization for Use of Military Force. It authorized the use of force against America’s enemies: “nations, organizations, or persons he [the president] determines planned, authorized, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.” The goal: “to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States.”152
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg did not hand over an atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. The Obama administration has authorized a foreign policy of handing over weapons themselves to the very group of people who perpetrated September 11, as well as their Islamist associates. There is little or no evidence that the Obama administration has complied with its duty to receive congressional authorization for such covert acts. By funneling weapons to Libyan terrorists openly associated with al-Qaeda and pushing weapons through Libya to Syrian terrorists openly associated with al-Qaeda, the Obama administration was playing with treasonous fire.
That treasonous fire burned four Americans to death in Benghazi on the eleventh anniversary of September 11. The feckless foreign policy of the Obama administration did not just embolden America’s enemies, it handed guns to them. And then, when our American-funded al-Qaeda enemies turned on us, that feckless foreign policy recommended that we keep security low so as not to offend the terrorists openly working with those who flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Any charges associated with gun smuggling to terrorist groups in violation of American law would not require separate RICO charges. Such charges could spring from the Arms Control Export Act (AECA), which explicitly provides that the United States cannot provide guns or credit to countries supporting terrorism. There is no question that President Obama’s administration did this, and did it repeatedly. In fact, President Obama essentially admitted as much when, in September 2013, he attempted to retroactively justify that gun smuggling by waiving the applicable provision under the AECA.153
But the crimes didn’t stop there.
When it became obvious that revelations about what really happened in Benghazi could undermine President Obama’s bid for reelection, deputies throughout his administration began covering up the evidence: silencing witnesses, threatening agents, and lying to the American people. Then those same lackeys had the temerity to label the entire debacle a distraction from the real issues of the day, and to blame those who wanted the truth for supposed conspiracy-mongering.
This is where RICO comes in. The RICO Act explicitly lists among its predicate crimes obstruction of justice (certainly the highly flawed Accountability Review Board would fall under this provision, as would the Obama administration’s repeated attempts to silence witnesses to the Benghazi events);154 tampering with a witness, victim, or informant; and terrorism-related offenses, among others.
There is no question who designed the strategy of attempting to ingratiate the United States to its enemies overseas—and there is little question that President Obama and Hillary Clinton had an inkling of just what was happening in Benghazi. There is no doubt that Clinton in particular had direct contact with Gregory Hicks, a witness involved in the event, and that her direct operatives tampered with witnesses. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is still staffed by the same men and women who made the despicable decisions that led to Benghazi in the first place.
By their betrayal, the Obama administration has undoubtedly altered the course of history to the disadvantage of our country and is guilty of espionage.
COUNT 2
INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER
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A person commits manslaughter by recklessly causing the death of another person. . . . Manslaughter is a class 2 felony. . . . “Recklessly” means, with respect to a result or to a circumstance described by a statute defining an offense, that a person is aware of and consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the result will occur or that the circumstance exists. The risk must be of such nature and degree that disregard of such risk constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation.
—ARIZONA REVISED STATUTES, TITLE 13, CRIMINAL CODE
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OPENING ARGUMENT
The air was dry and cool on the evening of December 14, 2010, in the Peck Canyon area of the southern Arizona desert. The area was well-known as a looting zone for Mexican bandits hoping to rob incoming illegal immigrants of drugs being carried across the border; such bajadores were known to bear heavy weaponry and wear ski masks to carry out their crimes, including but not limited to robbery and rape. In the prior few months, there had been several ambushes in the area.
The groups
responsible for stopping such activity were known as Border Patrol Tactical Units (BORTACs). “Any time an agent encounters a known suspect who has weapons,” said Brandon Judd, president of the Local 2544 agents’ union, “we call BORTAC.” And that happened often in Peck Canyon. Just three months before, in September, Border Patrol agents had encountered such criminals at Bellota Canyon nearby, and a firefight ensued. “Anywhere that we know that bandit activity is taking place, that’s where BORTAC goes,” said Judd. “If BORTAC’s out there patrolling that area, it’s a bad area.” It was the feds’ job to keep the border secure. It was the feds’ job to keep the Border Patrol agents safe. “It’s a federal responsibility,” explained Sheriff Antonio Estrada. “The Border Patrol, they have the numbers, they have the technology, they have the resources to do that.”1
One of those border patrol agents was a forty-year-old nicknamed “Superman”: Brian Terry. As he and his compatriots patrolled the area, they suddenly came under fire from five gunmen from the Mexican side of the border. While Terry and company fired beanbag guns in an attempt to neutralize the threat without serious injury, the suspects began firing AK-47s and other heavy-duty rifles.