Buried Benghazi Bombshell: Excavating The Truth About That Night In The Desert
By Cultural Limits on February 14, 2014 • ( 1 )
General Ham, where art thou?
Thanks to the alternative media who will not let this story die, and Ulsterman for posting it in a place where many of us could find it.
A month ago, James Rosen, the Fox News reporter targeted by the Obama Regime for spy treatment due to his reporting, published a piece on the then newly declassified testimony of one General Carter Ham last June. General Ham has since all but disappeared.
Gen. Carter Ham, who at the time was head of AFRICOM, the Defense Department combatant command with jurisdiction over Libya, told the House in classified testimony last year that it was him who broke the news about the unfolding situation in Benghazi to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The tense briefing — in which it was already known that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens had been targeted and had gone missing — occurred just before the two senior officials departed the Pentagon for their session with the commander in chief.
According to declassified testimony obtained by Fox News, Ham — who was working out of his Pentagon office on the afternoon of Sept. 11 — said he learned about the assault on the consulate compound within 15 minutes of its commencement, at 9:42 p.m. Libya time, through a call he received from the AFRICOM Command Center.
“My first call was to General Dempsey, General Dempsey’s office, to say, ‘Hey, I am headed down the hall. I need to see him right away,’” Ham told lawmakers on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation on June 26 of last year. “I told him what I knew. We immediately walked upstairs to meet with Secretary Panetta.”
Ham’s account of that fateful day was included in some 450 pages of testimony given by senior Pentagon officials in classified, closed-door hearings conducted last year by the Armed Services subcommittee. The testimony, given under “Top Secret” clearance and only declassified this month, presents a rare glimpse into how information during a crisis travels at the top echelons of America’s national security apparatus, all the way up to the president.
Hmm. Very interesting.
“In your discussions with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta,” McKeon asked, “was there any mention of a demonstration or was all discussion about an attack?” Ham initially testified that there was some “peripheral” discussion of this subject, but added “at that initial meeting, we knew that a U.S. facility had been attacked and was under attack, and we knew at that point that we had two individuals, Ambassador Stevens and Mr. [Sean] Smith, unaccounted for.”
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, a first-term lawmaker with experience as an Iraq war veteran and Army reserve officer, pressed Ham further on the point, prodding the 29-year Army veteran to admit that “the nature of the conversation” he had with Panetta and Dempsey was that “this was a terrorist attack.”
The transcript reads as follows:
WENSTRUP: “As a military person, I am concerned that someone in the military would be advising that this was a demonstration. I would hope that our military leadership would be advising that this was a terrorist attack.”
HAM: ”Again, sir, I think, you know, there was some preliminary discussion about, you know, maybe there was a demonstration. But I think at the command, I personally and I think the command very quickly got to the point that this was not a demonstration, this was a terrorist attack.”
WENSTRUP: ”And you would have advised as such if asked. Would that be correct?”
HAM: ”Well, and with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta, that is the nature of the conversation we had, yes, sir.”
Even more interesting. The Pentagon official who got up from his desk to send the information that the assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was a terrorist attack up the chain of command not only has all but disappeared, but his testimony to that fact was declassified a month ago and no MSM outlet ran with it?
What if this had happened under George W. Bush’s watch? We’d still be hearing about it.
The Obama Regime lied up and down the chain and the one person who spoke the truth under oath BEHIND CLOSED DOORS is apparently under some sort of a gag order.
Was the Foggy Bottom Theater of Scandal too much? Spotlights on transgressions do make them seem huge. And this one was a lulu, even if it was a private screening.
Farther into the piece, Rosen explores an exchange with then CIA Director Leon Panetta and Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) where Panetta does say that he thought at the time that the attack was terrorist in nature. (And of course a state department official said he should have spoken up.)
So, Ham wasn’t the only one to think that the death of a sitting ambassador and three other Americans was at the hands of demonstrators, but actual terrorists.
Seriously, what if this had happened under Bush’s watch?
Talk about dereliction of duty. Not just the Obama Regime in lying about the attack being terrorist in nature, but the mainstream media in not reporting it, or even try to report it. Everyone saw Hillary Clinton explode with “What difference does it make” in an unsworn hearing. But only readers of the alternative media and viewers of Fox News saw the more in-depth and probing reporting that the death of a sitting ambassador deserves – or that the people in military command thought at the time that it was a terrorist attack.
It may take a while, but the truth about this one will come out in the end.
http://constitutionclub.org/2014/02/14/buried-benghazi-bombshell-excavating-the-truth-about-that-night-in-the-desert/
