Benghazi-gate whistleblower told 'Shut up or be fired!'

Tuesday, May 14, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: Benghazi, whistleblower, Obama Administration

(NaturalNews) In her Sunday, May 12 New York Times column, serial Obama Administration apologist Maureen Dowd dutifully played her role once more, this time over the raging Benghazi scandal that, were there enough true statesmen in Congress, Hillary Clinton and the president would be consulting attorneys as their criminal and impeachment trials were set to begin.

To be fair, Dowd at least acknowledges several undeniable facts about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya last fall, which occurred on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11 and in which the first American ambassador in more than 30 years, Christopher Stevens, was killed, along with three other U.S. operatives. She also takes to task a number of administration officials in both the State Department, which Clinton controlled then as Secretary of State, and the White House for ignoring warnings from field operatives in Benghazi that security at the consulate was less than ideal. Finally, she also mentions that career State Department bureaucrats, in collusion with White House officials and aides, crafted a bogus story about the conditions surrounding the attack ("it was a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muslim video produced by a California man).

But seemingly unable to keep her own bitter left-wing partisanship in check, she then jabs a verbal spear into the heart of Obama's political opponents - who nonetheless have a seriously legitimate beef with this administration concerning the very real and, we're learning, very numerous lies that were told in the aftermath of this tragedy: "Truth is the first casualty here when competing fiefs protect their mythologies. Some unhinged ideologues on the right cling to the mythology that Barry and Hillary are out to destroy America."

Her attempt at marginalizing critics of Obama and Clinton won't fall on deaf ears because such comments are fuel for the left-wing extremists to whom she regularly caters. But the fact remains there is much Dowd and other administration lap dogs still refuse to acknowledge, and that is this simple axiom: The devil is always in the details.

'Don't talk to Congress'

For instance, it should be front-page news in every paper around the country, as well as headlining the cable news shows, that the one guy, so far, who has stepped up to lay bare the events leading up to, during and after the Benghazi attack was threatened with retaliation and demoted. That in and of itself smacks of a cover-up and it should serve as a huge red flag to anyone even remotely interested in getting to the bottom of this tragedy.

During testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week, veteran U.S. foreign service officer Gregory Hicks, who was in Tripoli the night of the Benghazi attack and who was informed that night by a near-frantic Stevens before he was killed that the consulate was under attack, told the panel that he was ordered by senior State Department officials not to talk to a visiting congressional delegation investigating the incident last fall.

"I was instructed not to allow the RSO (Regional Security Officer), the acting deputy chief of mission and myself to be personally interviewed by Congressman (Jason) Chaffetz (R-Utah)," Hicks told Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a member of the oversight panel.

'Never'

"So, the people at State (the State Department) told you, 'Don't talk to the guy who's coming to investigate?'" Jordan asked.

"Yes, sir," Hicks replied.

"Now, you've had several congressional delegations come to various places you've been around the world," Jordan continued. "Has that ever happened where lawyers get on the phone to you prior to a congressional delegation coming to investigate, a time when we've had four Americans lose their lives, have you ever had anyone tell you, 'Don't talk with the people from Congress coming to find out what took place?'"

Hicks' one word reply: "Never."

But Hicks is talking, and for challenging the BS emanating out of the White House and State Department in the wake of Benghazi, his lawyer now says, he was demoted. So much for "whistleblower" protection laws.

To Dowd and Obama's legion of apologists, this isn't about politics anymore. It's not about Republicans or Democrats or ideology. It's about dealing with the people who knew what was brewing in Libya but did nothing, or too little, about it because doing more would have made Obama's reelection campaign narrative that al Qaeda was on life-support look ridiculously contrived (http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20130512/OPINION04/705129968).

Politics killed Stevens and his aides, and politics is preventing we the people from actually holding someone responsible for it.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.nytimes.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZHsVhXB-Pk&feature=youtu.be

http://www.breitbart.com

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20130512/OPINION04/705129968