Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Charlene Lamb testified that on September 11, after the “full-scale assault” in Libya — “unprecedented in its size and intensity” — began about 9:40 p.m. Libyan time (4:40 p.m. Washington time), she was “in our Diplomatic Security Command Center [in Washington] monitoring multiple open lines with our agents [in Libya] for much of the attack.”
On Friday, a CNN reporter asked Hillary Clinton what she was doing as the attack occurred, and Clinton responded with a 400-word answer that avoided the question. Here was the colloquy:
QUESTION: … could you tell us a little bit about what you were doing when that attack actually happened? I know Charlene Lamb, who as the State Department official, was mentioning that she back here in Washington was monitoring electronically from that post what was happening in real time. Could you tell us what you were doing? Were you watching? Were you talking with the President? Any details about that, please.
SECRETARY CLINTON: … I think that it is very important to recognize that we have an investigation going on. [Blah, blah for 222 words]. So that’s what an investigative process is designed to do: to try to sort through all of the information, some of it contradictory and conflicting. [Blah, blah for 76 words]. So I’m going to be, as I have been from the very beginning, cooperating fully with the investigations that are ongoing, because nobody wants to know more about what happened and why than I do. And I think I’ll leave it at that.
QUESTION: Mrs. Secretary, if you could, the question was –
SECRETARY CLINTON: I know, but I’m going to leave it at that.
Later on Friday, the State Department spokesperson was asked why Clinton hadn’t answered, and provided this response:
As you know, she’s not that interested in focusing on herself. But obviously, she was here very late that night. She was getting regular updates from both the DS Command Center and the senior NEA leadership in the building, she was making phone calls to senior people, and so she was obviously very much involved. But I think she was not interested in sort of giving a personal tick-tock. It’s not the way she operates. [Emphasis added].
It is understandable that she’s not interested in focusing on herself, nor on the “senior people” she kept informed on the evening of September 11, as a major terrorist assault unfolded, monitored in real time on multiple open lines in her Washington command center, with a dead foreign service office and a missing ambassador by 6 p.m. Washington time and mortar attacks and more deaths coming later in the evening.
But to believe that her unwillingness to describe her actions reflected a self-effacing modus operandi may require the willing suspension of disbelief. It seems more likely she decided that, in view of Joe Biden’s malarkey on Thursday about an uninformed White House, this was not the time to describe what it seems any secretary of state would have done: inform the White House and keep it informed, in roughly the same real time as the State Department itself received the information, about an attack that was obviously not a demonstration about a video.
If a reasonable person combines Hillary's and her "spokesperson's" answers to the same question, namely, "What was she doing during the attack?" which is obviously the same question in all important aspects as "What did she KNOW at the time of the attack?" a reasonable person must conclude that Hillary knew what Charlene Lamb knew, which is that the embassy was under attack by terrorists full stop. n nTherefore, any journalist who is both reasonable and conscious is entitled to report that Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama knew the facts of the matter and were unencumbered by the slightest speculative quibble no later than 6 AM (EDT) the next morning, after the survivors had been transported to Tripoli and debriefed; further, that journalist is now entitled to report THAT conclusion without let or hindrance by conscience or professionalism and without fear of contradiction. It matters not two figs if Hillary would prefer to "leave it at that."
Hillary was probably drinking beer and dancing at some beer hall in a third world dumpster.
Actually, her public schedule for 9/11 shows she was in Washington all day, with her last event a swear-in of the Serbian ambassador at 4 pm. So she was there at the State Department at 4:40 pm when the Libyan attack began, and Sec. Lamb testified that the Libyan consulate notified Washington immediately, pursuant to "security protocols."
SECRETARY CLINTON: I know, but I’m going to leave it at that. n nWell, that is NOT good enough!
If she wasn't talking to the Preident about the attack in real time as she was being briefed on it, as she was monitoring it, so that it was clear from the jump that there were no protests, that the video was not the cause of anything in Libya, then I've lost my ability to discern objective reality.
They lied because they needed to cover up an AQ hit after Obama's repeated spiking of the ball but O's personal and obsessive predilection for kissing up to the Prophet plays a role here in dragging the "understandable anger" of Muslims over "this disgraceful video" into the Benghazi attack.
In fact, they dragged our free speech through the mud, all the way to the UN. "Squirrel!"
I hope the MSM gets confused enough to forget that they are supposed to be covering up for this gross incompetence and inadvertently stumbles upon the truth, before November 6th
The only word missing from this dancing around the truth is "Oops" n nI watched the VP debate with a friend. When Biden said 'we knew nothing but intel', my friend said she had been following the story all night, and UK's Telegraph reported the truth within six hours. n nMaybe the White House needs to add the Telegraph to their reading list?
Mitt Romney can destroy both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama with one question in the upcoming foreign relations debate. He simply preambles his question by quoting this State Department spokesperson that insisted that Hillary witnessed the attack in real time, and then ask President Obama what she (or her department) told him that day about the attack. Obama is then stuck in a hard place. He can't answer this question. Every answer is an admission of either complete incompetence on his part, or corruption. To say that she told him it was a spontaneous reaction about the film, Romney can press him by asking why did Hillary's state department lie to him, "Why is your State Department out of control?" To answer that he was informed it was a terrorist attack leads to the question, "Why then did you lie to the American people?" And because Hillary is on record as claiming the attack was a result of the film, she is dead in the water, no matter what Obama says or doesn't say.
They watched the play-by-play of the Bin Laden job and came out and spiked the football! nThey watched the play-by-play of the Stevens hit and didn't come out… nI wonder if politics had anything to do with these disparate reactions…?
They knew immediately this was a paramilitary operation that AQ had been telegraphing for months, for which they had chosen not to prepare because appropriate preparations would have contradicted their mythology of success in the region. They went with the story about the video because on those facts they would be off the hook for not.not anticipating the event and protecting the ambassador. They stuck w that story untiluntil it became clear it would not sell. Disgusting.
That "strategy can be summed up in three words: VOTE FOR ROMNEY!