Mark Caserta: Free State Patriot Editor
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is slated to testify today before a special House committee chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., regarding the Sept. 11, 2012, attack. I fully expect this much anticipated testimony could significantly impact Hillary’s campaign for her party’s presidential nomination.
In an article this week in the Los Angeles Times by W.J. Hennigan, Gowdy was quoted as saying the investigation “has taken on new importance” after receiving Ambassador Stevens’ emails leading up to the attack.
“If you want a window into Libya and what was happening in the weeks and months before these four were killed, why would you not look at the ambassador’s emails?” he said. “He was a prolific emailer.”
An Associated Press release this week reported that emails from Ambassador Stevens to the State Department show that additional security was requested for the area almost from the moment the ambassador arrived, but were virtually ignored. According to the release, in one of the Ambassador’s emails he joked, “Maybe we should ask another government to pay our security upgrades because our government isn’t willing to do it.”
A piece in the Wall Street Journal by Peter Nicholas and Byron Tau reported that 300 emails recently released by the State Department revealed that Hillary had received emails from her top aides warning about the dangerous security conditions in Benghazi prior to the terrorist attack.
You may recall, following the incident, President Obama and members of his administration attempted to blame the attack on a “spontaneous protest” resulting from an obscure, anti-Islamic video. It was several days before the administration finally admitted it was, indeed, a terrorist attack.
Hillary’s testimony before the committee will surely be more awkward than her 2013 testimony. Rep. Gowdy and his committee have pursued and acquired additional facts which will be difficult for her to explain.
Since leaving the administration, then-defense secretary and CIA chief Leon Panetta has divulged that he knew that Benghazi was a “terrorist attack” right away. In a 2014 interview with MSNBC, Panetta said he sensed it from the beginning.
“I didn’t have any specific information, but the fact was, when you bring grenade launchers to a demonstration, there’s something else going on,” Panetta said. “And I just, from the very beginning, sensed that this was an attack – this was a terrorist attack on our compound.”
Now, I’m sure most liberal Democrats share Hillary’s position of “What difference, at this point does it make?” and would like for Benghazi to just go away.
But for the families of the victims who lost their lives, the difference is the closure of finally knowing the truth.
Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.
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