Is Feinstein an Ally for Benghazi Truth-Seekers?
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has shown a renewed post-election feistiness over the scandal swirling around former CIA Director David Petraeus that could translate to holding the administration accountable for this and the Benghazi scandal.
Freshly re-elected to another six-year term and pushing 80 years old, Feinstein would have little to lose by not doing the White House’s bidding — pressure that was evident when she backed off from claims that the executive branch was leaking sensitive information.
“I think the White House has to understand that some of this is coming from their ranks,” Feinstein said in an address at the World Affairs Council in July.
Feinstein was irked by Mitt Romney using her statement on the campaign trail, and issued her own statement saying that after noting she didn’t believe President Obama personally leaked classified information: “I shouldn’t have speculated beyond that, because the fact of the matter is I don’t know the source of the leaks.”
“It looks like President Obama has given Dianne Feinstein the Cory Booker treatment,” Romney spokesman Ryan Williams fired back in a statement, referring to the Newark mayor after Booker called attacks on Romney’s Bain record “nauseating.”
Tomorrow, Feinstein will be front and center — albeit in a highly anticipated classified hearing behind closed doors — as her Senate Intelligence Committee examines the Benghazi attacks. The House Intelligence Committee will be doing the same, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold its own examination in open session.
The Senate witness line-up was supposed to include Petraeus, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce and National Counterterrorism Center Director Matt Olsen. After the scandal broke Friday, Petraeus was replaced with Acting CIA Director Mike Morell.
Lawmakers cried foul — especially since Petraeus had gone on a fact-finding mission to Libya days before the election.
Feinstein noted Monday that she needs to see his report on that trip to help get to the bottom of Benghazi, but has been stonewalled.
“I believe that there is a trip report. We have asked to see the trip report. One person tells me he has read it, and then we tried to get it and they tell me it hasn’t been done,” she said on MSNBC. “That’s unacceptable. We are entitled to this trip report. And if we have to go to the floor of the Senate on a subpoena, we will do just that… for the very reason that it may have some very relevant information to what happened in Benghazi.”
Yesterday she laid down the gauntlet by announcing she and the Intelligence Committee’s vice-chairman, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), were formulating a plan to get to talk to Petraeus one way or another.
This morning, the pressure apparently paid off as it was reported Petraeus is willing to speak with the Senate panel, perhaps as soon as Friday. The House Intelligence Committee announced this evening that Petraeus will speak before their panel, behind closed doors, early Friday.
“I think she has been designated as the hearings point person for the Dems, because nothing that is said in her hearings can be released publicly anyway,” a Senate GOP aide told PJM late last month. “Clever.”
But with campaign-season sensitivities out of the way and at a pretty untouchable point in her career, Feinstein’s tough talk could turn into action that cements her status as a valuable ally for those wanting to get to the bottom of both the Benghazi and Petraeus scandals — even if they wind up intersecting.
Feinstein has also called for a who-knew-what-when investigation into the Petraeus affair, a probe which could reveal that damaging news of the scandal was withheld pre-election — either by Attorney General Eric Holder not telling the president, or the president having been told after all but deciding to sit on it until Election Day.
Whatever that investigation reveals, it’s a fact that the heads of the congressional intelligence committees first found out about the scandal when reporters began calling them for comment Friday — notification that’s required by law when operational security may have been compromised.
“It’s been like peeling an onion,” Feinstein said Monday. “Every day, another peel comes off, and you see a whole new dimension to this.”
It’s easy to write off this public show of concern and disgust for procedures not followed as an act, but Republicans also regard the current composition of the Senate and House Intelligence committees to be the most bipartisan, cooperative intel panels in a long time.
“Especially those that are in charge of overseeing this — the chairmen and ranking members — they do not want to be anywhere near a cover-up,” House Intelligence Committee member Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told PJM during the pre-election Benghazi furor.
Nunes predicted at the time that especially once the campaigning was out of the way, more Democrats would come out to support the Benghazi probe.
“The last thing any of us want to do is throw away the good bipartisanship we’ve built up over last two years,” he said of the intelligence committees.
– ancient Californian running the country.
Feinstein is a Clinton Democrat. Do the math.
In Israel there is a saying, ‘sach ha’kol’, which means ‘at the end of it all’.
The moment I saw Feinstein on FOX News, as she veered back and forth between her thoughts on Benghazigate – not unlike a ping pong – this blogger’s antenna went up. The thought process is best understood, by remembering where she comes from – the loony left coast, and the hob nobbers she rubs elbows with, the likes of Clinton & Obama surrogates.
Therefore, how much truth telling will she elicit? – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/11/13/covering-up-benghazigate-exquisite-political-timing-sacrificing-a-cia-director-to-boot-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
Time will tell.
We in the USA have a song called the hokey pokey:
“Put your left foot in
Pull your left foot out
Put your left foot in
And shake it all about
You do the hokey pokey and
You turn yourself around
That’s what it’s all about!”
Feinstein is doing pretty much the political hokey pokey. She’s a poseur.
If she does end up helping the truth to come out, it will be a turning point in the politics of the nation, if not the world, because the truth should sink Obama and his Administration (which is why I strongly doubt she will do much good for the truth after all). The key point has been well known to the observant since the day after the benghazi attack, and the first reports informed us they were by heavily-armed militants, determined to overrun and kill, in a wave of attacks spanning over 7 hours and two attack sites — not by “spontaneous demonstrators”. That next day, September 12th, I also saw on Fox news the short film clip of Muslims “finding” the body of Ambassador Stevens — and immediately saw they were not yelling “Allahu akhbar” in joy of finding him alive, as later reported, but in triumphant display of his dead body, like hunters displaying their kill, posing its dead face for the camera (only these were indeed not the killers, they were just men whose religion has made them all less than manful, so that their “triumph” in dragging Stevens’s face up to the camera, to show his death mask, was mere pathetic, savage posturing on their part). No, that key reality was already knowable, to anyone who wanted to accept it, on September 12th. The Petraeus “scandal” is just a complex lie, to distract from Obama’s utter failure to even tell what was the plain truth to the public and the world, and his obstinate refusal to say ANYTHING of real truth to this day: This was an attack by Islamic terrorists at war with the United States (AT WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES), on the anniversary of a similar attack by that same enemy.
PS — With respect to your link, I would call the firing of Petraeus, not “exquisite political timing”, but “blatant, obvious, inept timing”.
She has nothing to lose, and much to gain. A lasting self-respect for having done her part to root out the corruption at the core of the Administration. I just hope she is realistic enough to have considered that the source is the Oval Office, that Obama will take the fall, that Hillary is forevermore toast, and that it will take the Democrat Party years to recover.
Bingo! We have a winner. Hildabeast is the biggest threat to Mooshell’s run in ’16. The current Resident would much rather shove Hillary under the bus than Petreaus. If you doubt for a moment the left isn’t thinking about Mooshell running you’re fooling yourselves, they love “dynasties” and “royalty”.
I’m betting the general was told to play ball or else get outed for “playing ball” and he pushed the eject/self destruct button to salvage some semblance of honor.
Mooshell, the original angry black woman, the fatazz who dictates what everyone else can eat, our own Marie Antoinette, running for President, and having a prayer of winning? It would take someone who is an imbecile, delusional, or a Democrat to believe that. But I repeat myself.
They should get a copy of the trip report BEFORE bringing in Petraeus, then ask him to read it and swear if it’s the same as he submitted.
Good thinking.
I don’t think these democrats and their terrorist allies will ever be held to account.
The only people that can afford to pursue the truth are the ones that Zero hasn’t dug-up dirt on, yet. Imagine how much FBI info he has on every democrat anywhere near him- Napalitano, Panneta, Clinton, etc. It’s a Chicago thang.
There is not one single, honorable, patriotic Democrat in the whole Party. Not a one.
Liars, cheaters and whores. F**k them all.
Unlike her California senatorial counterpart, Senator Feinstein has generally been a serious person, a legislator of substance. I hope that she does not betray that reputation in the upcoming hearings.
Lady Fi is a scourge upon this country and this state, as are Boxer, Pelosi, Waxman and the rest of the lefty loons. Thanks to all of them this state and the United States of America are failing under constant lies and worse, cheating during elections to maintain power. Let me state I have just about the same feeling about the Republicans, except for the out and out cheating during elections.
She only has about three hours per year before she falls back asleep in her crypt.
As long as Hairy Reed is majority leader, the senate is a tomb.
A farce. An absolute farce. The Democrats own it. Feinstein do the right thing?! Come on – by whom and for whom. She has made an absolute fortune being a Senator. Why jeopardize that. What on earth do you really think she wants to achieve. More blah blah blah – nothing.
Benghazi is a Democrat Party foreign policy success. Having worked as a poll watcher in the recent election the assumption by well meaning people like Bridget Johnson that any Democrat is interested in the truth is an absolute farce.
These are truths. The Muslim Brotherhood now controls Egypt. Their first foreign policy decision was to violate the Camp David accords by moving armored forces into the Sinai.
Libya is an Islamic anarchists dream. There is already plenty of speculation as to what the whole Benghazi thing is all about. Safe to say that Islamofacists decided that they no longer needed the US Ambassador around anymore and did not fear any repercussions – whether he was supplying them with arms and encouraging them to fight the Assads in Syria or not.
Hamas attacked IDF patrols over the weekend with anti-tank missiles and Israel has responded. There will now be war. IDF retaliation, the only thing reported so far, will allow Islamofacists to “legitimately” claim a state of war now exists along Israel’s borders. The Obama Administration will enshrine this at the UN, by immediately requesting that the Israelis stop their illegal attacks in Gaza. Thus establishing the causus beli for the Islamofacists to launch nuclear weapons against Israel sometime in the future.
The Democrat’s will continue to delegitimize and dissolve all US National Security organizations. The US Army is disintegrating before our eyes. The Navy the largest Democrat constituency in the Armed Forces, smug in its assumption that it can win WWII in the Pacific again, is useless. The Air Force has more drone pilots than fighter jocks and fewer and fewer planes. The Marine Corps, the last hold out, is about to be crushed in a flurry of political correctness. All of these organizations have contributed to their own demise and as designed are reflective of our democracy at large. It is not all their fault, but real leadership might have saved them.
The CIA has no mission and is focused exclusively on ladyparts. The FBI has not convicted a single white collar criminal from the banking industry. Homeland Security is a jobs program – potentially dangerous if you are tasked to guard the borders.
The State Department still does not understand what Islamofacism is? Oh, right! the religion of peace.
The NSA keeps subpoenaing Google to cover its own Patriot Act tracks for spying on Americans, but cannot read the email of the PLA.
We are a big country. The recent election was close – closer still if you deduct just the blatant fraud, not the soft fraud I witnessed. I remain optimistic about the future, but the Democrats, the Left, and unfortunately many “innocents” are going to suffer mightily first. We do not have to do anything. America is not the Soviet Union, never will be. But we will suffer the consequences of the imbecilic 1960s Leftists as they “realize” all their glory.
Just as the people of Warsaw in June 1939 did not foresee what October 1939 might look like. Most of us are not thinking about what March 2013 might look like.
The Supreme Being tries to remind us – witness Sandy. But as we all know – we are much smarter than any silly Supreme Being or pathetic religion, or some ridiculous history written by dead white males. The whole world can change very very quickly.
“I just want to be HAPPY!” she said. My explanation for the gender divide that truly decided the 2012 election.
“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.” – George Orwell.
Sorry gotta go, “Dancing with the Stars” is on tv and my dvr is full…
I don’t really care what her motives are; all that matters is that Petraeus will testify, and the Democrats won’t stop it because one of their own is asking.
He has to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, in order for his testimony to amount to anything. And you have to doubt he will, if it was this easy to get him to do it. Be ready for disappointment when he opens his mouth.
Good post. Pretty well sums it all up.
equally interesting is the sudden visibility of Jane Harman.
Containment is a strategy that also works within fracturing political parties.
Senator Feinstein is a Democrat first and an American only secondarily. She will betray the committee.
She’s 78 years old. Maybe a trickle of common decency has slipped from her liberal brain. Stranger things have happened. But I’m sure she will come to her partisan senses. The Boy Emperor must be shielded at all costs.
The Democrats always present the nation with a foil, who seems to be demanding the truth, and when it is all said and done, the foil, to great fanfare, lets us all know that there was nothing to see here. This time it is Diane Feinstein. If we are counting on her to get to the bottom of this, God help our military and God help us all.
Exactamundo, Frosty.
This is a slick but old trick. Co-opt the investigation so that you can exert some control over it, and produce a more congenial outcome.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Perhaps that 9/11 Commission really did look into the Clinton Administrations failures, heh? Just one example of many.
Gullible Conservatives will no doubt hold out hope.
Feinstein will do as she always does: pretend to be a hard ass then cover by misdirection, ridicule, and obfuscation. Usually the result is another defense contract for her husband. This woman is crooked and evil. Pure evil. She would sell her grand-daughter. Never forget it.
She will sell anyone even cut the throat of her own mother.She is certainly selling the country!
“She would sell her grand-daughter.” And ship her to the buyer COD! She is a hard, hard left corrupt commiecrat from the communist state of california. Empty posturing which she will use to block the real truth from ever coming out.
A horrible, horrible human being.
She will try to find out what happended, but not at the expense of Obama.
She will rationalize it that the nation could not handle the shock of the scandal and investigation of a black president.
She does not like conflict. She came to politcal prominance when a San Francisco Supervisor, Dan White, shot they mayor of San Francisco– George Moscone.
Although it was her springboard to national politics, word is it disturbed her greatly.
“She will try to find out what happended, but not at the expense of Obama.”
Yes, I think so, too. She’s a tired old leftist hack who will play the part to the bitter end. Her job will be to deflect all attention away from the truth that it was Obama himself who ordered the rescue teams to stand down from saving our ambassador and his heroic team in the Benghazi terror attack. She will, with the laborious assistance of her assorted aides, bend over backwards to cover that up. And then she will probably die of some mundane ailment a few months hence. And history will go on, and little note her for her “foreign affairs” *leadership*.
She got re-elected in CA because the Republican party has abandoned us. She will talk conservative and vote liberal every time. I don’t beleive a word this administration tells us. I take that back. He did say he would raise taxes on the rich? That means all of the middle class. He says its for those who make $250,000. How does he define the “middle class”?
This women is a “tojan horse” for obama and the libs. Just like justice roberts she will attempt to disguise her bias and twisted mind but in the end she is in the bag with the rest of these liars, thieves, thugs and leftits morons killing this great country.
Yes she is a trojan horse.What happened to the inquiry on the White House leaks?The truth will come but not because of Feinstein.No one should forget that she is a member of the party of the murderer Ted Kennedy,the deserter and perjurer Bill Clinton,the pathological liar Benghazi Barack.These are the values of the lady!If you want to know the truth,ask Vlad,the Chinese,the Mossad etc etc…This would be quicker and certainly cheaper!Just enjoy the show!
Not a snowball’s chance in hell will she do anything to discredit her “dear leader”.
“Is Feinstein an Ally for Benghazi Truth-Seekers?”
No. She knows exactly what the administration is doing and she doesn’t care. She has hers.
Breaking Up With the Mainstream Media!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpNqFrSZqbE&feature=player_embedded
Senator Feinstein is a loyal Democrat, but she is also the Chair of a important and still bipartisan Senate Committee that has been left out of the loop. I think she feels dis’d both personally and institutionally. In the end she well may go with her caucus but only after venting her displeasure and getting the facts or as much as can be released publicly on the record. I don’t think she will fold up to protect the White House. The President is now a lame duck and this means that he has to deal with a Senate where many in both parties have hopes for the 2016 cycle and dreams of being a presidential or vice presidential candidate. Sooner or later the uniquely high handed and amateurish Obama White House staff was going to get into trouble and dis’ing Diane and the Senate as an institution will provoke a push back. Finally, we all know that while the details may be kept under raps, we will be able to read the gist of the “secret” committee sessions the next day in the WaPo and The Hill and other political sources.
I’m wondering how well Barry’s Blue Wall will actually hold now. Those who needed to ride in on his coattails have done so. By 2014, association with him will be toxic waste. It is possible that the next few months will prove so damaging to the Democrat brand that they will desert him in droves, and be only too glad to vote to get rid of him.
It took almost exactly two years for Nixon to be forced to resign after claiming no White House involvement in Watergate; twenty years later it took just about a year for Clinton’s impeachment trial after the story broke of Monica’s involvement. Between 1998 and today, MSM complicity notwithstanding, the American people are far more cynical, and the speed of sharing information has increased exponentially. Benghazi, when combined with Fast and Furious, make the obstruction, perjury, and abuse of power crimes of Nixon and Clinton look like peccadillos by comparison.
If the Blue Wall, now that the election is over, finds there is sufficiently compelling evidence that it cannot propagate the lie that this is just some “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” and that it cannot pass this off as just much ado about private behavior, I think, I hope, I pray, that the vote to impeach is a supermajority, and that the vote to convict is at least 70.
And yes, that means senile old Uncle Joe, but he’s up to his hairplugs in it; if he doesn’t go down too, his political viability is toast.
Let’s hope Feinstein is up for it.