Former Obama National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor dropped a mini-bombshell on Fox last night. We’ve already gone over his surfer boy treatment of the politicizing of the terrorist attack that left four Americans dead.
During the same interview, Vietor disclosed a fact that up to now had been elusive: Where was President Barack Obama on the night of the Benghazi attack? Vietor did not disclose where Obama was, but he did disclose where Obama was not.
Vietor tells Fox’s Bret Baier that he, Vietor, was in the White House Situation Room during the assault. Baier asks Vietor a straightforward question: “Where was the president?”
Vietor responds, “In the White House,” before he dismisses the notion that the White House could tell what was happening from the real-time video feed provided to it by a drone orbiting over the scene in Benghazi.
Baier asks again, “Where was the president?”
Vietor responds, “In the White House.”
Baier: “He wasn’t in the Situation Room?”
Vietor dodges: “At what point in the evening?”
Baier asks, “At any point in the evening.”
Vietor refuses to place President Obama at any specific place in the White House, but allows that the president was not in the Situation Room, where the video feed and other information from the ongoing battle were being gathered and examined.
President Obama practically posed for the iconic photo that was taken in the Situation Room during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, three years ago today. That photo showed an image that the president wanted broadcast: That he was in charge when bin Laden was eliminated.
There is no such photo from the night of the Benghazi attack because Barack Obama was elsewhere, doing something else, while the assault unfolded and four Americans died.
At 10 p.m. on the night of the attack, Obama emerged from whatever he was doing to speak with then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by phone.
Eight minutes after that, the State Department released a statement that is no longer on its website, but has been preserved by the New York Times. That statement links the YouTube video to the ongoing coordinated terrorist attack in Benghazi.
I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on our mission in Benghazi today. As we work to secure our personnel and facilities, we have confirmed that one of our State Department officers was killed. We are heartbroken by this terrible loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and those who have suffered in this attack.
This evening, I called Libyan President Magariaf to coordinate additional support to protect Americans in Libya. President Magariaf expressed his condemnation and condolences and pledged his government’s full cooperation.
Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.
In light of the events of today, the United States government is working with partner countries around the world to protect our personnel, our missions, and American citizens worldwide.
Emphasis added.
Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had motive and opportunity to start blaming anything but their own policies and their own decisions for Benghazi as quickly as possible, as I’ll explain on the next page.
Obama had just finished his party’s nominating convention having every speaker stand up and say some version of “Osama bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is on the run.” The assault in Benghazi threatened to destroy his foreign policy talking points just weeks before the election. He had not even bothered to take command in the Situation Room during the attack. Leon Panetta, secretary of Defense at the time, has testified that he only had one briefing with Obama during the attack and then did not hear from the White House at all afterward. That conversation was at 5 p.m. Washington time. The battle raged on for about nine hours after that.
President Obama never even called to ask how the battle was progressing, according to Panetta.
Hillary Clinton placed Ambassador Chris Stevens in Libya. She kept the barely defended facility in Benghazi open despite the deteriorating security situation there. Ansar al-Sharia — al Qaeda — was on the rise. Stevens had reported seeing the black flag flying on government buildings in the city. Clinton and Obama had made the decision to have the United States lead Libya’s civil war “from behind,” and Clinton’s top staff had made a series of decisions that left the facility in Benghazi open and exposed even after a series of terrorist attacks had driven out the Red Cross and the British.
With the deaths of four Americans on their hands, what did they do?
The State Department’s first response, after a conversation between the secretary of State and the president of the United States during the battle, was to begin blaming a YouTube video.
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