Blumenthal, Benghazi And The Difference It Makes

Dick Blumenthal, the nation’s first full time consumer protection senator, has now weighed in on merchants who “may be selling lower quality items produced specifically for outlet stores without properly informing consumers,” according to a Philadelphia television station.

The Senator has asked the Federal Trade Commission to examine claims that merchants have misled consumers in their ads. “There’s a lot of evidence,” Blumenthal breathlessly told the television consumer protection watchdog in Philadelphia, “that people shopping at outlet malls or at outlet establishments have no idea that goods and merchandise are made specifically for outlet malls.”

Naturally, preventive legislation is needed.

On foreign policy issues of national importance, Benghazi for instance, the senator has been less voluble. But that is because Mr. Blumenthal is not interested in regulating foreign affairs – just outlet malls. In fact, political consumers may be unaware that U.S. Congresspersons generally are uninterested in regulating foreign policy or budgets or administration officials who deprive Congress of the data the greatest deliberative body on earth needs to satisfy its Constitutional obligations or, of equal importance, its own ungovernable appetite for regulating everything that moves and breathes outside Congressional precincts. Mr. Blumenthal’s own Congressional site carries only a brief pro forma, seven line expression of “outrage and sadness” issued the day after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

And you thought you sent your senator to Washington to hold responsible high administration officials who failed to protect or come to the aid of an ambassador to Libya murdered by – dare it be said? – Islamic terrorists.

Silly you.

In High School, your civics text – if you had the advantage of a civics text – mentioned a division of powers as a check on presidential presumption. The Constitution, an ancient but never-the-less useful document dating from 1787, invests the President with war powers and assigns to Congress auxiliary powers that also shape foreign policy. Constitutionally, Congress is the voice of conscience perched on the shoulder of any president who has Napoleonic ambitions.

Chris Stevens, the ambassador murdered in Libya by Islamic terrorists, was the personal representative of the President of the United States, as are all ambassadors.

Following the murder of the personal representative of President Barack Obama and the brave military personnel who came to his aid -- Sean Smith and two Navy Seals, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, all slaughtered by militant Al-Qaida connected terrorists -- members of the administration fanned out to spread the lie that those who led the assault on the annex in Benghazi were “protestors” agitated by a film that had insulted, peace be upon him, the prophet Muhammad.

Persistent investigations by oversight Congressional committees and a cache of e-mails  secured by Judicial Watch on a Freedom of Information demand has now shown that the Obama/Rice stage show was an elaborate pantomime designed to convey the message during a presidential campaign that Mr. Obama had dealt a death blow to Al-Qaida. As such, the deception was much more wicked – and deadly – than the ads that recently have excited the interest of Mr. Blumenthal.

Among the 41 documents pried loose from the Obama administration, is an e-mail from deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes that presents to then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice four goals that were to be accomplished during Ms. Rice’s numerous television appearances days after militant Islamic terrorists murdered the ambassador and other Americans in Benghazi.

According to the e-mail, Ms. Rice was to: “… convey that the United States is doing everything that we can to protect our people and facilities abroad; To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy; To show that we will be resolute in bringing people who harm Americans to justice, and standing steadfast through these protests; To reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.”

Only the last goal had been accomplished – temporarily – in the weeks following the terrorist attack. The attack on the U.S. Consulate did not arise from a spontaneous protest; it was not rooted in an internet video; the successful assault did point to a broader policy failure; the United States was and remains irresolute in bringing to justice people who harm Americans, particularly if they are associated with the Obama administration; and Mr. Obama’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges – in Libya, Syria, Egypt, Iran and, most recently, Russia -- is very much in question.

Mr. Blumenthal, however, appears to be blithely unconcerned with the foreign policy mishaps of the Obama administration, preferring to focus his attention on misleading representations issued by Mall vendors. Unless he refocuses his attention pronto, history will hit him like a speeding passenger train. Mr. Blumenthal lately has devoted some of his attention to passenger trains.

Obama’s Connecticut Praetorian Guard

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” -- George Orwell

George Orwell, like Jonathan Swift before him, is one of those large writers who simply straddle ideological categories. He was fortunate enough – or unfortunate enough, depending on one’s point of view – to have been born in what the ancient Chinese call “interesting times,” the bloody and totalitarian 20th century.

The revolutionist speaking truth to power often appears among us with a rope braided by the reigning powers draped about his neck. He steps towards gallows with a wan smile on his face.

Such was the case with Gregory Hicks, the friend and compatriot of slain Ambassador Christopher Stevens who, testifying before Congress, said he was stunned and embarrassed when he first heard U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice attribute the attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi to a crowd of protestors agitated by a video that defamed Mohammed. One expects that Mr. Hick’s many years of honorable service will soon crash on the rocks of modern politics.
 

The Obama administration had hoped to put the Benghazi affair to bed early, and then direct witnesses to the murder of the Libyan ambassador showed up at the Congressional doorstep. The unwelcomed visitations were followed by an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal involving unaccountable delays of Tea Party applications for tax exempt status, which in turn was followed by yet another scandal involving phone taps placed by Eric Holder’s Department of Justice (DOJ) on Associated Press reporters. The IRS has since apologized for having politicized what should have been a routine review of applications.

Of the three scandals, only the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups for punitive treatment and the overbroad tapping of AP phone lines have been unreservedly condemned by Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional delegation. The condemnations by Connecticut Congresspersons of the IRS conform to a script adopted by the Obama administration, which unreservedly denounced what appeared to be an IRS enemies' list drawn up by as yet unknown persons who perhaps had been overstimulated by Mr. Obama’s frequently expressed condemnations of Tea Party Patriots.           

U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, for more than 20 years Connecticut’s crusading attorney general, was outraged at the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups for federal tax scrutiny and “deeply troubled” concerning reports that the DOJ had collected phone records from the Associated Press. U.S. Senator Chis Murphy’s reliance on the DOJ received a blow and he hopes “the leadership there is working steadfastly” to accomplish its mission. U.S. Representative Elizabeth Esty ventured further out than either of the state’s senators; the IRS allegations, she thought, “should concern all Americans. It’s completely unacceptable for the IRS to target groups or individuals based on their political views. A full Congressional investigation is warranted, and anyone who acted inappropriately or abused power must be held fully accountable.” U.S. Representative John Larson, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee that oversees the IRS, thought the IRS action were “absolutely inexcusable." U.S. Rep Rosa DeLauro entertained the hope “that those who participated in inappropriate activities are held fully accountable,” and U.S. Representative Joe Courtney was moved to tweet, “The actions taken by the IRS should alarm all Americans. A full investigation is warranted.”

The person in charge of the IRS unit that so disappointed Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation, it should be mentioned, was given a promotion of sorts; she has been put in charge of the many hundreds of workers in the IRS who, as part of the implementation of Obamacare, will be rifling through health care records in an attempt to weed out frauds. Provided the frauds are not conservative, few insuperable obstacles may be put in their way – if the IRS processes are unreformed.
 

ABC News was among the first mainstream news outlets to report that “the Internal Revenue Service official in charge of overseeing tax-exempt organizations — an operation now under fire for targeting Tea Party groups and other right-wing entities — is now in charge of IRS accounting for President Obama’s health-care overhaul initiative, or Obamacare. Sarah Hall Ingram oversaw tax-exempt organizations for the IRS from 2009 to 2012. The misdeeds allegedly occurred at the IRS from 2010 to 2012.”

It is not known at this point how many of the distressed members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation oppose Mr. Obama’s stunningly inept appointment or what form their opposition to the appointment of Ms. Ingrahm might take. While Peter Weber of The Week has speculated that Ms. Ingram’s head may roll, it is a safe bet that it will not land in Mr. Blumenthal’s lap. Both Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Murphy, since their fairly recent elevations to the U.S. Senate, have been stout supporters of all things Obama, and the entire Connecticut Congressional delegation is part of the vast Beltway Praetorian Guard charged with protecting the president’s idiocies.

 

Obama Administration Hit With A Triple Whammy

While President Barack Obama was doubling down on his discredited narrative concerning the attack by terrorists on the Benghazi consulate, in the course of which Mr. Obama’s personal minister – that is what an ambassador is; the personal minister of the president – was murdered, it was revealed that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had targeted Tea Party groups for what may turn out to be punitive audits.

National Public Radio briefly reported that when the president was asked a question concerning “reports that the IRS targeted organizations that identified themselves as ‘tea party’ or ‘patriot groups and gave their applications for tax-exempt status extra reviews, Obama said:

"’This is pretty straightforward. ... If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported ... and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that's outrageous and there's no place for it.’ Those responsible, he said, will ‘be held fully accountable.’”

Mr. Obama was asked about the audits during a press conference that featured British Prime Minister David Cameron. The president’s initial response, the promise of a severe dressing down of the IRS, passed muster with the increasing band of journalists who thought Mr. Obama’s handing of the Benghazi assault was seriously deficient. Even Fox News, unrelenting on Benghazi, slathered the president with commendations. Brit Hume of Fox News generously allowed the president’s initial response was the right one.

An explanation offered by IRS tax-exempt chief Lois Lerner quickly came under fire. Ms. Lerner attributed the possible “outrageous” conduct to “line people” in Cincinnati, Ohio who had “used names like Tea Party or Patriots” as criteria for selecting tax-exempt applications for further scrutiny.

Chairman of Americans for Limited Government Howard Rich noted in a piece written for Forbes Magazine that Ms. Lerner pointedly did not mention that “the IRS’ Cincinnati office is the central location for all tax-exempt application evaluations – meaning the discrimination that took place there “wasn’t an isolated, dumb incident by some random field office,” as The Washington Post concisely noted. In other words this was no error: It was official policy – which directly contradicts testimony previously provided by the agency’s leadership to Congressional investigators.”

A Reuters report noted, “When tax agents started singling out non-profit groups for extra scrutiny in 2010, they looked at first only for key words such as 'Tea Party,' but later they focused on criticisms by groups of ‘how the country is being run’ …  At one point, the agents chose to screen applications from groups focused on making ‘America a better place to live.”  Other IRS search terms included: “Government spending”, “Government debt, or taxes.” On Jan, 25, 2012, the criteria for flagging suspect groups was changed to "political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform/movement,’ according to an advance copy of a report done by Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), which notes that agency leadership was made aware of the discrimination nearly two years ago, who said nothing – and clearly had no plans to alert the public to what had happened.

On ABC This Week, columnist George Will remarked that the country had just celebrated – if that is the proper word – the 40^th anniversary of the Watergate summer and read from then President Richard Nixon impeachment records: “He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.”

Finally, shortly after the possible “outrageous” conduct of the IRS towards the much maligned Tea Party groups knocked the Obama administration on its noggin, a third shoe fell. The Justice Department, led by Fast and Furious Eric Holder, had wiretapped the phone lines of more than a hundred Associated Press reporters in an attempt to uncover the source of a leak of top secret information. Mr. Holder, who had recused himself from investigating the event, explained in a press conference that the taps were justified because of the nature of the leak.

This is not theway to gain friends and influence reporters among the national media. To judge from subsequent media availabilities in which presidential spokesman Jay Carney was relentlessly grilled, some worm had turned in the breast of reporters, and the Obama administration, which tends to treat words as incantations that magically alter objective reality, was playing hardball defense.

Benghazi Goes Mainstream

A dung beetle would strain himself pushing around a misdirection so massive.

Even Jonathan Karl of ABC News has taken notice, and he has nothing kind to say about Obama administration “talking points” on Benghazi. Mr. Karl, it should be said, is not part of the putative conservative conspiracy against progressive Democrats.

Concerning the CIA “talking points” that then Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice pushed on several news outlets shortly after the American Consulate was overrun and destroyed by Islamic terrorists, Mr. Karl notes that “ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.”

According to Mr. Karl, the initial CIA report noted that “The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qaeda in Benghazi and eastern Libya.  These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has (sic) previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.”

This intelligence displeased State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland who, perhaps feeling pressure from higher-ups in the Obama administration, objected to the inclusion of such intelligence because such inconvenient truths, as she wrote in an email to officials at the White House “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either?”

In a final revision, the offending paragraph was entirely deleted.

The CIA’s first draft had noted that the attack on the embassy appeared to be “spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo” – later found to be an incorrect assessment -- but pointedly noted as well, “That being said, we do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qaeda participated in the attack.” The first draft specifically identified the al Qaeda-affiliated group as Ansar al-Sharia, occasioning yet another objection from the State Department’s Ms. Nuland, who did not want to “prejudice the investigation” by the mention of specific terrorist groups.

Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes concurred and dispatched an email stressing that State Department’s concerns needed to be addressed: “We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation.  We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.”

What no one will say about the several visions and revisions of a CIA document that certainly was more complete and accurate than the truncated final product at last given the nod at Foggy Bottom is this: The procrustean editing was necessary because a more accurate depiction of true events at Benghazi did not support presidential campaign election rhetoric which suggested falsely that al-Qaeda had been sufficiently degraded by Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Most of the hard data and all of the insufficient explanations seem to point a finger in that direction. And it now becomes possible to ask: Is it possible that an embassy and the lives of those in it were put at risk because a president did not want his fictional campaign narrative to be overthrown by the truth?

In the days following the murderous assault on the American consulate in Benghazi by an invigorated and deadly al-Qaeda connected offshoot, presidential spokesman Jay Carney rose to a defense of the misleading remarks made by Ms. Rice at several media venues. Apparently not under oath, he told reporters at the White House press briefing on November 28, 2012:

“Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened. The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”

Mary McCarthy once said of Lillian Hellman that every word she spoke was a lie, including “and” and “but.” That may more appropriately have been said about Jay Carnie’s media fish bait.

Mr. Karl’s report may be the first indication that, at least on Benghazi, mainstream reporters and commentator have had their fill of worms.

The Benghazi Cover-up, And Why It matters

“Terrible. I cry every night. I don't sleep at night. I need answers… Why was there no security for him? When they were supposed to have security and the security that they did have was called back. It just -- things do not add up and I'm just told lies.” So said Pat Smith, the mother of Sean Smith, a State Department information officer, one of four Americans murdered in Benghazi. The enduring agony of Mrs. Smith recalls the advice given by the blind prophet Tiresias to an obdurate King Creon in Sophocles’ “Antigone.”

Self-will must bear the guilt of stubbornness.

Yield to the dead, and outrage not a corpse

So long as the truth is scorned, Ambassador Chris Stevens and the brave people who died with him at the consulate in Benghazi will not be quiet in their graves. Honor must have a voice. The shattering truth about Benghazi will be told; blood will tell it. Whether the telling will change much is quite a different question. Power does have its privileges, and the Obama administration, in an attempt to subvert the truth, has buried it  behind a literal wall of obfuscation.

The recent testimony of three direct witnesses before a Congressional committee, as well as prior news accounts of the assault by terrorists on the consulate in Benghazi, utterly destroys the order of operative assumptions churned out by the Obama administration, then in a campaign mode, before, during and after the murderous assault.

Even today, the Obama administration insists on the following discredited narrative: 1) Early real-time reports indicated that the assault on the consulate was a spinoff of a protest occasioned by a video that defamed the prophet Mohammed; 2) As the administration gained more access to accurate information, it abandoned an earlier view that Al-Qaida elements were not involved in the assault.

The truth is just the opposite. The earliest report – indeed, the very last words of Ambassador Stevens to his second in command, “Greg Hicks, who testified recently before a Congressional panel] we are under attack” – indicated right from the get-go that the embassy was under assault. No early on the spot report mentions a protest.

Even before the assaults had ended, intelligence officials had concluded, according to a report in the Weekly Standard written by Steven Hayes, “that al Qaeda-linked terrorists were involved. Senior administration officials, however, sought to obscure the emerging picture and downplay the significance of attacks that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. The frantic process that produced the changes to the talking points took place over a 24-hour period just one day before Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, made her now-famous appearances on the Sunday television talk shows. The discussions involved senior officials from the State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the White House.”

Mr. Hayes’ report includes reproductions of two critical e-mails not previously made available to the general public.

The Weekly Standard story shows two revisions to an initial e-mail that provided the foundation of the Obama administration “talking points” on the Benghazi assaults.

An early cable sent by the CIA station chief in Libya on September 12, immediately after the attack on the consulate on September 11, a propitious day for terrorists, clearly stated that U.S. facilities in Benghazi had come under terrorist attack. It was this intelligence – very inconvenient to an administration that was in the process of insisting during a presidential campaign that the effectiveness of  Al-Qaida had been degraded “that top Obama officials would work so hard to obscure,” according to the Weekly Standard report: “The frantic process that produced the changes to the talking points took place over a 24-hour period just one day before Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, made her now-famous appearances on the Sunday television talk shows. The discussions involved senior officials from the State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the White House.”

The laundering of accurate information – indeed, the tailoring of data to make the talking points conform to an Obama campaign procrustean bed – began after
Democrat Dutch Ruppersburger, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, requested unclassified guidance on what members of Congress could say in public comments on the assaults.

An initial draft prepared by the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis asserted that the U.S. Government “know[s] that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda participated in the attack.” The same draft noted that press reports “linked the attack to Ansar al Sharia. The group has since released a statement that its leadership did not order the attacks, but did not deny that some of its members were involved.”

This first draft, prepared in response to Mr. Ruppersburger request and widely distributed internally for comment at 11:15 a.m. on Friday, September 14, (Version 1) was itself subject to revision (Version 2).

According to The Weekly Standard report: “This initial [Version 1] CIA draft included the assertion that the U.S. government ‘knows[s] that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qaeda participated in the attack.’ That draft also noted that press reports ‘linked the attack to Ansar al Sharia. The group has since released a statement that its leadership did not order the attacks, but did not deny that some of its members were involved.’ Ansar al Sharia, the CIA draft continued, aims to spread sharia law in Libya and ‘emphasizes the need for jihad.’ The agency draft also raised the prospect that the facilities had been the subject of jihadist surveillance and offered a reminder that in the previous six months there had been ‘at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy.’”

A second [Version 2] CIA amended draft provided more information concerning the jihadist threat in both Egypt and Libya: “On 10 September we warned of social media reports calling for a demonstration in front of the [Cairo] Embassy and that jihadists were threatening to break into the Embassy… The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al Qaeda in Benghazi and Libya.” Tellingly, the second draft no longer specified “Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda” but mentioned only “Islamic extremists.” And the mention of “attacks” in the first more accurate draft was changed to “demonstrations.”

An hour after the amended version was distributed to officials in the interagency vetting process, an official identified in the official House report only as a “senior State Department official” raised “serious concerns” about the draft. The senior official, since identified as Victoria Nuland, was concerned that members of Congress might use the talking points to assail the State Department for “not paying attention to Agency warnings.”

Addressing Ms. Nuland’s concerns, the CIA made some minor changes and cut all references to Ansar al Sharia. But Ms. Nuland was still not appeased.  She advised that the changes did not “resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership.” Her unnamed superiors, Ms. Nuland, wrote, were unhappy.

“In an attempt to address those concerns,” according to The Standard report, “CIA officials made minor tweaks. But in a follow-up email at 9:24 p.m., Nuland wrote that the problem remained and that her superiors—she did not say which ones—were unhappy. Moments later, according to the House report, ‘White House officials responded by stating that the State Department’s concerns would have to be taken into account.’ One official—Ben Rhodes, The Weekly Standard is told, a top adviser to President Obama on national security and foreign policy—further advised the group that the issues would be resolved in a meeting of top administration officials the following morning at the White House.”

The final snipping of the initial and more accurate CIA report fell to deputy director of the CIA Mike Morell, who made broad changes to the draft, according to sources cited in The Standard report: “Morrell cut all or parts of four paragraphs of the six-paragraph talking points—148 of its 248 words. Gone were the reference to ‘Islamic extremists,’ the reminders of agency warnings about al Qaeda in Libya, the reference to ‘jihadists’ in Cairo, the mention of possible surveillance of the facility in Benghazi, and the report of five previous attacks on foreign interests.”

In a series of revisions, the truth was rung out of the data available to the Obama administration. It was left to the hapless Susan Rice to present the limbless, truncated version of events to the general public in a series of television appearances, during the course of which it was stressed that the attack on the consulate and the murder of Ambassador Stevens and other American defenders of the consulate was inspired by a video that had enraged protestors.

For anyone who has bothered to examine the data now available, this convenient fiction, serviceable to the Obama administration as campaign filler, is more than preposterous; it is the wall of misinformation behind which Ambassador Stevens and other brave American yet lie, immured and silent.         

Journalists Fiddle While Benghazi Burns

It would be a disgrace to journalism in Connecticut if questions concerning the murder of a U.S. ambassador attached to the consulate in Benghazi were not put to all the members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation, preferably before Connecticut voters march to the polls to decide who among the candidates for Congress this year are best fitted to represent them.

Among candidates who may find themselves in Congress after November has come and gone are Representatives John Larson and Rosa DeLauro, both of whom occupy safe districts that, so it would seem, likely will not fall to Republicans. Other Congressional seats are more competitive. On the Democratic side in the U.S. House, incumbent U.S. Representatives Joe Courtney in the 2^nd District and Jim Himes in the 4^th District are defending their seats against Republicans Paul Formica and Steve Obsitnik. The 5^th District race, an open seat, pits Democrat Elizabeth Esty against Republican Andrew Roraback and could go either way. In the U.S. Senate race, current Democratic U.S. Representative Chris Murphy has a slight edge over Republican Linda McMahon.

The attack on the consulate in Libya has been a tar baby for President Barrack Obama, largely because the president and members of his administration took the view immediately following attacks by terrorists associated with al-Qaida in the African Maghreb that the murderous assault on U.S. Ambassador Ted Stevens and his much reduced band of security defenders sprang from a spontaneous protest against an amateurish film trailer defaming the prophet Mohammed. Within a short time of the assault, it became clear there was no protest near the consulate during an attack that lasted several hours. The security force protecting the consulate had earlier been reduced after assaults on the British ambassador.An earlier attack destroyed part of perimeter wall surrounding the consulate, and thus far no one in the Obama administration has sufficiently accounted for the reduction in security staff prior to 9/11, a date often exploited by al-Qaida terrorists.

Had Sherlock Holmes been on the scene, he would have reminded Dr. Watson, somewhat curtly, that the absence of a protest preceding the terrorist attack would strongly suggest that the ensuing mayhem could not have arisen spontaneously from a film that had enraged non-existent protesters. Elementary, my dear Watson.

In addition, the assault on the embassy appeared to be a well-coordinated attack on the ambassador and other brave military operatives two of whom, disregarding repeated orders from the CIA to “stand down,” rushed to the consulate from the annex in an attempt to extract Ambassador Stevens and ferry him to the annex where both, overcome by superior force, died.

The death of Navy Seal Tyrone Woods is morally nettlesome: Involved in two shootouts with terrorists at the consulate and the annex, Mr. Woods expired on the annex rooftop where he lay mortally injured, having repeatedly called for help that never materialized. Though the White House might have ordered an extraction of the ambassador-- help during the long ordealcould have been dispatched in a few hours – that order remained stillborn.

The attack on the consulate and the annex a mile distant was captured by two drones circling overhead, an evidentiary record sent in real time to Langley Air Force Base and members of the Obama administration. In view of persistent misrepresentations made by Obama officials who implausibly claimed that the murders of Ambassador Stevens others were connected with a film supposed to have sparked the assault, the drone record is a must-see.

Yet, if any journalist in Connecticut has asked Mr. Murphy, who sits on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, to intercede with the Obama administration and demand the release of the drones' real time record, his answer is not readily apparent from anything he has said in debates or on the campaign stump. The remaining members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation -- Mr. Larson, who serves on the Committee on Ways and Means, which controls tax writing, Mrs. DeLauro, who serves on the Committee on Appropriations, and Mr. Himes, who sits on the House Banking Committee, all positions or power and authority – have maintained a discreet and deadly silence as the Benghazi ordeal has progressed from political incompetence to what may be a cover-up of major proportions in an administration that early on had pledged itself to an extraordinary degree of transparency.

This suffocating silence rolling over the bodies of four Americans – every one a hero – stems either from inexcusable ignorance, mendacious incompetence or the overriding campaign concerns of the Obama administration. This winding shroud of silence smothering a cry of help never answered even now could be shattered by journalists in Connecticut and elsewhere who are not asleep at their keyboards.