Pat Benic/UPI/Newscom
President Obama raised eyebrows today with his press conference statement that he was unaware of news stories about Benghazi whistleblowers being blocked and even threatened by the State Department.
“I’m not familiar with this notion that anybody has been blocked from testifying,” said Obama to a question from Jessica Yellin of CNN. “So what I’ll do is I will find out what exactly you are referring to.”
The President must be the only person in Washington who has not heard about the Benghazi whistleblowers. Congress has been trying to gain access to the survivors of the terrorist attack for months. Indeed, during his congressional testimony on April 21, Secretary of State John Kerry promised them he would make it happen. Well, it turns out the opposite is the case.
As reported by Fox News yesterday, at least four career employees at the State Department and the CIA are ready to provide information to Congress that can give insights into what happened that fateful night at the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi.
This news is of huge importance. We have to understand the systemic and individual failures that led to the deaths of four brave Americans in order fix the problems.
However, considering that the survivors of Benghazi have been incommunicado for all these months, it is perhaps not surprising to learn that the potential whistleblowers are allegedly being threatened with career-ending consequences if they speak.
Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official and Republican counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been retained by one of the State Department employees. Toensing told Fox News that her client and some of the others have been informed that talking could lead to retirement or an end to promotions. “I’m not talking generally, I’m talking specifically about Benghazi—that people have been threatened,” Toensing said in an interview Monday. “And not just the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA.”
At every step of the way, the Obama Administration has been obfuscating the facts of the September 11 terrorist attack, misleading the public, dragging its feet, and—according to the report released by five House committees last week—trying to whitewash its own security and intelligence failures. Expect fireworks when the whistleblowers finally do get to tell their stories.
