N.Y. Times serves up baloney on Benghazi
Hit-piece 'investigation' parrots
discredited talking points
TEL AVIV – An extensive New York Times investigation into the
Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack is filled with
misleading information, including details contradicted by the U.S. government, Benghazi victims and numerous other previous
news reports.
The report, entitled, “A Deadly
Mix in Benghazi,” was authored from Benghazi by Times writer
David D. Kirkpatrick.
Bringing back the Muhammad film
One of the main contentions of the
Times piece is that “contrary to claims by some members of Congress,” the Benghazi attack “was
fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.”
“There is no doubt that anger over
the video motivated many attackers,” continued the Times.
The New York Times article seeks
to link the Benghazi attack to protests planned
outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo.
Reads the Times piece: “[O]n Sept.
8, a popular Islamist preacher lit the fuse by screening a clip of the video on
the ultraconservative Egyptian satellite channel El Nas. American diplomats in Cairo raised the alarm in Washington about a growing backlash,
including calls for a protest outside their embassy.”
However, the Cairo
protest on Sept. 11 was announced days in advance as part of a movement to free
the so-called “blind sheik,” Omar Abdel-Rahman, held in the U.S. over the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing.
The State Department’s 39-page
Accountability Review Board report, or ARB, described a group acting to free
Rahman was involved in previous attacks against diplomatic facilities in
Benghazi.
The Times fails to report the
anti-U.S. protest movement outside the Cairo
embassy was a long-term project about freeing Rahman.
As far back as July 2012, Rahman’s
son, Abdallah Abdel Rahman, threatened to organize a protest at the U.S.
Embassy in Cairo
and detain the employees inside.
On the day of the Sept. 11, 2012,
protests in Cairo,
CNN’s Nic Robertson interviewed the son of Rahman, who described the protest as
being about freeing his father. No Muhammad film was mentioned. A big banner
calling for Rahman’s release can be seen as Robertson walked to the embassy
protests.
The Times claim the Benghazi
attack was fuelled by the anti-Muslim film also doesn’t jibe with an
independent investigation that reportedly found no mention of the film on
social media in Libya in the three days leading up to the attack.
A review of more than 4,000
postings was conducted by the leading social media monitoring firm Agincourt
Solutions, reportedly finding the first reference to the film was not detected
on social media until the day after the attack.
“From the data we have, it’s hard
for us to reach the conclusion that the consulate attack was motivated by the
movie. Nothing in the immediate picture – surrounding the attack in Libya –
suggests that,” Jeff Chapman, chief executive with Agincourt Solutions, told
Fox News.
The Times claim of popular
protests about the Muhammad film further may not hold up to logic. The U.S.
Special Mission was not a permanent facility, nor was its existence widely
known by the public in Libya.
Indeed, State’s ARB report on the Benghazi attack itself
documented the facility was set up secretively and without the knowledge of the
new Libyan government.
“Another key driver behind the
weak security platform in Benghazi was the decision to treat Benghazi as a
temporary, residential facility, not officially notified to the host
government, even though it was also a full-time office facility,” the report
states.
No al-Qaida in Libya?
Another main contention of the New
York Times article on Benghazi
is there was “no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups
had any role in the assault.”
However, the Times’ next statement
in effect contradicts that claim. The Times relates, “The attack was led,
instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power
and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi.”
Scores of news media reports
documented those “fighters” included al-Qaida groups among their ranks. Many of
those “fighters” were widely quoted in news media reports as fighting under the
al-Qaida banner.
The Times further claims, “Benghazi was not infiltrated
by Al Qaeda, but nonetheless contained grave local threats to American
interests.”
This contention is contradicted by
the U.S.
government, as WND first reported.
A Library of Congress report
detailed – one month before the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi
– how al-Qaida established a major base of operations in Libya in the
aftermath of the U.S.-NATO campaign that deposed Muammar Gadhafi and his
secular regime.
The report documented al-Qaida and
affiliated organizations were establishing terrorist training camps and pushing
Taliban-style Islamic law in Libya while the new, Western-backed Libyan
government incorporated jihadists into its militias.
The document named Benghazi as a new central
headquarters for al-Qaida activities.
“Al-Qaeda adherents in Libya used the
2011 Revolution to establish well-armed, well-trained, and combat-experienced
militias,” stated the congressional report.
The report also said a terrorist
released from the U.S. Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba became the leader of the al-Qaida-affiliate
Ansar Al-Sharia in Libya,
which espoused anti-Western ideology.
The Martyrs of 17 February
Brigade, which was hired by the State Department to protect the U.S. facility in Benghazi, operates under the Ansar-Al-Sharia
banner.
The document said scores of
Islamic extremists were freed from Libyan prison after the U.S.-supported
revolution in Libya.
The August 2012 document was
prepared by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress under an
inter-agency agreement with the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office’s
Irregular Warfare Support Program.
More al-Qaida and organized
extremist connections to the Benghazi attack were reported by the Daily Beast,
which confirmed an October 2012 Wall Street Journal report that fighters
affiliated with the Egypt-based, al-Qaida-linked Jamal Network group
participated in the Benghazi attack.
The Daily Beast’s Eli Lake
further quoted Seth Jones, associate director for the international security
and defense policy center at the RAND Corporation, about Jamal’s involvement.
“There was at least one member and
may have been more members from the Mohammed Jamal network on the compound for
the attack on Benghazi
along with members of Ansar al-Sharia and members of al Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb,” Jones stated.
‘Not pre-planned’
Another main claim by the Times
piece is that the Benghazi
attack was largely not premeditated, although the article allows some aspects
were loosely planned that day.
“Surveillance of the American
compound appears to have been underway at least 12 hours before the assault
started,” reported the Times. “The violence, though, also had spontaneous
elements. Anger at the video motivated the initial attack.”
The Times claims, “Looters and
arsonists, without any sign of a plan, were the ones who ravaged the compound
after the initial attack, according to more than a dozen Libyan witnesses as
well as many American officials who have viewed the footage from security
cameras.”
That description doesn’t fit with
the State ARB investigation into Benghazi.
The ARB described a
well-orchestrated attack with militants who seemingly had specific knowledge of
the compound. It doesn’t focus on looters but rather on “men armed with AK
rifles” who “started to destroy the living room contents and then approached
the safe area gate and started banging on it.”
In another detail bespeaking a
plan, the ARB states the intruders smoked up Villa C, likely to make breathing
so difficult that anyone inside the safe room where Ambassador Chris Stevens
was holed up would need to come out.
It may be difficult for keen
observers to swallow the Times’ claim of unplanned looters in light of events
that demonstrated the attackers knew the location of the nearby CIA annex, or
that they set up checkpoints, as they did, to ensure against the escape by
Americans inside the Special Mission.
Fox News reported late Florida
Rep. Bill Young said he spoke for 90 minutes with David Ubben, one of the
security agents severely injured in the assault. Young said the agent revealed
to him the intruders knew the exact location of Stevens’ safe room.
“He (Ubben) emphasized the fact
that it was a very, very military type of operation [in that] they had
knowledge of almost everything in the compound,” stated Young. “They knew where
the gasoline was, they knew where the generators were, they knew where the safe
room was, they knew more than they should have about that compound.”
New York Times
Richard R. Burt
was a correspondent for the
New York
Times, and is a director at the
Atlantic
Council of the United States
(think tank).
Note:
Linda Greenhouse
was a reporter or the
New York Times,
and is a director at the
American
Constitution Society.
Open
Society Foundations was a funder for the
Atlantic Council of the United
States (think tank), and the
American Constitution Society.
George
Soros is the founder & chairman for the
Open Society Foundations, a board member for the
International Crisis Group, the chairman
for the
Foundation to Promote Open
Society, and was a benefactor for the
NPR.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the
NPR, the
Brookings
Institution (think tank), the
New
America Foundation, and the
Committee
for Economic Development.
Leslie
H. Gelb was a board member for the
International
Crisis Group, and a reporter, columnist & op-ed page editor for the
New York Times.
Vivian Schiller
was the president & CEO for the
NPR,
and the SVP for the
NYTimes.com.
Henry
B. Schacht was an honorary trustee at the
Brookings Institution (think tank), and a director at the
New York Times Co.
Steven L. Rattner
was a trustee at the
Brookings
Institution (think tank), a director at the
New America Foundation, and an economic correspondent for the
New York Times.
Ellen
R. Marram is a trustee at the
Committee
for Economic Development, and a director at the
New York Times Co.
Jason P. DeParle
is a reporter for the
New York Times,
and married to
Nancy-Ann DeParle.
Nancy-Ann DeParle
is married to
Jason P. DeParle, and
was the White House health czar & deputy chief of staff for the
Barack Obama administration.
Crystal Nix Hines
was a reporter for the
New York Times,
Barack Obama’s law school friend, a fundraiser
for the
2008 Barack Obama presidential
campaign, and a fundraiser for the
2012
Barack Obama presidential campaign.
