{"id":41927,"date":"2014-04-21T12:15:07","date_gmt":"2014-04-21T11:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=41927"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:35:06","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:35:06","slug":"answer-offered-by-seymour-hersh-gets-little-public-attention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/04\/answer-offered-by-seymour-hersh-gets-little-public-attention\/","title":{"rendered":"Answer Offered By Seymour Hersh Gets Little Public Attention"},"content":{"rendered":"

Benghazi Mystery Explained!?!\u00a0 – Report from London links CIA Covert Op with Turkey, Syria\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cBenghazi\u201d is one of those kneejerk labels that rightwing folks<\/a> slap on a story they don\u2019t actually understand but have determined the \u201cright\u201d answer to anyway. It\u2019s a hot button<\/a>, not an argument, like the \u201cIRS scandal<\/a>,\u201d which the right is finally beginning to admit it got wrong because it ignored the law as written. \u201cFast and Furious\u201d is another of some two dozen<\/a>, mostly less-well-known rightwing thought substitutes<\/a> that aren\u2019t supported by persuasive evidence (meanwhile, the scripted herd of Obama-haters pretty much remains silent about real Obama administration scandals, like civilian murder by drone or massive global surveillance, the sorts of things that throw the left into denial<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The latest explanation of \u201cBenghazi\u201d comes from a non-partisan reporter, so that\u2019s a start, and it provides a credible framework for most of the anomalies associated with Benghazi. Even better, official spokes-people universally either refused to comment \u00a0on the story, or denied it flatly. So there\u2019s hope.<\/p>\n

\u201cBenghazi\u201d as a political story began with the Obama administration\u2019s strangely dishonest<\/a> early responses to the killing of four Americans in Libya<\/a> on September 11, 2012. The story got legs when Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney immediately falsified what the administration was saying, and was followed by just about every Republican who\u2019s talked about it since perpetuating one lie or another. Nobody has seemed interested in the truth, which especially makes sense from a Republican perspective, since \u201cBenghazi\u201d provided a handy rhetorical cudgel with which to pound the table and the president in order to appear \u201ctough.\u201d But why has the Obama administration remained so opaque, tossing out one red herring<\/a> after another for Republicans to gleefully chase, but still not offering a persuasive narative?<\/p>\n

Even when Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer<\/a> recently told Republicans to give up on Benghazi \u2013 \u201cthe public is now tired of it\u201d \u2013 he was still clinging to the party line that there was a real scandal to be found somewhere<\/a>, even though neither he nor anyone else<\/a> seemed to know what it could be even though they were sure it was \u201cworse than Watergate<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

If some truth about Benghazi is available, does anyone want to know?\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

So far, every report \u2013 from Congress<\/a> and the executive branch<\/a> and most media<\/a> \u2013 has come t5o conclusions with serious critiques<\/a> that fall short of scandal. Despite a variety of shortcomings and contradictions<\/a> in the administration\u2019s responses since September 2012, none of the investigations has produced a credible, fact-based explanation for the administration\u2019s obviously misleading response at the time or its apparent stonewalling since. This changed on April 6, 2014, when the London Review of Books published \u201cThe Red Line and the Rat Line,\u201d a long article by Seymour Hersh<\/a>, focusing on evidence that the sarin nerve gas used in Damascus in August 2013 was likely a false flag gassing<\/a> by rebel forces made to look like it was done by the Syrian government, in order to fool the United States into attacking Syria.<\/p>\n

Hersh\u2019s analysis of how Turkish and Syrian agents almost managed to dupe the United States into going to war based on a lie (they\u2019d seen that work before, right?), is the focus of his article, in which Benghazi is only a tangential element. The \u201cLibyan spring\u201d began in Benghazi and anyone who wanted to know could easily learn that the region was hot with jihadists among anti-government rebels.<\/p>\n

By early 2012, Libyan President Muammar al-Gaddfi had been overthrown and killed. The U.S. had established a foothold in the Libyan turmoil. The U.S. also had access to Gaddafi\u2019s significant weapons cache, which was largely unneeded in a Libya already awash in arms. But those weapons had other uses, one of which was to support the rebels in Syria trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Reportedly<\/a>, Turkey was already operating the Benghazi airport, primarily to fly humanitarian aid to Syria, but also to smuggle arms<\/a> to the rebels. Since the U.S. and Turkey both wanted Assad gone, the CIA helped set up a more extensive, covert supply line to those rebels. As Hersh reports:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe full\u00a0extent of US co-operation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in assisting the rebel opposition in Syria has yet to come to light. The Obama administration has never publicly admitted to its role in creating what the CIA calls a \u2018rat line\u2019, a back channel highway into Syria. The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida. (The DNI [Director of National Intelligence] spokesperson said: \u2018The idea that the United States was providing weapons from Libya to anyone is false.\u2019)\u201d\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Libyans attacked both the consulate and the CIA safe house in 2012 <\/strong><\/p>\n

CIA director David Petraeus apparently ran the rat line operation (his spokesperson denies there was such an operation) at the same time the FBI was investigating his extra-marital operations. (The CIA secretly coordinated its activities with Britain\u2019s MI6.) Coincidentally or not, Turkish media<\/a> reported an unscheduled meeting in Ankara between Petraeus and \u201chis Turkish counterpart on Sept. 2 in Istanbul during which the spy chiefs discussed the Syrian crisis and the Arab republic\u2019s possible transition process,\u201d without providing further detail other than noting that this was the CIA director\u2019s second visit to Ankara in six months. The Turkish report noted that a month earlier, U.S. and Turkish delegations met to discuss how \u201cto coordinate ongoing efforts to extend humanitarian aid to Syrians and to produce a common road map to shape a possible post-Baathist era. The meetings also raised the issue of the need for a smooth transition in Syria to avoid chaos in the country in the event that President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s government collapses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Equally circumstantial, and despite earlier security warnings, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, had come to Benghazi for a dinner meeting with the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin on September 11, 2014, , reportedly for a discussion of furthering weapons transfers<\/a>. The attacks started later, after 10 p.m., leaving the ambassador and three other Americans dead. Soon after that, the CIA role in the rat line operation was severed, but the operation continued with the shell companies that had been established (staffed with American mercenaries), and with British, Turkish, Saudi, and Qatari backing. Whether another covert American agency replaced the CIA is uncertain.<\/p>\n

Running for re-election in 2012, President Obama is unlikely to have wanted to disclose an ongoing covert operation, especially one which was politically dangerous, since it was arming Syrian rebels of all stripes, including jihadists, who were supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Worse for the Obama administration, the operation was arguably illegal, and at best controversial. According to Hersh:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe operation had not been disclosed at the time it was set up to the congressional intelligence committees and the congressional leadership, as required by law since the 1970s. The involvement of MI6 enabled the CIA to evade the law by classifying the mission as a liaison operation\u2026. for years there has been a recognised exception in the law that permits the CIA not to report liaison activity to Congress, which would otherwise be owed a finding. (All proposed CIA covert operations must be described in a written document, known as a \u2018finding\u2019, submitted to the senior leadership of Congress for approval.)\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

What\u2019s better than watching Republicans chase imaginary wild hares? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Even today, disclosure is limited by official secrecy. Much of Hersh\u2019s information comes from a \u201chighly classified annex\u201d to the January 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report on Benghazi. Distribution of the annex was limited to eight ranking Congresspersons and the staff who wrote it. Hersh says he has not seen the annex but has talked to one or more people who have. According to them, the only purpose of the Benghazi consulate was to provide cover for the nearby CIA station and its gun running operation.<\/p>\n

Given all that, what better tactic could the Obama campaign find in 2012 than letting Republicans make up and chase down imaginary conspiracy theories, only to come up empty time and again? \u00a0Yes, the Obama administration ended up looking suspicious: incompetent, disingenuous, or dishonest. But that\u2019s a political hit that seems far easier to take than what might have resulted from telling the truth in all its detail.<\/p>\n

The CIA\/gun-running aspect of Benghazi has been part of the story pretty much from the start, reinforced by the September 14 London Times<\/a> report of the arrival in a Turkish port of a 400 ton arms shipment on a Libyan ship, \u201cThe Victory<\/a>\u201d with a captain from Benghazi. The story was picked up<\/a> by Business Insider, which proceeded to run with it \u2013 in the wrong direction if you assume that the most important question was whether Ambassador Stevens knew there were Libyan arms going to Syria. At the same time, Paula Broadwell, by then known as the CIA director\u2019s mistress, publicly suggested that the attack on the CIA annex in Benghazi was meant to free Libyan prisoners<\/a> there, a story plant that has the feel of a deliberate wild goose chase (which of course the CIA \u201cadamantly denied<\/a>\u201d). By May 2013, Business Insider<\/a> was again focusing on the Libyan weapons freighter and quoting Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, on the same day that he announced he was \u201cconsidering\u201d a run for the presidency in 2016, telling CNN<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve actually always suspected that, although I have no evidence, that maybe we were facilitating arms leaving Libya going through Turkey into Syria\u2026. I never have quite understood the cover-up — if it was intentional or incompetence — but something went on. I mean, they had talking points that they were trying to make it out to be a movie when everybody seemed to be on the ground telling them it had nothing to do with a movie\u2026. Were they trying to obscure that there was an arms operation going on at the CIA annex? I\u2019m not sure exactly what was going on, but I think questions ought to be asked and answered.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Perhaps the clearest, and most vitriolic, expression of the Benghazi gun-running plot came from rising rightwing celebrity blogger Katie Kieffer of Minnesota, whose April 29, 2013, post began:\u00a0“Liberals don’t want honest Americans like you to have guns. Liberals just want to arm foreign rebels in crapshoot attempts to \u2018end global violence.\u2019 But liberals feign ignorance when the rebels they arm end up being criminals who kill innocent Americans like the late U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.”\u00a0In other words, the new rightwing Benghazi meme<\/a> came down to this: Obama gave weapons to some jihadists\u2013 some jihadists killed Americans in Benghazi\u00a0 \u00ad\u2013 therefore Obama is a murderer \u2013 and, no, we don\u2019t have any evidence for that.<\/p>\n

\u201cBenghazi\u201d outbursts continue, but most media ignore Hersh\u2019s claims <\/strong><\/p>\n

A year later, as some 70 demonstrators<\/a> prepared to protest Hillary Clinton\u2019s satellite appearance at a San Diego healthcare event, the current rightwing version of Benghazi goes like this:<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it not inconceivable to you that a Muslim terror attack,\u00a0on the 11th anniversary of 9\/11<\/a>, that resulted in the death of four Americans, would not only go uninvestigated but also\u00a0unpunished\u00a0as well? That is exactly what the Obama White House is doing. President Obama and then-Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton\u00a0allowed a Muslim terror attack\u00a0<\/a>against the US Consulate in Libya to occur unchallenged, while\u00a0they watched it in real-time on White House satellite feeds<\/a>.\u00a0Then Obama started firing<\/a>\u00a0staff to perpetuate the coverup.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The assertion that they \u201callowed a Muslim<\/a> terror attack\u201d derives from an anonymous claim that unnamed sources gave unspecified warnings that the consulate was in danger. The \u201csatellite feeds<\/a>\u201d refer an anonymous report that two drones, one replacing the first, observed the attacks and had the capability to send signals the White House could receive. The \u201cstaff firing\u201d reference is about the Petraeus resignation<\/a> after his extra-marital affair became public.<\/p>\n

Hersh\u2019s story has had little or no coverage<\/a> in mainstream media, which were pretty much of one mind that the sarin attacks of 2013 were the work of the Assad regime, because they bought the official story that no one else had the capability to do that. Hersh\u2019s article casts credible doubt<\/a> on that assumption of certainty<\/a>, and provides a more plausible motivation than whatever self-destructive impulse was assigned to Assad.\u00a0 Much of the Twitter backlash against Hersh is merely ad hominem<\/em> sputtering and their debunkings of Hersh\u2019s debunking of the official version of events were inconclusive, as Interventions Watch<\/a> wrote: \u201cThe article has caused much consternation among those people in the corporate media and the NGO community who are 100% certain that the Assad regime was responsible for the attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n

So now there are new Benghazi questions coming from new directions:<\/p>\n