RUSH: CBSNews.com: “‘Everybody in the mission’ in Benghazi, Libya, thought the attack on a US consulate there last Sept. 11 was an act of terror ‘from the get-go,’ according to excerpts of an interview investigators conducted with the No. 2 official in Libya at the time, obtained by CBS News’ Face the Nation. ‘I think everybody in the mission thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning,’ Greg Hicks, a 22-year foreign service diplomat who was the highest-ranking US official in Libya after the strike, told investigators under authority of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.”
Now, we can beat this Benghazi stuff to death all day today if we want to, and I don’t really intend to do that, but this article from CBS News (and we’ve got some supporting audio coming up) points out four important things. Number one: Greg Hicks, the top US diplomat in Libya after Chris Stevens (he’s right beneath Chris Stevens) knew from the get-go that Benghazi was a terrorist attack. He wasn’t even in Benghazi. Remember, the regime was saying, “Nobody knew!”
“We thought it maybe was a bunch of ruffians, a bunch of ne’er-do-wells reacting to the video that was causing all kinds of stuff to happen in Cairo!” Remember that? This guy is saying, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We knew from the beginning.” Number two: Despite Hillary’s claims to the contrary, Greg Hicks was never contacted. I’ll tell you, Hillary does not look good in all of this. Hillary doesn’t come off well. These are the whistleblowers. These are the people that the regime didn’t want anybody to ever hear from.
Remember all of us saying back during the aftermath of Benghazi and during the campaign last year, “They’re gonna try to put this to bed but this is gonna come back and bite ’em”? Because the excuses they were offering, the video and all this — they were so public about that — was so obviously wrong, and they were obviously trying to cover something up. The third of the four important things in this particular story at CBS News is that Greg Hicks says that he knew Susan Rice was lying when she appeared on those five talk shows, and he was not happy about it.
He knew she was lying when she said that all this happened because of this video. And the fourth point that’s made, according to Greg Hicks, is that Susan Rice directly contradicted the president of the Libya who said Benghazi was a terrorist attack right before she came on, and this led Libya to delay the FBI’s access to Benghazi. Do you remember we were all wondering, “Where’s the FBI? Why aren’t they there?” Well, the reason is the president of Libya had been embarrassed on TV. He was on CBS and he said it was a terrorist attack.
He finishes, and Susan Rice comes out and says, “No, no, no, it wasn’t a terrorist attack. It was this video guy!” The president of Libya said, “You’re gonna call me out like that?” So he kept the FBI at bay and delayed their access to Benghazi, which hurt their investigation tremendously. All of this is pretty damning. Let’s go to the audio sound bites. Grab number 14. This is Bob Schieffer yesterday morning, Face the Nation. This is how he opened the show, and you will hear Libyan President Mohamed Magariaf and Susan Rice in this piece.
SCHIEFFER: (bouncy music) Today, only on Face the Nation, startling new details about the Benghazi attack from the number two American official in Libya. It’s been almost eight months since the attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi that killed US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. We’ll get new details today and more insight into the stunning contradictions between the president of Libya and ambassador to the UN Susan Rice when they appeared after the attack on Face the Nation.
MAGARIAF: This is preplanned, predetermined. So —
RICE: We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned.
RUSH: So there you hear it. The Libyan president says it’s a “preplanned,” premeditated terrorist attack. Susan Rice says, “No, no. It wasn’t. We don’t have any information like that.” So they call him a liar. Now, it’s Bob Schieffer here. He’s okay, but I must tell you something, folks: It has to be a little insulting to whatever viewers this show has left that Bob Schieffer is trying to treat this as breaking news that the administration and Susan Rice lied to Bob Schieffer’s and everybody else’s faces.
The viewers of this program know different.
Everybody by now, by yesterday, long ago knew that Susan Rice had made it up. The only question with Susan Rice was, “Who sent her out there and why and who gave her that story?” You know, “Why Susan Rice to fall on the sword?” so to speak. But Schieffer yesterday was treating this as, “Well, up until this very moment, we thought it was the video! Up until this very moment we believed what Susan Rice said. But now this Greg Hicks guy has come forward and we now realize that we have been lied to!” Long after everybody else paying attention knew.
We couldn’t do this before the election, you see.
We couldn’t get anywhere near this before the election.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Back to the audio sound bites, Bob Schieffer, CBS, Face the Nation. During the segment on the Benghazi attack, the host Bob Schieffer set up the segment by saying this. Now, what he does here is a dramatic reading of the testimony that we’re gonna get from Greg Hicks, again, who is the 22-year Foreign Service diplomat, number two official in Libya right underneath the ambassador, and this is Schieffer.
SCHIEFFER: The administration claimed the attack grew out of a spontaneous demonstration provoked by protests in Egypt. Greg Hicks told investigators that was simply not true. Part of what he said. Hicks: I thought it was a terrorist attack from the get-go. I think everybody in the mission thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning. Question: Did you ever have any indication that there was a protest, a popular protest outside the mission in Benghazi? Greg Hicks: No question. And if there was such a protest, would that have been reported? Hicks: Absolutely. For there to have been a demonstration on Chris Stevens’ front door and him not to have reported it is unbelievable.
RUSH: I’m telling you, they’re blowing this thing sky-high. They’re blowing it up. Now, remember what we heard. I’ll take you back. Benghazi happens. Just a brief timeline. Five o’clock in the afternoon is when Washington ostensibly becomes aware, the White House. Obama talks to the defense secretary, Leon Panetta, and Hillary. He says (paraphrasing), “You guys deal with it however you need,” and vanishes, and nobody to this day knows what Obama was doing the next five to eight hours. Honestly. If somebody knows, please tell me. I don’t think anybody knows.
Earlier in the day in Cairo, if you will recall, somebody at our embassy — remember, it’s the 9/11 anniversary — somebody in our embassy put out an apology. Nothing has happened and somebody in our embassy issued an apology, a justification for protests that might occur against the embassy in Egypt. Nothing had happened. That apology came before anything had happened. We’re all sitting here saying, “What in the world are we apologizing for now?” Then the protests started and somebody attempted to get in the embassy, it you recall, climbed over the walls.
That is what led the Obama administration to say that that protest was spawned by the video, and that protest inspired an ad hoc protest at Benghazi. Nothing was gonna happen in Benghazi until this ad hoc, ad-lib protest happened in Cairo, after we apologized. There was nothing to apologize for, just some typical left-winger in our embassy over there decided to go PC and try to stop any protest by apologizing for the United States in advance. Honest to God. I know many of you have probably forgotten this, but that’s what really got that day going. It was somebody in our embassy apologizing, nothing had happened. We later learned that the apology was written by some subordinate staff member in an attempt to stop any protest from taking place.
Yes, if we’re just nice to them, and if we just admit that it’s all our fault, then maybe they won’t attack us today. That’s the thinking on these people’s part. Well, that was just an invitation. And the mob began to attack the embassy, in Cairo. So the White House immediately distanced itself from that apology. The first thing they did was to distance themselves from that apology, saying that it was a rogue staff member acting on her own over there, and then they said that a video, at which time nobody had ever heard of or seen, was responsible for that protest. Then Benghazi happened, and the administration said, Hillary, Susan Rice, everybody said the video inspired the protest in Cairo, and that inspired an ad-lib protest in Benghazi.
Now, what we know is that what happened in Benghazi had nothing to do with what happened in Cairo. We had a planned, premeditated terror attack in Benghazi, four Americans killed, including the ambassador. For weeks after the administration continued to try to blame the video, some video that nobody had seen. The filmmaker, by the way, of that video is still in jail somewhere in California. Hillary and Obama cut public service announcement type commercials that ran on Pakistan TV, apologizing for the United States and that video, claiming that all of this protest activity had nothing to do with anything other than that video.
None of that was true. Bob Schieffer, ABC, NBC, Washington Post, New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, you name it, all ran with the video story for weeks. And now the number two man is coming forth and saying none of that is true. That’s what this is all about. Bob Schieffer’s got an exclusive here ’cause Hicks’ testimony was leaked to them first, his upcoming testimony. So all of this that is being reported yesterday and today in the Drive-By Media was known before the election, folks, all of it was. So Obama gets reelected under false pretenses under a timeline story that’s made up.
Remember how we were called racists and sexists for complaining about Susan Rice’s lies? The only reason anybody was disagreeing with her was because she’s black, yep, we were racist, and we were sexist. And the mainstream media even said that people challenging the veracity and honesty of Susan Rice, this is just the GOP’s War on Women, that’s all it was, they said. And make sure we remember here, Obama was only talking to Panetta because they had a previously scheduled meeting at five o’clock. It wasn’t even Benghazi that forced the meeting. Obama was scheduled to meet with Panetta at five o’clock anyway. Benghazi just happened to come up at the end of that meeting. Obama never even had a meeting devoted to Benghazi.
Who was the person most attacked in the days after the Benghazi attack? Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney was the person most attacked in the media after Benghazi because he dared issue a statement after the protests in Cairo. He dared act presidential during the campaign, and the media launched into him as creating problems for America. It’s not his role to speak out. It’s not his responsibility. He shouldn’t be doing it. He should shut up. Mitt Romney was portrayed as an absolute irresponsible idiot for jumping to conclusions.
Now, all of what Bob Schieffer reported yesterday was known back then. It was all covered up by an administration that every American media outlet was loyal to and duly invested to report. Next up on CBS Slay the Nation during the segment on the Benghazi attacks and after reading what Susan Rice had said about the attacks, that they were a response to a video, Bob Schieffer then read what Greg Hicks told investigators about her remarks.
SCHIEFFER: My jaw hit the floor as I watched this. I’ve never been as embarrassed in my life, in my career as on that day. I never reported a demonstration. I reported an attack on the consulate. Chris’ last report, if you want to say his final report is, “Greg, we are under attack.” It is jaw dropping that, to me, how that came to be. I was personally known to one of Ambassador Rice’s staff members. I could have been called. And, you know, the phone call could have been, “Hey, Greg, Ambassador Rice is gonna say blah, blah, blah.” I could have said, “No, that’s not the right thing.” The phone call was never made.
RUSH: Imagine that. The phone call to correct what Susan Rice was going to say was never made because they didn’t want her saying anything other than what she said, that it was an ad hoc, ad-libbed, totally instantaneous protest. Not a terror attack brought about by this unseemly anti-Muslim video, again, which nobody had seen. Now, let’s move to Fox News Sunday yesterday. Chris Wallace is interviewing Stephen Lynch, a member of Congress, Massachusetts, during a discussion about the Benghazi attacks and how they were represented in the public. Chris Wallace said, “How do you explain the fact that that Sunday Ambassador Rice came on this show and four other Sunday shows and never mentioned Al-Qaeda extremists. It had been scrubbed from the talking points, but did mention a reaction to the anti-Islam video, which had never been in any of the talking points?”
LYNCH: Well, it was scrubbed. It was totally inaccurate. You’re absolutely right. There’s no excuse for that. It was false information. What they tried to do is harmonize what happened in Benghazi with what happened everywhere else across the Middle East.
RUSH: There’s Stephen Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts, admitting that the correct things were “scrubbed” from Susan Rice’s prepared text for her Sunday appearances and the video substituted. He’s admitting it, and he also admits that what they tried to do “is harmonize what happened in Benghazi with what happened everywhere else across the Middle East.” What that means is they tried to link what happened in Benghazi to these ad hoc, spontaneous protests in Cairo brought about by the video.
This whole thing just a mountain of one lie on another, and it was all done to not upset any pre-electoral poll data, and they made sure to jump all over Romney. Romney was the guy most criticized in the American media after the Benghazi attack. Mitt Romney had nothing to do with it, at all. He just issued a presidential statement about it. He objected to this mindless, senseless apology for nothing that came out of our embassy in Cairo. One thing here. Darrell Issa was on Fox America’s Newsroom this morning. Bill Hemmer talked to Issa, who’s gonna be running the hearings on this. Hemmer said, “Based on what you know now, how damaging is all of this to Hillary?”
ISSA: It’s damaging because it happened on her watch. I think the important thing is that Hillary Clinton is no longer secretary of state, but there are many people still at [the] State Department who were involved in this at the highest levels who continue to keep their jobs and keep this symbol of, “The war is over, terror is behind us.” We know in Boston, we know in Syria, we know every day for the survivors, if you will, from Benghazi, that that just simply isn’t true.
RUSH: And besides, “It’s eight months ago. “What does it matter now? What difference does it make?” That’s the administration line now: “What difference does it make?” The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes has written up a very detailed report on the timeline of how the talking points were scrubbed based on State Department and other administration e-mails and records.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We’re gonna start in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with Gary. Hello, sir. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Good. Thank you.
CALLER: It’s an honor, sir. It’s an honor to talk to you.
RUSH: Appreciate that very much. I’m glad you called, sir. Yes.
CALLER: Quick question for you: How can the State Department not tell the difference between a simple protest and a terrorist attack? That’s question A. Question B is: How can I trust them in national security?
RUSH: Let me ask you a question out there, Gar’. Do you actually think the State Department cannot tell the difference between a terrorist attack and a harmless protest?
CALLER: Oh, they absolutely can.
RUSH: Yeah, yeah.
CALLER: It was more of a setup question.
RUSH: You’re being facetious.
CALLER: It was just a fabrication.
RUSH: Of course they can tell the difference. You have to remember now: At the time this happened, Al-Qaeda was on the run. Obama was king of the drones. We’re wiping out all of our enemies! We’d killed bin Laden. Nobody stopped to think that maybe killing bin Laden and running around bragging about it as Obama did might stir something up on September 11th somewhere — and it did. It wasn’t a video!
At any rate, the State Department knows full well the difference between a simple, harmless protest and a terrorist attack. This was in September. We are beginning the intense portion of the presidential campaign. The president wants the low-information voter voting public to realize terrorism has been dealt with. “There isn’t any more. Fort Hood? Ah, just workplace violence. Fort Dix? Ah, just some random bad actors.” Terrorism was finished.
Obama had killed Osama, and the Democrats all said that the War on Terror can never end until Osama’s dead. Well, they killed Osama and they kept talking about it. So the image put forth was that there was no terrorism. You can’t then turn around and admit that you’ve got a terrorist attack going on. That would not fly. Even low-information voters may say, “Wait a minute. You told us that Al-Qaeda’s dead and been dealt with, that they’re on the run, and here they are again?” So they had to make something up.
They clearly know the difference between a terror attack and a simple, harmless protest.
But your next question: “How can we trust them to deal with anything?” This is my point. I practically beg people to understand: When looking at what the Democrat Party does, and everything they control — the State Department this case — everything is political. Everything is tied to an agenda. It’s their agenda and their party first, and you have to look at them that way. It’s not a question of trusting the State Department. How do you trust them to deal with anything? You have to learn to interpret the Democrat Party as moving their political agenda forward with every instance that happens in life.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I got one more thing on Benghazi when we come back, then we’ll move on. It is that Mark Thompson, a former Marine and now the deputy coordinator for the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, is saying that Hillary Clinton bypassed her own counterterrorism people. Hillary cut them out at the moment Benghazi was happening.