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Benghazi, David Petraeus, Michael J. Morell and the Destabilization of the Obama Administration

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. (The flash dri­ve includes the anti-fas­cist books avail­able on this site.)

COMMENT: The ginned-up non-scan­dal sur­round­ing the Beng­hazi attack is begin­ning to clar­i­fy, and our rumi­na­tions con­cern­ing the Petraeus affair and the suc­ces­sion of Michael J. Morell to the posi­tion of act­ing CIA direc­tor are becom­ing increas­ing­ly pre­scient.

It seemed appar­ent that Petraeus was set up to fall. (This is not to say he was­n’t a damn fool to take the bait–i.e. for­mer counter-ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tor Paula Broad­well.)

Some of the bul­let points that we made in the con­text of the Petraeus affair:

  • Petraeus was going to be ques­tioned about the Beng­hazi affair behind closed doors. Does this impinge on the Beng­hazi sit­u­a­tion? Might this be con­nect­ed to the “Octo­ber Sur­prise II” that the GOP was crow­ing about last fall?
  • Petraeus was also seen by the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion as an ele­ment of sta­bil­i­ty going into the sec­ond term. Might this affair be an effort at de-sta­bi­liz­ing Oba­ma?
  • In the above con­text, note that neg­a­tive head­lines are dom­i­nat­ing in the wake of Oba­ma’s re-elec­tion.
  • The act­ing head of the CIA is Michael J. Morell, who gave Dubya his intel­li­gence brief­in­gs and was actu­al­ly with him on 9/11. Some observers were crit­i­cal of Morell as being too much of an insid­er to effec­tive­ly coun­ter­act abus­es at the agency. Is this the agency “re-right­ing itself”–i.e. clean­ing out an out­sider? (The agency was ini­tial­ly report­ed to be leery of Petraeus, only com­ing to accept him when he adopt­ed a “hands-off” approach to intel­li­gence mat­ters and CIA.)
  • On a high­ly spec­u­la­tive note, we’ve read of Nazi gen­er­als named Morell dur­ing our research into the Third Reich. I won­dered if Morell might be an Under­ground Reich insert when I heard he was act­ing head of CIA and being con­sid­ered as direc­tor. A leg­end would have been cre­at­ed to obscure his Nazi/German/Underground Reich back­ground. This sus­pi­cion grew more pro­found when I saw Morel­l’s pic­ture. Again, this is admit­ted­ly high­ly spec­u­la­tive. Look at Morel­l’s pic­ture at right and see what you think.
  • Will Mor­rell work with the GOP and Under­ground Reich against Oba­ma?

 Since that analy­sis was post­ed, we have learned that Morell is of Ger­man-Amer­i­can extrac­tion. One won­ders if his ances­tors might have been part of the large Ger­man-Amer­i­can Fifth Col­umn in the Unit­ed States, encom­pass­ing such orga­ni­za­tions as the Steuben Soci­ety and the Ger­man Amer­i­can Bund. (Under Cov­er by John Roy Carl­son, avail­able for down­load on this web­site, details that milieu.)

The thrust of the GOP charges in the Beng­hazi inci­dent are alle­ga­tions that the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion denied that the attack was a ter­ror­ist inci­dent and delet­ed ref­er­ences to CIA warn­ings in their report.

It has now become clear that it was none oth­er than Michael J. Morell who delet­ed the ref­er­ences to the ter­ror­ist warn­ings! He was opposed by David Petraeus in this attempt!

Do not fail to note that Petraeus was then sacked, leav­ing Morell in charge of the CIA! (Again, it was Morell who gave George W. Bush his intel­li­gence brief­in­gs and was actu­al­ly with him at the time of the 9/11 attacks.)

As the desta­bi­liza­tion of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion takes form, do not fail to note that the head of the IRS when the Tea Par­ty fronts were tar­get­ed was a George W. Bush appointee!

At the same time, the whored-out Amer­i­can media are up in arms over the Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s seiz­ing of reporters’ phone records. The phone records con­cern a sto­ry that con­tained leaked mate­r­i­al about a counter-ter­ror­ism sting in Yemen.

Who leaked that mate­r­i­al? Might it have been Michael J. Morell, or some­one else linked to the Bush administration/GOP/Underground Reich?

We note that that seizure of phone records could be pre­cise­ly cal­cu­lat­ed to inflame the media. 

The sus­pi­cion in these quar­ters cen­ters on the 2012 leak as part of the pre-cal­cu­lat­ed desta­bi­liza­tion of Oba­ma.

“Ear­ly E‑Mails on Beng­hazi Show Inter­nal Divi­sions” by Mark Landler, Eric Schmitt and Michael D. Shear; The New York Times; 5/15/2013.

EXCERPT: E‑mails released by the White House on Wednes­day revealed a fierce inter­nal jostling over the government’s offi­cial talk­ing points in the after­math of last September’s attack in Beng­hazi, Libya, not only between the State Depart­ment and the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency, but at the high­est lev­els of the C.I.A.

The 100 pages of e‑mails showed a dis­agree­ment between David H. Petraeus, then the direc­tor of the C.I.A., and his deputy, Michael J. Morell, over how much to dis­close in the talk­ing points, which were used by Susan E. Rice, the ambas­sador to the Unit­ed Nations, in tele­vi­sion appear­ances days after the attack.

Mr. Morell, admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials said, delet­ed a ref­er­ence in the draft ver­sion of the talk­ing points to C.I.A. warn­ings of extrem­ist threats in Libya, which State Depart­ment offi­cials object­ed to because they feared it would reflect bad­ly on them.

Mr. Morell, offi­cials said, act­ed on his own and not in response to pres­sure from the State Depart­ment. But when the final draft of the talk­ing points was sent to Mr. Petraeus, he dis­missed them, say­ing “Frankly, I’d just as soon not use this,” adding that the heav­ily scrubbed account would not sat­isfy the House Demo­c­rat who had request­ed it.

“This is cer­tainly not what Vice Chair­man Rup­pers­berger was hop­ing to get,” Mr. Petraeus wrote, refer­ring to Rep­re­sen­ta­tive C. A. Dutch Rup­pers­berger of Mary­land, the top Demo­c­rat on the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, which had asked Mr. Petraeus for talk­ing points to use with reporters in dis­cussing the attack on Beng­hazi.

The White House released the e‑mails to reporters after Repub­li­cans seized on snip­pets of the cor­re­spon­dence that became pub­lic on Fri­day to sug­gest that Pres­i­dent Obama’s nation­al secu­rity staff had been com­plicit in try­ing to alter the talk­ing points for polit­i­cal rea­sons.

While the e‑mails por­trayed White House offi­cials as being sen­si­tive to the con­cerns of the State Depart­ment, they sug­gest that Mr. Obama’s aides most­ly medi­ated a bureau­cratic tug of war between the State Depart­ment and the C.I.A. over how much to dis­close — all under heavy time con­straints because of the demands from Capi­tol Hill. The e‑mails revealed no new details about the administration’s evolv­ing account of the Sept. 11 attack, which killed four Amer­i­cans, includ­ing Ambas­sador J. Christo­pher Stevens. . . .

Discussion

5 comments for “Benghazi, David Petraeus, Michael J. Morell and the Destabilization of the Obama Administration”

  1. And now we learn that key pas­sages from hun­dreds of emails released by the White House relat­ing to Beng­hazi report­ed by ABC last week were inac­cu­rate quotes ped­dled by by Repub­li­cans and mis­re­port­ed by ABC:

    Talk­ing Points Memo
    Edi­tor’s blog
    The Lat­est Turn of the Screw
    Josh Mar­shall May 19, 2013, 8:18 PM

    For the last sev­er­al days we’ve been nar­rat­ing the odd after­math of ABC’s Jon Karl’s block­buster but ulti­mate­ly erro­neous report about the White House Beng­hazi emails. This after­noon he released what I believe is his first state­ment on the con­tro­ver­sy as such …

    State­ment from ABC News’ Jonathan Karl: “I regret that one email was quot­ed incor­rect­ly and I regret that it’s become a dis­trac­tion from the sto­ry, which still entire­ly stands. I should have been clear­er about the attri­bu­tion. We updat­ed our sto­ry imme­di­ate­ly when new infor­ma­tion became avail­able.”

    This seems at best will­ful­ly mis­lead­ing.

    I thought it would be best to break the state­ment down into its con­stituent parts.

    “I regret that one email was quot­ed incor­rect­ly …”

    If you didn’t know the back­sto­ry here you would think Karl was refer­ring to some sort of edit­ing error. What seems to have hap­pened is that a Repub­li­can source gave him what they said was a direct quote from an email but which turned out to be inac­cu­rate. The fact that it was wrong in a way that appeared dam­ag­ing to the White House (the oppo­nents of the Repub­li­can sources in this case) sug­gests it may not have been an inno­cent mis­take. But whether they were play­ing games or just slop­py is sec­ondary to the fact that the quote was wrong.

    “… and I regret that it’s become a dis­trac­tion from the sto­ry, which still entire­ly stands.”

    This is sim­ply false. Folks on either side can dis­agree over how much it changed the sto­ry. But you can’t have a major part of the sto­ry be false and have the sto­ry ‘entire­ly stand’. Here Karl is dou­bling down on his orig­i­nal claim that the fact that his quotes were wrong didn’t change the sto­ry. Not so. A cen­tral point of his sto­ry was White House involve­ment and White House involve­ment on behalf of the State Depart­ment. The alleged quotes were key evi­dence for that claim but the quotes were wrong. Ergo, the sto­ry can­not ‘entire­ly stand.’ Call­ing this error a ‘dis­trac­tion’ from the sto­ry is incor­rect because the error under­mines the sto­ry itself.

    Indeed, even with­in the nor­mal­ly col­le­gial norms of elite reporters, CNN’s Jake Tap­per and CBS’s Major Gar­rett have both said the bogus quotes change the sto­ry sig­nif­i­cant­ly or under­mine it entire­ly.

    “I should have been clear­er about the attri­bu­tion.”

    Here’s where you see that this very short state­ment is like a tight­ly-bound set of inter­lock­ing mis­di­rec­tions. Karl repeat­ed­ly said that he reviewed the actu­al emails. But he didn’t. And that’s not a minor point because the impact of his sto­ry was based on his hav­ing reviewed them him­self rather than rely­ing on a sec­ond hand account — hav­ing got­ten some sum­ma­ry of them from a ten­den­tious source — a Repub­li­can staffer. The fact that Karl put the non-quotes with­in quo­ta­tion marks makes it pret­ty clear that he was led to believe that he was being giv­en ver­ba­tim tran­scrip­tions. You nev­er put sum­maries in quotes.

    To see what dif­fer­ence this makes, imag­ine rewrit­ing the arti­cle as “I’ve reviewed notes tak­en by a source who was allowed to read but not make copies of the emails …” If he’d writ­ten it that way, the cred­i­bil­i­ty of his source would have imme­di­ate­ly become cen­tral to the sto­ry — and since inves­ti­ga­tors or Hill staffers are the kind of peo­ple who get allowed to review but not make copies of doc­u­ments it would have been fair­ly clear that he’d got­ten them from Repub­li­can staffers.

    (We seem to know def­i­nite­ly that the sources were Repub­li­cans since CBS’s Major Gar­rett said that. He must know either because Karl told him or because Gar­rett too was offered the same notes from the same source.)

    Again, see how the parts inter­lock: False­ly claim­ing to have reviewed the actu­al emails made the source’s cred­i­bil­i­ty irrel­e­vant since Karl had seen the actu­al emails. Had Karl not said that, this all would have been on the source who passed him inac­cu­rate quotes. Had the quotes been accu­rate, none of this would have sur­faced. The fact that they were inac­cu­rate made Karl’s claim unten­able.

    “We updat­ed our sto­ry imme­di­ate­ly when new infor­ma­tion became avail­able.”

    One of the most com­i­cal parts of the Dan Rather/Bush Nation­al Guard records fias­co came when Rather tried to shift gears after it was final­ly defin­i­tive­ly clear that the records were bogus. Rather did one seg­ment after this became clear where he basi­cal­ly said, ‘Yep, the fact that these were forg­eries is a dra­mat­ic new turn in the sto­ry. And we’re on it!’ Note the sin­gle quotes; I’m para­phras­ing.

    ...

    What an unfor­tu­nate jour­nal­is­tic ‘mis­take’.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 20, 2013, 8:36 am
  2. For­mer CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson recent­ly released a cell­phone video that she alleged­ly took dur­ing a gov­ern­ment hack­ing inci­dent. The video shows text get­ting delet­ed from a Microsoft Word doc­u­ment open on her com­put­er in real-time. She’s say­ing it’s evi­dence that the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion has been hack­ing her in order to thwart her, ummm, super awe­some report­ing on Beng­hazi. As one might expect, the video is cre­at­ing quite a media stir. A fraud­u­lent media stir:

    Crooks and Liar
    BUSTED: Sharyl Attkisson’s ‘Hacked’ Video Made Nine Months After Alleged Hack
    By karoli Novem­ber 1, 2014 6:00 am

    If Sharyl Attkisson’s anti-vax report­ing is as accu­rate as her claims about being hacked by the gov­ern­ment, she’s got a big prob­lem.

    Attkisson’s ‘Hack’

    In a nut­shell, Attkisson claims the gov­ern­ment hacked her com­put­ers in Decem­ber, 2012 and she report­ed it to CBS at the time. She claims a PC and her per­son­al Mac were hacked, and the media has accept­ed this claim with no skep­ti­cism. Medi­aite went with the assump­tion that she shot it in Decem­ber, 2012.

    Fox News, of course, is hail­ing her like a con­ser­v­a­tive hero­ine for being so bold as to take on the gov­ern­ment.

    Howie Kurtz quotes Attkisson’s book:

    Kurtz said that the book explains an anony­mous source was called in to look at Attkisson’s com­put­ers and was flab­ber­gast­ed at both the extent and the sophis­ti­ca­tion of the hack­ing.

    As evi­dence, Attkisson released this phone video she claims shows of the ‘hack’ in process.

    Media Mat­ters took on the assign­ment of debunk­ing it, and their experts said it real­ly looked like the delete key was stuck.

    Bust­ed!

    A sharp-eyed com­menter over at Media Mat­ters observed that Attkisson’s video was shot dur­ing the Valerie Harp­er debut on Danc­ing With the Stars in Sep­tem­ber, 2013. Here’s what Wis­co­Joe observes:

    Attkisson shot this video on or some­time after Sep­tem­ber 16, 2013. The episode of “Danc­ing with the Stars” that is play­ing in the back­ground fea­tures Valerie Harp­er danc­ing a Fox­trot to “Some Kind of Won­der­ful” and first aired live on the evening of that date.

    Accord­ing to Attkisson’s own time­line her com­put­er was ‘hacked’ in Octo­ber 2012, she came for­ward with this alle­ga­tion in May 2013, but then wait­ed until Sep­tem­ber 2013 to take video ‘evi­dence.’

    Has Ms. Attkisson pro­vid­ed an expla­na­tion of when this video was tak­en or why she wait­ed for a year, and until after she went for­ward with pub­lic alle­ga­tions, to take video doc­u­men­ta­tion of her com­put­er being ‘hacked’? Is this the stan­dard of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism that she was doing while at CBS? If that’s the case it may explain why she no longer works there.

    Here are a few more ques­tions to go with those. If you’re hacked, do you leave your com­put­er hooked up to the Inter­net while you’re writ­ing a book with what you allege is sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion about how the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion has failed? Do you open up all of your research to said ‘hack­ers’ who you allege are from the very gov­ern­ment that you are trash­ing in your book?

    Why on earth would­n’t you turn over those com­put­ers to foren­sic ana­lysts, and why on earth would CBS leave the work com­put­er hooked up to the Inter­net and the inter­nal com­pa­ny net­work after said hack was report­ed?

    We are sup­posed to believe that Sharyl Attkisson was hacked by the gov­ern­ment and just said, “Oops, I’m hacked!” while she went mer­ri­ly along with no addi­tion­al exam­i­na­tion, secu­ri­ty and a nine-month lag between when she orig­i­nal­ly believed she was hacked and when she shot the video?

    Valerie Harp­er did debut on Danc­ing With the Stars on Sep­tem­ber 16, 2013 and she did dance to Some Kind of Won­der­ful. You can hear the intro on the cell­phone video she shot.

    Despite the fact that Medi­aite and Politi­co uncrit­i­cal­ly assumed the video was shot in 2012, it’s clear it was shot on Sep­tem­ber 16, 2013.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 1, 2014, 5:40 pm
  3. “The House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee report was released with lit­tle fan­fare on the Fri­day before Thanks­giv­ing week. Many of its find­ings echo those of six pre­vi­ous inves­ti­ga­tions by var­i­ous con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees and a State Depart­ment pan­el. The eighth Beng­hazi inves­ti­ga­tion is being car­ried out by a House Select Com­mit­tee appoint­ed in May.” Eighth time’s a charm?

    GOP Intel Report Debunks Its Own Par­ty’s Nut­ty Beng­hazi The­o­ries
    By KEN DILANIAN Pub­lished Novem­ber 21, 2014, 5:40 PM EST

    WASHINGTON (AP) — A two-year inves­ti­ga­tion by the Repub­li­can-con­trolled House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee has found that the CIA and the mil­i­tary act­ed prop­er­ly in respond­ing to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplo­mat­ic com­pound in Beng­hazi, Libya, and assert­ed no wrong­do­ing by Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion appointees.

    Debunk­ing a series of per­sis­tent alle­ga­tions hint­ing at dark con­spir­a­cies, the inves­ti­ga­tion deter­mined that there was no intel­li­gence fail­ure, no delay in send­ing a CIA res­cue team, no missed oppor­tu­ni­ty for a mil­i­tary res­cue, and no evi­dence the CIA was covert­ly ship­ping arms from Libya to Syr­ia.

    In the imme­di­ate after­math of the attack, intel­li­gence about who car­ried it out and why was con­tra­dic­to­ry, the report found. That led Susan Rice, then U.S. ambas­sador to the Unit­ed Nations, to inac­cu­rate­ly assert that the attack had evolved from a protest, when in fact there had been no protest. But it was intel­li­gence ana­lysts, not polit­i­cal appointees, who made the wrong call, the com­mit­tee found. The report did not con­clude that Rice or any oth­er gov­ern­ment offi­cial act­ed in bad faith or inten­tion­al­ly mis­led the Amer­i­can peo­ple.

    The House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee report was released with lit­tle fan­fare on the Fri­day before Thanks­giv­ing week. Many of its find­ings echo those of six pre­vi­ous inves­ti­ga­tions by var­i­ous con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees and a State Depart­ment pan­el. The eighth Beng­hazi inves­ti­ga­tion is being car­ried out by a House Select Com­mit­tee appoint­ed in May.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 21, 2014, 5:53 pm
  4. A fraud on Fox News? Woah. You don’t say...:

    Wash­ing­ton Post
    He claimed to be ex-CIA and was quot­ed as an expert on Fox News. Pros­e­cu­tors say it was a lie.

    By Matt Zapo­to­sky
    Octo­ber 15

    Wayne Sim­mons claimed to be some­thing of an Amer­i­can James Bond, and if you watched TV or ran his name through Google, you’d have no rea­son to doubt him. In his pub­lic speak­ing engage­ments and fre­quent appear­ances on Fox News, the pur­port­ed for­mer CIA oper­a­tive spoke author­i­ta­tive­ly about ter­ror­ism and clan­des­tine intel­li­gence oper­a­tions, which he claimed he helped run for near­ly three decades.

    “Nobody knew who I was,” Sim­mons said at one event. “Nobody was allowed to know who I was.”

    But accord­ing to fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors, his claims of a 27-year career with the CIA were lies, and it was only by repeat­ing such false­hoods that Sim­mons was able to briefly get actu­al secu­ri­ty clear­ances and real gov­ern­ment con­tract­ing work in more recent years.

    On Thurs­day, fed­er­al author­i­ties arrest­ed Sim­mons and charged him with mak­ing false state­ments, major fraud against the Unit­ed States and wire fraud.

    Neigh­bors and oth­ers who knew him said they were shocked by the news — and still won­dered whether their friend might have been telling the truth.

    “I wouldn’t doubt Wayne a bit,” said David Zey­her, a neigh­bor and close friend of Sim­mons. “I think he has to some­times con­ceal what his pur­pos­es are, what he’s done.”

    In a brief appear­ance in fed­er­al Dis­trict Court in Alexan­dria on Thurs­day, Sim­mons, dressed in jeans and a but­ton-down shirt, sighed loud­ly when a mag­is­trate judge ordered him jailed in advance of a deten­tion hear­ing Fri­day and peered back toward the audi­ence as U.S. mar­shals led him away. Sim­mons said lit­tle dur­ing the hear­ing, save for a brief dis­cus­sion about who was rep­re­sent­ing him in the case. The judge twice warned him not to talk, not­ing that pros­e­cu­tors could use any com­ments he made against him.

    Assis­tant U.S. Attor­ney Paul Nathanson had asked the judge to detain Sim­mons, not­ing that inves­ti­ga­tors had recov­ered two guns when arrest­ing him and that he had a pre­vi­ous fed­er­al con­vic­tion for being a felon in pos­ses­sion of a firearm.

    A rel­a­tive of Sim­mons declined to com­ment for this report, and oth­ers could not be reached. Jean-Jacques Cabou, a lawyer with the Perkins Coie firm who had rep­re­sent­ed Sim­mons pre­vi­ous­ly but has not been retained in the new case, said, “This was unex­pect­ed, and under the cir­cum­stances, it just wouldn’t be appro­pri­ate for me to com­ment.”

    Though Sim­mons was far from a house­hold name, he seemed to car­ry a cer­tain celebri­ty and mys­tique — at least online and on cable news. He boast­ed on his Web site that he was recruit­ed from the Navy to be a part of the CIA’s “out­side para­mil­i­tary spe­cial oper­a­tions group” and that he led “Deep Cov­er Intel Ops against some of the world’s most dan­ger­ous Drug Car­tels and arms smug­glers from Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca and the Mid­dle East.”

    A Navy spokesman said the Navy could find no record that Wayne Shel­by Sim­mons had ever served in that branch of the mil­i­tary. A CIA spokesman declined to com­ment, oth­er than to say the agency was work­ing with the Jus­tice Depart­ment.

    Accord­ing to neigh­bors, includ­ing Zey­her, Sim­mons, 62, has two adult chil­dren and lives on a large prop­er­ty in Annapo­lis where he cares for two dogs and two hors­es. His wife, neigh­bors said, died of can­cer. Zey­her, 78, said Sim­mons would watch his house while he was trav­el­ing and come by if he need­ed help car­ry­ing heavy stuff around. He said the two talked about Simmons’s work — but only to a point. “There was only so much he could tell me in the CIA,” Zey­her said. “He was very closed-lip about what he did.”

    Zey­her said he still believes his friend and not­ed that a gen­er­al came to the wed­ding when one of Simmons’s chil­dren got mar­ried.

    Simmons’s boasts of his CIA con­nec­tions won him fre­quent com­ment­ing gigs on Fox and in oth­er places. He even wrote a nov­el called “The Natanz Direc­tive,” a thriller that he told Zey­her drew from his real expe­ri­ences. On his Web site, Sim­mons claimed that for­mer defense sec­re­tary Don­ald H. Rums­feld had said of the book: “Wayne Sim­mons doesn’t just write it. He’s lived it, and that’s why he and Mark Gra­ham can tell this spy thriller in such an engross­ing way.”

    A Rums­feld rep­re­sen­ta­tive could not imme­di­ate­ly con­firm or dis­pute the authen­tic­i­ty of the claim. Gra­ham, the co-author of the book, declined to com­ment but said he had been inter­viewed by the FBI.

    A spokesman for Fox News said Sim­mons was not paid by the net­work for his appear­ances. The spokesman did not respond to a ques­tion ask­ing how Simmons’s exper­tise was ver­i­fied. Sev­er­al years ago, Sim­mons met with a Wash­ing­ton Post reporter on at least two occa­sions to dis­cuss his sup­posed CIA back­ground and mis­sion, though those con­ver­sa­tions nev­er pro­duced a sto­ry.

    The Post did note in 2008 that Sim­mons was the keynote speak­er at a GOP fundrais­ing din­ner, refer­ring to him as “a for­mer CIA oper­a­tive and fre­quent guest on Fox News.”

    When he talked on TV or at pub­lic func­tions, Sim­mons did not shy from delv­ing into the details of inter­na­tion­al affairs or from offer­ing strong, quotable, con­vinc­ing opin­ions. Speak­ing to Neil Cavu­to about the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobac­co, Firearms and Explo­sives’ botched “Fast and Furi­ous” gun-track­ing oper­a­tion, Sim­mons said it was “one of the most egre­gious, incom­pe­tent” activ­i­ties he had ever heard about, accord­ing to a tran­script.

    “And I can tell you I have per­son­al­ly been involved in these types of things,” he added.

    In a speech at an event involv­ing the group Accu­ra­cy in Media, Sim­mons boast­ed of his 27 years “run­ning noth­ing and doing noth­ing but spe­cial oper­a­tions” to give cre­dence to his views.

    “I’m here today because I dealt in real­i­ty, and in fact, and a whole lot of luck,” he said.

    Retired Gen. Paul Val­le­ly, who met Sim­mons through their appear­ances on Fox News years ago and served with him on a group called the Cit­i­zens’ Com­mis­sion on Beng­hazi, said Sim­mons came across to him as “very knowl­edge­able” and was able to talk “in depth about CIA oper­a­tions, ­covert oper­a­tions espe­cial­ly.”

    Val­le­ly said he was eager to hear Simmons’s side of the sto­ry. It could be “that he was on a con­tract, wasn’t an employ­ee of the CIA nec­es­sar­i­ly, but was on a high­ly sen­si­tive, com­part­ment­ed con­tract of the CIA,” the for­mer gen­er­al said.

    He said two peo­ple had approached him and author­i­ties a few years back claim­ing Sim­mons was not who he pur­port­ed to be.

    “It’s just a sad com­men­tary,” Val­le­ly said. “He came off to me as a very hon­est, down-to-the-earth guy.”

    It’s not clear pre­cise­ly what prompt­ed the crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion or when it began, but the charges against Sim­mons are based large­ly on his alleged­ly lying on offi­cial gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments to help get con­tract­ing jobs and secu­ri­ty clear­ances.

    Pros­e­cu­tors alleged in an indict­ment that Sim­mons was hired as the “Human Ter­rain Sys­tem Team Leader” for an unnamed gov­ern­ment con­trac­tor in 2008, and in that role, he trained at an Army facil­i­ty. He won an inter­im secu­ri­ty clear­ance for that job, pros­e­cu­tors alleged, by “false­ly stat­ing that he had been recruit­ed to the CIA in 1973, that he had not pre­vi­ous­ly been charged with or con­vict­ed of a felony offense, that his pri­or arrests and crim­i­nal con­vic­tions were direct­ly relat­ed to his sup­posed intel­li­gence work for the CIA, and that he had held a top secret secu­ri­ty clear­ance from 1973 to 2000.”

    A spokesman for BAE Sys­tems, which appears to have won the con­tract of which Sim­mons was a part, con­firmed he worked there from Sep­tem­ber 2008 to March 2009 but declined to com­ment fur­ther.

    Sim­mons was hired a short time lat­er by anoth­er gov­ern­ment sub­con­trac­tor, pros­e­cu­tors alleged, based on what they said were sim­i­lar lies. In that role, they said, he was deployed over­seas as an advis­er to senior U.S. mil­i­tary per­son­nel. Neigh­bors and Val­le­ly said that at one point Sim­mons went to Afghanistan.

    ...

    So in addi­tion to being a Fox News reg­u­lar and appar­ent­ly con­ning oth­er Fox News com­men­ta­tors like retired Gen­er­al Paul Val­le­ly, Sim­mons was also hired as the “Human Ter­rain Sys­tem Team Leader” for an unnamed gov­ern­ment con­trac­tor in 2008 and was lat­er alleged­ly hired by anoth­er gov­ern­ment sub­con­trac­tor where he was deployed over­seas as an advis­er to senior US mil­i­tary per­son­nel. And he appar­ent­ly was able to pull all this off sole­ly through the pow­er of just repeat­ing the same “I’m such a secret agent I can’t pos­si­bly prove it” shtick!

    You have to won­der how many oth­er “super secret agents” are out there qui­et­ly get­ting hired by gov­ern­ment con­trac­tors and advis­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials. You also have to won­der if Sim­mon­s’s dozens of Fox News appear­ances, start­ing back in 2004, had any­thing to do with those hir­ings. After all, dozens of TV appear­ance where you’re por­trayed as a for­mer CIA oper­a­tive is one hell of an addi­tion to your con artist resume:

    Media Mat­ters
    Wayne Sim­mons, Right-Wing Medi­a’s Beng­hazi Expert, Declared Fraud By Fed­er­al Pros­e­cu­tors
    Octo­ber 15, 2015 4:49 PM EDT ››› ERIC HANANOKI

    Wayne Sim­mons has been arrest­ed after a fed­er­al grand jury indict­ed him on “charges of major fraud against the Unit­ed States, wire fraud, and mak­ing false state­ments to the gov­ern­ment,” includ­ing alleged­ly false­ly claim­ing he worked for the CIA. Sim­mons was a fre­quent and favorite guest on Fox News, and was one of the con­ser­v­a­tive medi­a’s pur­port­ed experts on the 2012 Beng­hazi attacks. Sim­mons joined sev­er­al promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive activists and media fig­ures in call­ing for the House to con­vene a Beng­hazi Select Com­mit­tee.

    Fed­er­al Pros­e­cu­tors: Wayne Sim­mons False­ly Claimed He Worked For CIA

    Wayne Sim­mons Is A Con­ser­v­a­tive Com­men­ta­tor. Sim­mons’ web­site claimed he was part of the CIA’s “Out­side Para­mil­i­tary Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Group.” He also has writ­ten for Human Events and appeared reg­u­lar­ly on Fox News. [WayneSimmons.us, accessed 10/15/15; HumanEvents.com, accessed 10/15/15]

    ...
    Con­ser­v­a­tives Turned To Sim­mons For Beng­hazi Exper­tise

    Con­ser­v­a­tive Activists Joined With Sim­mons To Demand A Beng­hazi Select Com­mit­tee. A March 5, 2014, let­ter signed by Sim­mons and oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive activists urged House Speak­er John Boehn­er to “cre­ate a House Select Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee on Beng­hazi — ful­ly resourced with staff and sub­poe­na pow­ers — to con­duct a thor­ough, coor­di­nat­ed inves­ti­ga­tion.” Boehn­er announced plans to form a select com­mit­tee on May 2, 2014, and the House approved it on May 8, 2014. Activists who signed on to the let­ter with Sim­mons includ­ed Judi­cial Watch pres­i­dent Tom Fit­ton, Fox News con­trib­u­tor Thomas McIn­er­ney, Fox News con­trib­u­tor Allen West, Cen­ter for Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy pres­i­dent Frank Gaffney, Vet­er­ans for a Strong Amer­i­ca pres­i­dent Joel Arends, Secure Amer­i­ca New pres­i­dent Allen Roth, Gin­ni Thomas, and Free­dom Cen­ter pres­i­dent David Horowitz. [JudicialWatch.org, 3/5/14; Speaker.gov, 5/2/14; Wash­ing­ton Post, 5/8/14]

    Fox News Pro­mot­ed Sim­mons’ Call For A Beng­hazi Select Com­mit­tee. Fox News host­ed Sim­mons to pro­mote his call for a com­mit­tee. From the seg­ment:

    UMA PEMMARAJU: For­mer CIA oper­a­tive and author Wayne Sim­mons is one of those who signed that let­ter to the speak­er of the House and he’s join­ing us this now. Tell us more about why all of you have come togeth­er to sign this let­ter and do you think it’s going to put more pres­sure to get the answers that you guys are look­ing for?

    SIMMONS: The answer is we hope so. We hope that the pres­sure that we can con­tin­ue to put on from the Cit­i­zens’ Com­mis­sion on Beng­hazi and along with Judi­cial Watch by deliv­er­ing this very, very strong let­ter to Speak­er Boehn­er, helps moti­vate him to begin this House Select Com­mit­tee on Inves­ti­ga­tions.

    [...]

    We know that, of course, Hillary Clin­ton is the gen­e­sis of this. [JudicialWatch.org, 3/5/14; Fox News, Amer­i­ca’s News HQ, 3/8/14; Speaker.gov, 5/2/14]

    Appear­ing On Fox News, Sim­mons Said The White House Decid­ed “To Not Res­cue Our For­mer CIA Oper­a­tives And Our Mil­i­tary” In Beng­hazi. Dur­ing a Novem­ber 2012 appear­ance on Your World with Neil Cavu­to, Sim­mons crit­i­cized the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion over the Beng­hazi attacks. He won­dered why the White House “made the deci­sions to not res­cue our for­mer CIA oper­a­tives and our mil­i­tary” — a fre­quent­ly ref­er­enced con­ser­v­a­tive media false­hood. He also sug­gest­ed only a Mitt Rom­ney win — which he said he was hop­ing for — would allow the coun­try to find out what hap­pened in Beng­hazi.

    [see Fox clip]
    [Fox News, Your World with Neil Cavu­to, 11/2/12; Media Mat­ters, 7/10/14]

    Sim­mons Was A Mem­ber Of Accu­ra­cy In Medi­a’s Cit­i­zens’ Com­mis­sion On Beng­hazi. In 2013, the con­ser­v­a­tive group Accu­ra­cy in Media (AIM) cre­at­ed the Cit­i­zens’ Com­mis­sion on Beng­hazi “to attempt to deter­mine the truth and accu­ra­cy of what hap­pened in Beng­hazi.” The com­mis­sion includ­ed “Wayne Sim­mons, for­mer CIA offi­cer.” Sim­mons also par­tic­i­pat­ed in AIM’s Beng­hazi com­mis­sion events in July 2013 and April 2014. [AIM.org, 7/30/13, accessed 10/15/15; Media Mat­ters, 7/30/13; YouTube, 7/31/13, 5/2/14; Media Mat­ters, 4/23/14]

    Fox News And Oth­er Con­ser­v­a­tive Media Pro­mot­ed The Com­mis­sion’s Report When It Was Com­plet­ed In 2014. [Media Mat­ters, 4/23/14; Dai­ly Mail, 4/22/14; Newsmax.com, 4/23/14; Amer­i­can Thinker, 5/3/14]

    Sim­mons Praised Fox News For Its Beng­hazi Cov­er­age. Dur­ing the July 2013 AIM event, Sim­mons praised Fox News’ cov­er­age of Beng­hazi in an inter­view with Media Mat­ters. Sim­mons stat­ed: “I would sug­gest that for­tu­nate­ly for the coun­try that Fox had the fore­sight to rec­og­nize ear­ly that there real­ly was some­thing dra­mat­ic and very impor­tant to the coun­try that hap­pened in Beng­hazi and the deci­sion mak­ers at Fox chose to not allow that to fall to the way­side. And I think that was, in fact I’m cer­tain that was a big ben­e­fit to the nation and hope­ful­ly we can con­tin­ue to move that inves­ti­ga­tion for­ward.” [Media Mat­ters, 7/30/13]

    Sim­mons Was A Fre­quent Guest On Fox News

    Sim­mons Appeared On Fox News Dozens Of Times. Accord­ing to a Nex­is search, Sim­mons has made dozens of appear­ances on Fox News since 2004. He was reg­u­lar­ly iden­ti­fied as a for­mer CIA oper­a­tive.

    Fox News Declined To Com­ment On Sim­mons’ Arrest Because He Was Not A “Fox News Con­trib­u­tor.” CNN report­ed that “Fox News spokesper­son Ire­na Brig­an­ti told CNN that he ‘was nev­er a con­trib­u­tor for Fox News,’ and that he appeared on the net­work only as a non-paid guest. She there­fore declined to com­ment fur­ther.” Dur­ing an April 22 appear­ance on Fox News Radio, host Bri­an Kilmeade incor­rect­ly called Sim­mons a “Fox News con­trib­u­tor.” A Fox News spokesper­son told The Huff­in­g­ton Post that “Kilmeade false­ly iden­ti­fied Sim­mons as a con­trib­u­tor.” [CNN.com, 10/15/15; Fox News Radio, Kilmeade & Friends, 4/22/15; Huff­in­g­ton Post, 10/15/15]

    Sim­mons Once Appeared On Fox News To Crit­i­cize A For­mer CIA Agent For Com­mit­ting Fraud. [Fox News, The Big Sto­ry, 11/13/07]

    Sim­mons Said The Unit­ed States Should Pro­file Stu­dents From Mus­lim Coun­tries. [Fox News, Your World with Neil Cavu­to, 5/2/13]

    Sim­mons Claimed “If The Democ­rats Come Into Pow­er ... We’ll Have 9–1‑1s Unabat­ed.” [Fox News, The O’Reil­ly Fac­tor, 11/15/05]

    Sim­mons: Amer­i­ca’s Ene­mies Don’t Fear “Boy King” Oba­ma. [YouTube, 12/29/09, via WayneSimmons.us]

    Sim­mons Claimed There Are “At Least 19 Para­mil­i­tary Mus­lim Train­ing Facil­i­ties In The Unit­ed States.” [Talk­ing Points Memo, 1/16/15]

    Sim­mons Called The Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion The Worst Admin­is­tra­tion Ever. [FoxNews.com, 4/22/15]

    Sim­mons Said Nan­cy Pelosi Is A “Patho­log­i­cal Liar” Whose “Attacks On The CIA” Have Sent A Chill “Through The CIA And To Guys Like Me.” [Crooks and Liars, 5/15/09]

    “Sim­mons Once Appeared On Fox News To Crit­i­cize A For­mer CIA Agent For Com­mit­ting Fraud.”
    That must have been a fun one for him. Not as fun as it could have been, but still fun.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 17, 2015, 11:49 am
  5. The fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion sug­gests that Beng­hazi was used by pro­pa­gan­dists to dis­cred­it Oba­ma and Hillary Clin­ton.  Not that Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion did not use their best PR efforts to min­i­mize the polit­i­cal dam­age before the elec­tion. The admin­is­tra­tion politi­cized and delayed reveal­ing their knowl­edge of what hap­pened in order to min­i­mize the dam­age on elec­tion day.  

    Here is the Wash­ing­ton Post inter­view with “Bob”, the local CIA Annex chief in Beng­hazi.
    We’ve heard sev­er­al ver­sions (FOX NEWS) of the sup­posed CIA stand-down order at around 10 PM Beng­hazi time Sep­tem­ber 11, 2012.
     
    One alleged stand-down order came from CIA HQ in Lan­g­ley. Anoth­er from CIA or State Dept. Secu­ri­ty chiefs at the S Embassy in Tripoli. A third from “Bob” the local Annex chief in Beng­hazi
     
    In each case, secu­ri­ty contractor’s eager to res­cue Ambas­sador Stevens report­ed­ly com­plained that supe­ri­ors ini­tial­ly refused to let them rush imme­di­ate­ly to the con­sulate that was under fire.  Rea­sons offered: Ambush expect­ed, need to first arrange for heavy weapons and armored vehi­cles from friend­ly Libyans before rush­ing to the res­cue, friend­ly Libyan mili­tias in the area would do the res­cue on their own and US con­trac­tors would only get in the way and be mis­tak­en­ly tar­get­ed them­selves (the friend­ly Libyans did get to the con­sulate and retrieve Ambas­sador Steven’s body).
     
    Why so many sto­ries of stand-downs in Wash­ing­ton, Tripoli and Beng­hazi? Sources of these sto­ries were always groups of secu­ri­ty con­trac­tors on the scene.  None of the sto­ries blames Petraeus, Clin­ton or Oba­ma for issu­ing any kind of stand-down order.
     
    The State Depart­ment Admin­is­tra­tive Review Board (accept­ed as neu­tral by intel­li­gence com­mit­tee Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats alike) found no stand-down orders. The ARB sup­pos­ed­ly held three mid-lev­el State Depart­ment Diplo­mat­ic Secu­ri­ty man­agers to be neg­li­gent in send­ing enough secu­ri­ty to Tripoli or Beng­hazi long before the attack. 
     
    Where are the bod­ies of the dead and wound­ed attack­ers in the 9:45 pm to 5 am fire­fights? No ene­my rifles, bul­let shells with fin­ger­prints or DNA to com­pare to sus­pects appre­hend­ed by Libyan author­i­ties after­ward? No video tapes retrieved from the near­by hos­pi­tal where wound­ed attack­ers were report­ed­ly tak­en for treat­ment (same hos­pi­tal where Ambas­sador. Steven’s body was tak­en).
     
    On the oth­er side, the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion did politi­cize the event by delay­ing the report­ing that it was a Ter­ror­ist attack by using care­ful­ly cho­sen words like “act of ter­ror” rather than labelling a ter­ror­ist inci­dent and tak­ing an exces­sive­ly long time, until after the elec­tion to report it clear­ly as such. They did this because they feared the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the attack on the elec­tion results. The Jan. 15, 2016 Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle “For­mer CIA chief in Beng­hazi chal­lenges the sto­ry line of the new movie ‘13 Hours” stat­ed:

    “The oth­er major con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Beng­hazi has focused on how the attack on the diplo­mat­ic com­pound was ini­tial­ly por­trayed by the White House as a vio­lent protest rather than a ter­ror­ist attack.”

    “Bob said there was “some report­ing” even in the midst of the attacks that a ter­ror group known as Ansar al-Sharia was involved, but he said he played no role in shap­ing White House talk­ing points about the attacks that came under harsh crit­i­cism.”

    See: For­mer CIA chief in Beng­hazi chal­lenges film’s claim of ‘stand-down’ order

    EXCLUSIVE | It is the most fate­ful moment in the movie “13 Hours,” which pur­ports to present a sear­ing­ly accu­rate account of the 2012 attacks. Speak­ing pub­licly for the first time, the offi­cer in charge that night said it was entire­ly untrue.
    ¥ By Adam Gold­man and Greg Miller

    Posted by Sojourner Truth | January 16, 2016, 2:58 pm

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