By Ben Barrack
We now know five things unequivocally. First, Hillary Clinton issued a statement about the Benghazi attack prior to 10:42pm EST on 9/11/12. We know this because an AP report published at that time made reference to it. We also know that Hillary and Barack Obama had a phone conversation at approximately 10:00pm EST on 9/11/12 (unless Jay Carney lied again). Third, Clinton’s statement made a general reference to the anti-Muhammad video. Fourth, the AP took that general reference and made the leap that UN Ambassador Susan Rice attempted to bolster on 9/16/12.
The 10:42pm AP Headline read, American killed in Libya protest over film and opened thusly:
Protesters angered over a film that ridiculed Islam’s Prophet Muhammad fired gunshots and burned down the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, killing one American diplomat, witnesses and the State Department said. In Egypt, protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy in Cairo and replaced an American flag with an Islamic banner.
It was the first such assaults on U.S. diplomatic facilities in either country, at a time when both Libya and Egypt are struggling to overcome the turmoil following the ouster of their longtime leaders, Moammar Gadhafi and Hosni Mubarak in uprisings last year.
The protests in both countries were sparked by outrage over a film ridiculing Muhammad produced by an American in California and being promoted by an extreme anti-Muslim Egyptian Christian campaigner in the United States. Excerpts from the film dubbed into Arabic were posted on YouTube.
Fifth, we now know that four months prior to the 9/11/12 attack, Eric Holder’s Justice Department was intimately involved with what was going on at the AP, seizing all kinds of phone records from them:
In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.
For some reason, the Justice Department was very close to what a supposedly independent news agency was doing long before the Benghazi attack. This begs a question: To what extent did the Obama administration influence the AP’s reporting on the night of 9/11/12? If Hillary was willing to issue a statement that referred to the video in broad terms, the AP was certainly willing to report on the video as being the cause of the attacks before Doherty and Woods (the two Navy SEALs) were even murdered.
It would seem that Hillary provided the canvas, brush, and paint via the statement (between 5:30pm EST – 10:42pm EST) and the AP provided the finished painting.
What inspired the AP to take the anti-Muhammad video ball and run with it?
Something – or someone – clearly did.
On May 28th, Charles Krauthammer was on the O’Reilly Factor and discussed Benghazi. Pay attention to this particular line in the video below:
…five hours in he calls the Secretary of State. And after the phone call she releases a statement essentially about the video and how we denounce any intolerance.
Via GWP:
Below is a screen shot of the statement Krauthammer appears to be referring to. Terrence Jeffrey of CNS News, reported on January 24th that this statement was released some time before 11pm EST / 5am Benghazi time and after the recovery of Sean Smith’s body at approximately 5:30pm (reference made in first paragraph of statement).
That leads us to the words of White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, who said the following to CNS News in February:
“He (Obama) was in regular communication with his national security team directly, through them, and spoke with the secretary of state at approximately 10 p.m. He called her to get an update on the situation.”
That would have been 42 minutes before the AP – the same AP that was being very closely monitored by Eric Holder’s Justice Department – report was released.
Incidentally, the AP report in question – published less than one hour after Obama’s call with Hillary – went into extensive detail about the men behind the film. That’s awfully quick reporting, especially in light of the fact that we now know this report was completely fallacious and based on a false premise that was subsequently pushed by the administration for two weeks.
Why was the AP so quick to push such a narrative that is demonstrably false? The 10:42 report should drop the AP below the National Enquirer on the list of credible media sources.
If the AP is truly outraged about the Justice Department’s intrusion, perhaps we could get some answers from the authors of the 10:42pm EST article – Maggie Michael and Sara El Deeb.
