By Ben Barrack
At the time of the 9/11/12 attacks in Benghazi, one of Hillary Clinton’s deputies was a woman named Huma Abedin. To this point, Abedin’s name has not been introduced into the scandal publicly. However, at the May 8th Oversight Committee hearing, Rep. Trey Gowdy referred to an email sent by Beth Jones, Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs. As Gowdy listed the names of people Jones sent that email to, he ended with:
“…near as I can tell, to almost everyone in the State Department.”
In that email – sent one day after the attacks – Jones made it clear to everyone on her distribution list that Ansar al-Sharia had been responsible. Was Abedin – Hillary’s Deputy Chief of Staff at the time – included in that e-mail? Based on Gowdy’s claim, coupled with Abedin’s high position at State, it’s certainly possible and it would be relevant as Ansar al-Sharia and al-Qaeda are both offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group to which Abedin is linked extensively through her family.
Shouts of ‘guilt by association’ do not apply in this case. As has been reported previously, relationships and associations very much matter when it comes to the security clearance that came with the position Abedin held.
As the details of the Benghazi cover-up have been unfolding, it’s become widely accepted that the CIA talking points were altered because the truth about Ansar al-Sharia / al-Qaeda being behind the attacks disrupted the pre-election narrative of the Obama administration. However, as is often the case with political agendas, shared ends do not necessarily equate to shared motives.
If anyone had a stake in making sure that the talking points did not identify Ansar al-Sharia, al-Qaeda, or even Islamic extremists, Abedin’s mother and brother may very well have been candidates. Had Brotherhood offshoot groups been implicated in the murders of four Americans – one an Ambassador – on American soil, it likely would have been a little too close for the comfort of Brotherhood operatives.
Saleha (Mahmood) Abedin is a very prominent figure in the Muslim Brotherhood and is one of 63 leaders in the Muslim Sisterhood. Brother Hassan Abedin has a rather interesting history with the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood – Yusuf al-Qaradawi – and al-Qaeda financier Abdullah Omar Naseef.
As the purveyor of the Brotherhood tactic known as Muruna, Qaradawi is very much concerned about not blowing the Brotherhood’s cover. While terror groups like al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Sharia share his Sunni strain of Islam as well as his objectives, they certainly don’t share his tactics. In fact, the tactics of these groups actually serve to undermine the Brotherhood’s more stealthy, political agenda.
Access is the mother’s milk of politics and let there be no doubt that Huma’s mother had access – through her daughter – to Hillary. As the Vice Dean at Dar Al-Hekma College in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Saleha hosted Hillary in 2010 with the help of her daughter, Huma.
In recent days, several individuals have been implicated in removing references to Ansar al-Sharia, al-Qaeda, and Islamic extremists from the CIA’s version of the talking points before UN Ambassador Susan Rice lied on five separate Sunday talk shows on September 16th.
Let’s take a look at the names of those who have been revealed as being involved to varying degrees. To illustrate how high-ranking Abedin’s position at State was, consider the name Jake Sullivan. Not only did he hold the same title – Deputy Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton – but he appears to have been the point man for the State Department who worked with Deputy CIA Director at the time – Mike Morell – and White House adviser – Ben Rhodes – on that high stakes Saturday, September 15th meeting. It was during that meeting that the now infamous talking points took their final form.
As an aside, since his involvement in altering the talking points, Sullivan has since become Vice President Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser. TIME had this to say about Sullivan:
Sullivan was the reliable point of contact between the White House and Clinton’s 7th floor even when other White House and State staffers were at each others’ throats. Losing him to Biden’s office closes one line of influence to the White House for Kerry.
It’s also been widely reported that when Susan Rice lied on those five Sunday talk shows, she undermined what Libyan president Mohammed al-Magariaf, who had appeared on one of those shows (CBS’ Face the Nation) shortly before her and said the attacks were ‘pre-planned’.
Consider that when the Benghazi attacks occurred, al-Magariaf had only been in office for about one month. While reports suggest that relations between the newly elected Libyan president and the Muslim Brotherhood were friendly, he was not the group’s choice. In fact, the Brotherhood appears to have been quite disappointed at the time because its main interest was in who took the Prime Minister slot. The Brotherhood apparently very much wanted Awad Barasi as the PM.
Via the Libya Herald in an article from last August:
…it would not be wrong to interpret Magarief’s victory as a another significant setback for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Justice & Construction party (J&C).
Quite apart from misleading headlines that Magarief is ‘pro-Islamist’ (of which more later), the simple fact is that the main prize desired by the Islamists in this contest was always the prime minister, not the speaker, and they contemplated significant compromises over who should be selected for the latter post in order to maximize the chances of getting their choice for the former.
As a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the choice of the J&C and their allies for prime minister was, and remains, Barasi.
While Barasi did not become the PM of Libya, he is currently the Second Deputy Prime Minister there. Interestingly, at the time of the Benghazi attacks, the matter of who would be Libya’s PM was very much in a state of flux and up for grabs.
Currently, the PM of Libya is a guy named Ali Zeidan who defeated the Muslim Brotherhood’s preferred candidate about one month following the Benghazi attacks.
Again, let’s get back to the desire for shared outcomes if not shared motives. As a representative of the Muslim Brotherhood and a Muslim Sisterhood leader, didn’t Huma’s mother represent an entity that would have wanted to undermine the Libyan president?
The following is a list of names of former / current State Department employees that are implicated to varying degrees in what happened in Benghazi, both before and after the 9/11/12 attacks:
Hillary Clinton: Secretary of State
Victoria Nuland: State Department spokesman
Elizabeth (Beth) Jones: Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs
Cheryl Mills: Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton
Jake Sullivan: Deputy Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton
Bill Burns: Deputy Secretary of State
Patrick Kennedy: Under Secretary of State for Management
Eric Boswell: Asst Secretary of State for Diplomatic security
Charlene Lamb: Deputy Asst Secretary for Embassy security
So far, this list does not include the name Huma Abedin.
Should it?