When The New York Times first published its Dec. 28 story “A Deadly Mix in Benghazi” by top national security and foreign affairs reporter David D. Kirkpatrick, it seemed just another Christmas present for President Barack Obama and his Times-anointed successor Hillary R. Clinton.
Another twist is that Kirkpatrick and the Times are channeling St. Paul.
Not only is the story a wonderful Christmas gift for Obama and Clinton, it also was published two days after Dec. 26, the Feast of St. Stephen. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was stoned to death by a mob led by Paul, then a Pharisee counterinsurgency agent fighting Christians.
If fact, we know what we know about Stephen from Paul, himself, who later wrote: Yeah, I know it was terrible, I was there.
The Sept. 11, 2012 attack, six weeks before the presidential election between Obama and his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts governor W. Mitt Romney, was stage-managed by the White House with its willing minions in the mainstream media, so as not to affect the election.
In fact, Romney only once raised the courage to ask what really happened during a raid that burned our buildings at the compound to the ground and cost the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
After Obama’s hound dogs chased him back into his rhetorical bunker, Romney never mentioned it again—giving the president a hall pass for our huge international humiliation.
The NYT story relied on the crucial assistance of the State Department’s David McFarland, our Libyan mission’s political officer during the raid. In exchange, for McFarland’s insights and details about his and his boss’ attempts to win over the Libyan militia, the paper-of-record dutifully noted that the young diplomat cabled Washington with warnings before the attack
Helluva job, Dave!
McFarland, of course, is one of the Benghazi survivors the administration kept from speaking to reporters or congressional hearings. What was the price for this prize? Simple, the Times made the case that after its extensive investigation of the raid that the attack was sparked by local anger over the infamous video “'The Innocence of Muslims” by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula.
Clinton, Obama and National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice, then the ambassador to the United Nations all blamed the video for the attack—even after it was revealed that an original White House draft of the talking points it gave Rice for her Sept. 16, 2012 five-for-five Sunday talk show appearances blamed Al Qaeda.
This piece of data contradicted the president’s oft-repeated campaign speech claim: “Al Qaeda is on the run.” Um, that had to go.
The backlash against the Kirkpatrick story has been overwhelming.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R.-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, went on the NBC News program “Meet the Press” to criticize the story.
Issa said the Kirkpatrick deserves credit for his research in the raid, but he that it was ridiculous that video was the cause of the complex, two-staged attack.
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Michael J. Rogers (R.-Mich.) tweeted from @RepMikeRogers to CBS News in response to the story: .@CBSEveningNews To say there is no Al-Qaeda affiliate organizing, helping & participating would be completely inaccurate #Benghazi.
This back-and-forth might have died out, but Kirkpatrick, @ddknyt, threw down an unexpected trump card in a Twitter at Richard Grenell. Grenell, named in September by the media website DCFishbowl: “Journo you don't want to fight on Twitter.”
Grenell, a former Romney campaign foreign policy spokesman, wondered how the Times story was sourced, to which @ddknyt replied: “@RichardGrenell we had a reporter on the scene talking to the attackers during the attack- still invaluable.”
[Hat tip to Twitchy.com for
cataloging]
Whoa. Whoa? What? Grenell and others were quick to jump up and ask: Really? The New York Times had a reporter embedded in the pack of insurgents that attacked our diplomatic compound and killed our ambassador and three other Americans?
NYT: liberal elite’s roving damage control team
In reality, the only way that this is really true is that NYT paid off one of the militants and logged it in the ledger as “pay for reporter” instead of “bribe for terrorist murderer of Americans.”
There was a time when Times men were patriotic Americans, but those days are gone. Now, they are part of the liberal elite’s roving damage control team.
One of the dirty secrets of journalism is that reporters keep more secrets than they expose. Many times that is because there is no way to formally verify a story well enough to print.
Other times, it is because telling the secret would contaminate a relationship or betray a confidence.
Then, there are the times when it is the Times, and its sisters in the ya-ya-green-fried-tomatoes liberal media sisterhood.
We have not heard all The New York Times knows, or for that matter what our leaders know about Benghazi.
Maybe, if we are good, we will find out next Christmas—after the 2014 midterms.
Neil W. McCabe——
Bio and Archives
Neil W. McCabe is the editor of Human Event’s “Guns & Patriots” e-letter and was a senior reporter at the Human Events newspaper. McCabe deployed with the Army Reserve to Iraq for 15 months as a combat historian. For many years, he was a reporter and photographer for “The Pilot,” Boston’s Catholic paper. He was also the editor of two free community papers, “The Somerville (Mass.) News and “The Alewife (North Cambridge, Mass.).”
