Tag Archives: Michael Morell

Former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell Can’t Keep His Stories Straight

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morell-russia.sized-770x415xtPJ MEDIA, BY PATRICK POOLE, AUGUST 9, 2016:

Just last Friday, former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell opined in the pages of theNew York Times: “I ran the CIA. Now I’m endorsing Hillary Clinton.” He added that Donald Trump “may be a national security threat” due to his connections with Russia.

But just last November on Face the Nation, Morell was in favor of Trump’s approach.

So what does Morell really believe?

Here is the NYT tweeting about Morell’s op-ed, followed by Monday’s interview with CBS where Morell said he wanted to “scare Assad” and kill Russians:

He ran the CIA. Now he’s endorsing Hillary Clinton for president. https://t.co/MAbSD4DFBO via @nytopinion pic.twitter.com/T0UYEJGz52

“When we were in Iraq, the Iranians were giving weapons to the Shi’a militia, who were killing American soldiers,” Morell told “CBS This Morning” co-host Charlie Rose.

“The Iranians were making us pay a price. We need to make the Iranians pay a price in Syria. We need to make the Russians pay a price.”

He went on to explain making them “pay the price” would mean killing Russians and Iranians, and said he wants to make Syrian president Bashar al-Assad uncomfortable.

“I want to go after those things that Assad sees as his personal power base. I want to scare Assad.“

Now, here’s Morell back in November advising the opposite: that the U.S. needs to reconsider engagement with Assad and Putin as part of a rethinking of U.S. counter-ISIS strategy:

Morell-Putin-Assad

So should we be scaring Assad and killing Russians in Syria, or should we be engaging the Assad regime and Putin to counter ISIS?

Don’t expect the Washington, D.C. media to press Morell over that contradiction.

Or this one: in his New York Times oped, Morell also suggested that Donald Trump had been recruited by Putin as “an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”

But, as I noted at PJ Media two weeks ago, Hillary Clinton has her own Russia problems — namely, a Russian spy ring that the FBI had to shut down because it was getting too close to Clinton. That Russia problem is in addition to themillions the Clinton Foundation received while a government board that Hillary sat on as secretary of State was considering approval of the sale of a majority stake of Uranium One — which controls 20 percent of U.S. uranium assets — to Rosatom, the Russian atomic energy agency.

Also, Bill Clinton received $500,000 to give a speech in Moscow on behalf of a Russian investment bank tied to the Uranium One deal.

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Ex-CIA spook who whitewashed Benghazi endorses Hillary

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Hillary Clinton Photo: Reuters

Hillary Clinton Photo: Reuters

New York Post, by Kenneth R.  Timmerman, Aug. 5, 2016:

Hillary has become a spook’s candidate. Former deputy CIA Director Michael Morell, who so conveniently covered her tracks in Benghazi, has now confirmed it.

In a glowing endorsement his friends at The New York Times prominently featured Friday, Morell gave his full-throated support to Clinton, while insisting that he was no partisan and had even voted Republican in the past.

Like an obedient party hack vying for a new job, Morell spouted the party line that Donald Trump was “not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.”

Those are strong words, especially coming from someone who we are led to believe is an unimpeachable source. But is he?

The “non-partisan” Morell was caught “mis-speaking” to Congress about his role in sanitizing the infamous CIA talking points prepared for US Ambassador Susan Rice to deliver on the Sunday talk shows after the Benghazi attacks. And when he was caught out, like a faithful soldier, he fell on his sword.

Here’s how it happened: After Susan Rice’s outlandish claims on the Sunday talk shows that the Benghazi attacks began as a spontaneous protest over a “hateful” YouTube video, Congress began asking where she had gotten that information. This is how lawmakers discovered that the intelligence community had drafted her talking points, with input from the White House and Hillary Clinton’s staff.

Early drafts of the talking points included a mention of al Qaeda. But that reference was removed in the final drafts. Sen. Lindsay Graham explained to me what happened next.

“On Nov. 27, 2012, Morell and Susan Rice came into my office,” he told me. “I asked Morell who changed [the talking points]. He said, the FBI deleted the reference to al Qaeda because of an ongoing criminal investigation. So I called the FBI. They said, no, they didn’t change the talking points. They were furious.”

Apparently, that was an understatement: Someone at a senior level at FBI called the CIA to protest directly. Graham continued the story: “At 4 p.m. that day, CIA called me and said Morell ‘mis-spoke’ in his meeting with me, and that CIA deleted [the reference to al Qaeda], but they couldn’t give a reason why.”

Graham thought the reason was obvious: “If the truth had been known that al Qaeda killed four Americans seven weeks before an election, it would have been a different political story.”

Remember what Obama and his surrogates were saying? “Osama is dead, GM is alive.” That was their campaign mantra.

In fact, it was Morell himself who made those changes.

Morell subsequently testified before the House Select Committee on Intelligence, and eventually before the Benghazi Select Committee, twisting himself into a pretzel to explain why he removed any mention of the al Qaeda involvement in the attacks.

He ultimately claimed he believed news reports calling the Benghazi attacks a protest gone wild were more credible than repeated e-mails and cables from his own station chief in Libya insisting there had never been a protest.

It was an admission of gross incompetence — or partisanship. But that was the party line Clinton was putting out.

Morell was rewarded after the 2012 election. When he retired from CIA, Morell took a position with Beacon Global Strategies, a company cofounded by Andrew Shapiro and Philippe Reines, members of Hillary Clinton’s inner circle at the State Department.

In his Times op-ed, Morell claims Donald Trump is an “unwitting agent” of Russia because he makes friendly remarks toward Putin. But Trump has never taken a dime from Putin. As we now know, Clinton and her husband have both profited handsomely from their relations to Russian state-owned banks and corporations — and actually helped Russia get its hands on a company with rights to a fifth of US uranium. Does that make her a “witting agent” of Russia?

This former spook’s willingness to skewer the truth on behalf of a political patron should suffice to make any thinking person reject his judgment.

As for the truth about Hillary, well, we’ve seen her selling political favors to foreign countries and companies while secretary of state through the Clinton Foundation. And lying to the public incessantly — about Benghazi, her e-mails, you name it. Just imagine what she’ll do if elected president.

Kenneth R. Timmerman’s latest book, Deception: the Making of the YouTube Video Hillary and Obama Blamed for Benghazi, was released two weeks ago and is already in its 4th printing.

Morell: July 4th Terror Warnings Are ‘Not Routine,’ Wouldn’t Be Surprised if U.S. is Attacked

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Washington Free Beacon, by David Rutz, June 29, 2015:

Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell said Monday on CBS This Morning there was “nothing routine” about July 4 terrorist attack warnings by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, adding that he would not be surprised if “we’re sitting here a week from today talking about an attack.”

Federal authorities issued warnings across the U.S. of potential terroristic targeting of Independence Day celebrations, USA Today reported:

While there was no specific or credible threat of attack, the official said the intelligence bulletin prepared by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI alerted local colleagues to the ongoing threats posed by the Islamic State and other homegrown extremists. The official was not authorized to comment publicly.

The bulletins are frequently issued in advance of major U.S. holidays out of an abundance of caution and concern that operatives may exploit the timing to generate greater attention.

“This one really resonates with me for two reasons,” Morell said. “One is there’s been about 50 people in the last 12 months who have been arrested in the United States for being radicalized by ISIS, wanting to go fight there, or wanting to conduct an attack here, so there’s a lot of people out there who are seeing themselves as aligned with ISIS. Number two, you have this ISIS call to arms during Ramadan. We are right in the middle of Ramadan, call to arms, conduct attacks against our enemies, so I’m worried about this one.”

Co-host Norah O’Donnell asked what that meant for Americans over the 4th of July weekend.

“I don’t want to tell Americans what to do or what not to do, but Norah, I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re sitting here a week from today talking about an attack over the weekend in the United States,” he said. “That’s how serious this is.”

***

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And don’t forget the threat of Al Qaeda:

Former CIA Director and Deputy Director Endorse Benghazi Select Committee

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leon_panettaBy John Hayward:

It might just have become impossible for Democrats to sit out the Benghazi Select Committee, which means the childish temper tantrums from people like Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are going to cost the Party dearly.

At a forum held by his Panetta Institute in California on Monday, former CIA director – and major Democrat Party figure – Leon Panetta endorsed the new investigation, as did former Deputy Director Michael Morell, who played a role in preparing at least one set of Benghazi talking points for the Obama Administration.  As related by Politico, one of the reasons Morell favors a definitive Select Committee investigation is that he wants to make it clear the talking points he edited weren’t the same as the hyper-politicized gobbledygook that led the Administration to lie about “spontaneous video protests” for weeks on end:

“A lot of people have looked at this, but the polls show that the American people still have questions. I want to make sure that all of those questions are cleared up. There are still some questions about the role of the agency. And there are still questions about my own personal role and I want to clear that up,” Morell said during a panel discussion at the Panetta Institute in Monterey, Calif. “It might be surprising for you to hear me say this, but  I am a supporter of the creation of this committee because I want all the facts to come together in one place and be presented as one—by one entity as one thing, so the American people can see all of this.”

“I am hopeful that at least getting the facts on the table will be helpful.”

[…] During his appearance Monday, Morell sought to make clear that he had no involvement whatsover in drafting Rhodes’s messaging memo and, in fact, didn’t even know about it until recently.

“It’s very important to remember that there’s actually two sets of talking points now. For months, there was only one set of talking points, now there’s two. The only set that I was ever aware of was the set that the CIA produced at the request of  Congress and those we reproduced by my analysts and they were edited by a number of people including me,” the ex-CIA official said. As for the memo Rhodes issued, “Nobody in the intelligence community ever vetted those. Nobody in the intelligence community was aware of those So, I just learned about those a couple of weeks ago, so I really don’t have anything to add on those points. The ones I can talk to are the ones that we produced.”

Morell also said he’s certain that the House panel will reject allegations that the talking points he prepared were intended to provide political solace to either Obama or Clinton.

“There is absolutely no truth to that and I am 100 percent confident that when this committee is done with its work that will be shown to be true,” he said.

The White House repeatedly tried throwing intelligence officials under the bus during its frantic efforts to keep Obama’s re-election campaign alive after the Benghazi attack.  It looks like there might be a few hard feelings about that, now that all the “good soldiers” kept their lips zipped until the elections were over.  The discovery of those White House “smoking gun” emails by Judicial Watch has been a truly seismic event.  The intelligence community wants to create some daylight between itself and the political hacks who cooked up the “video protest” story.

Read more at Human Events

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Benghazi emails suggest White House aide involved in prepping Rice for ‘video’ explanation

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Sept. 13, 2012: A Libyan man investigates the inside of the U.S. Consulate after the attack that killed four Americans.AP

Sept. 13, 2012: A Libyan man investigates the inside of the U.S. Consulate after the attack that killed four Americans.AP


Fox News, April 29, 2014 By :

Newly released emails on the Benghazi terror attack suggest a senior White House aide played a central role in preparing former U.N. ambassador Susan Rice for her controversial Sunday show appearances — where she wrongly blamed protests over an Internet video.

More than 100 pages of documents were released to the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Among them was a Sept. 14, 2012, email from Ben Rhodes, an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications.

The Rhodes email, with the subject line: “RE: PREP Call with Susan: Saturday at 4:00 pm ET,” was sent to a dozen members of the administration’s inner circle, including key members of the White House communications team such as Press Secretary Jay Carney.

In the email, Rhodes specifically draws attention to the anti-Islam Internet video, without distinguishing whether the Benghazi attack was different from protests elsewhere.

The email lists the following two goals, among others:

“To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”

“To reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.”

The email goes on to state that the U.S. government rejected the message of the Internet video. “We find it disgusting and reprehensible. But there is absolutely no justification at all for responding to this movie with violence,” the email stated.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the documents read like a PR strategy, not an effort to provide the best available intelligence to the American people.

“The goal of the White House was to do one thing primarily, which was to make the president look good. Blame it on the video and not [the] president’s policies,” he said.

The Rhodes email was not part of the 100 pages of emails released by the administration last May — after Republicans refused to move forward with the confirmation of John Brennan as CIA director until the so-called “talking points” emails were made public.

The email is also significant because in congressional testimony in early April, former deputy CIA director Michael Morell told lawmakers it was Rice, in her Sunday show appearances, who linked the video to the Benghazi attack. Morell said the video was not part of the CIA analysis.

“My reaction was two-fold,” Morell told members of the House Intelligence Committee, regarding her appearances. “One was that what she said about the attacks evolving spontaneously from a protest was exactly what the talking points said, and it was exactly what the intelligence community analysts believed. When she talked about the video, my reaction was, that’s not something that the analysts have attributed this attack to.”

Incidentally, three leading Republicans on Monday night sent letters to the House and Senate foreign affairs committees asking them to compel the administration to explain who briefed Rice in advance of the Sunday talk shows and whether State Department or White House personnel were involved.

“How could former Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, during the five Sunday talk shows on September 16, 2012, claim that the attacks on our compounds were caused by a hateful video when Mr. Morell testified that the CIA never mentioned the video as a causal factor,” said the letter, from Sens. Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina; Kelly Ayotte, of New Hampshire; and John McCain, of Arizona.

The Sept. 14 Rhodes email does not indicate whether there was a “prep call” for Rice, as it suggests. If the call went ahead, it does not indicate who briefed her. Fox News has asked the White House if Rhodes prepped Rice for the Sunday shows, and, if he didn’t, who did — as well as what intelligence Rhodes relied upon.

The newly released emails also show that on Sept. 27, 2012 a Fox News report — titled “US officials knew Libya attack was terrorism within 24 hours, sources confirm” — was circulated at the most senior levels of the administration. This included going to then-deputy national security adviser Denis McDonough; then-White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan; Morell; and Rhodes, among others, but the comments were redacted, citing “personal privacy information.”

Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent.

Holder confirms Petraeus probe still open, amid questions over whether case used as leverage

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petrausBy , :

Two years after the FBI first began investigating former CIA director David Petraeus, Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed to lawmakers that the case remains open — amid allegations it is being used as leverage to keep the former general quiet.

“All I can say is that this is an ongoing investigation,” Holder testified Tuesday, in response to a series of questions from Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who wrote to the Justice Department last month about the matter. “I’m really not in a position to say much more about it than that.”

Fox News was told there may be friction between the FBI — whose investigators are on the Petraeus case — and the Justice Department over how to proceed, though Holder dismissed that claim.

“I’ve been briefed on this matter, and I did not detect any friction in what is an ongoing investigation,” he said.

In March, Chaffetz wrote to Holder, asking why the probe remained open 16 months after Petraeus resigned as CIA director following an affair with his biographer. At the time, Chaffetz suggested it was kept open to keep Petraeus quiet on controversies like the Benghazi terror attack, telling Fox News: “If there is something serious and sinister, then let Congress know. If not, give this man’s reputation back. But I worry that the White House is just holding this over his head to keep him quiet.”

In a series of questions before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Holder could not remember when he first learned about the FBI investigation or when the president was notified. He also could not recall when then-White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan (who is now the CIA director) learned, or when former CIA deputy director Mike Morell, who offered conflicting testimony on the question to the House Intelligence Committee last week, learned.

Read more at Fox News

More Obfuscation on Benghazi

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Michael Morell, former acting director of the CIA, examines an enlargement of the Obama administration's Benghazi 'talking points' during congressional testimony, April 2. Associated Press

Michael Morell, former acting director of the CIA, examines an enlargement of the Obama administration’s Benghazi ‘talking points’ during congressional testimony, April 2. Associated Press

By MICHAEL B. MUKASEY:

Last week’s encounter between former acting CIA Director Michael Morell and the House Permanent Subcommittee on Intelligence may have brought us a bit closer to the truth of how four Americans came to be killed at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, and how their countrymen came to be lied to about it. But the progress toward truth was probably not made in a way that Mr. Morell intended. The encounter on Capitol Hill also made clear that the forum that will take us all the way to the truth must be something other than a congressional hearing.

Mr. Morell announced at the start of the hearing that he was there to refute claims that he had “inappropriately altered CIA’s classified analysis and its unclassified talking points . . . for the political benefit of President Obama and then-Secretary of State Clinton.” Critics of the government’s performance on Benghazi have charged that Mr. Morell’s revisions principally although not exclusively involved changing the description of the violence and its perpetrators, and removing the suggestion that they might have had ties to a terrorist organization. These changes, it is argued, enabled Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the time, to promote the discredited and since abandoned narrative that the violence was a reaction to an anti-Muslim YouTube video produced by a probationer in Los Angeles.

The acting CIA director’s changes to the talking points did indeed enable the blame-it-on-the-video fiction, which served the interest of a president seeking re-election based in part on having put al Qaeda on the run, although in fairness it is not clear that was Mr. Morell’s motive. Thus he edited out a description of the warnings that the CIA had provided to the State Department of earlier terrorist attacks on the British embassy and on the Red Cross that caused them to withdraw their personnel, and a description of an attack that blew a hole in the U.S.’s own installation—events that might have suggested that Sept. 11, 2012, was not an isolated event.

Mr. Morell said he did the revising because it would have looked unseemly for the CIA to appear to be pounding its chest and blaming the State Department.

He substituted “demonstration” for “attack” despite the direct statement by the CIA’s Libya station chief in Tripoli that there was no demonstration; Mr. Morell changed “terrorist” to “extremist.” His explanation is that he relied on the CIA’s analysts, who he said had comprehensive information available to them, rather than on the CIA’s station chief, who relied on the testimony of eyewitnesses who arrived soon after the attack started. He used the term “extremist” because that’s what CIA analysts call terrorists.

Here it is actually possible that Mr. Morell fell victim to a bifurcated culture within the CIA. On one side is the directorate of operations, made up of those who do things, from gathering information to carrying out covert activities. On the other is a directorate of intelligence staffed by analysts who evaluate the information gathered by the directorate of operations and others. Mr. Morell spent his career in the directorate of intelligence. By his own account, when faced with a contradiction between what people on the ground were saying and what analysts were saying, his view was that unless the analysts—whom he called “my analysts”—changed their view, he would go with their version, even though they relied in large measure on local press reports.

The directorate of intelligence functions according to a protocol whose rigidity we more often associate with the military. So analysts whose deductions put them at odds with those on the scene wouldn’t have considered, and apparently didn’t consider, simply ringing up those on the scene and getting their input. To the contrary, analysts deal only with information that comes in the prescribed way. The CIA station chief’s communication to headquarters came in an email and did not get circulated within the intelligence community as it would have if it had been contained in a cable.

Read more at WSJ

Morell Hurt CIA’s Reputation in Benghazi Hearing

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John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Kelly AyotteBy Fred Fleitz:

Republican Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Kelly Ayotte put it best yesterday in a joint statement they issued in response to former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell’s testimony yesterday to the House Intelligence Committee:

“This looks an awful lot like misleading the Congress.”

It’s hard to come to any other conclusion after watching Morell squirm for three hours as he explained CIA’s drafting of talking points a week after the attacks on the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi.  The final version of these talking points were used by Ambassador Susan Rice on September 16, 2012 to deny that the attacks were related to terrorism and to instead claim they were the result of a spontaneous demonstration in response to an anti-Muslim video.

This explanation was politically convenient six weeks ahead of the 2012 presidential election and helped President Obama defend his dubious campaign theme that because of his leadership, Osama bin Laden was dead and al Qaeda was on the run.

During the hearing, Morell denied altering the talking points for political reasons.  He said he sided with CIA analysts who believed the attacks were in response to a demonstration and the anti-Muslim video even though the CIA Libya station chief told him there was no demonstration and that he believed the attacks were an act of terrorism.

Morell tried to convey that relying on career CIA analysts – even though they were thousands of miles away from the Benghazi attack – was a responsible decision that had nothing to do with politics.

This is nonsense.  Having worked as a CIA analyst for 19 years, I can attest that the lower levels of the CIA analysis bureaucracy know exactly what their managers want.  They know the line they need to take to get promoted and to earn bonuses.  Moreover, the analysis side of the house is well known for its liberal political bias and for being gun-shy in drawing politically controversial conclusions since the 9/11 and Iraq WMD intelligence failures.

Maybe Morell didn’t alter the talking points for the White House because he didn’t have to – his analysts and managers knew what he and the White House expected.  Regardless of who was responsible for drafting and altering the talking points, we now know Morell approved them even though he knew the senior CIA officer in Libya had a very different view.  He also knew the memo he approved said exactly what the White House wanted to hear.

Morell made many other head-spinning statements, such as his claim that we can’t know the motivations of the attackers since we haven’t caught them yet.  He said the events on September 11, 2012 were both a terrorist attack and a protest.

Morell also said he took out the word “Islamic” in a sentence that described the attackers as “Islamic extremists” because he did not want to fuel anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world.  This was a policy call and was politically convenient for the White House which has been extremely reluctant to use the terms “Islamic” or Islamist” in describing terrorists or terrorist attacks.

This was a bad day for the CIA since Morell’s testimony will further undermine the Agency’s reputation as a non-political and objective source of information on national security matters.  Morell was right when he said the CIA probably should not have been involved in drafting unclassified talking points.  If there was a compelling reason for the CIA to engage in such a task, CIA managers had a responsibility to be politically neutral and not ignore inconvenient facts like reports by the Libya Chief of Station.

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Ex-CIA boss Morell gives unorthodox reasons for omitting key Benghazi details

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morell3By :

In his opening statement during highly anticipated testimony Wednesday on Benghazi, former CIA deputy director Michael Morell claimed to be an intelligence professional who was willing to lay out the facts — no matter how damaging.

“I take very seriously the allegations about how the CIA in general and about how I in particular handled the analysis and the talking points,” Morell told the House Intelligence Committee, in his first public testimony on the Benghazi attacks. “The ethical code under which intelligence officers carry out their responsibilities calls for total objectivity.”

But Morell’s own testimony would appear to undercut that statement.

Early on, Morell made a startling claim about the so-called “talking points,” the faulty narrative that initially blamed a protest for the attack.

On the talking points, Morell said he dropped information about CIA security warnings — which were factual and accurate — because he thought it would be unprofessional to embarrass then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

This raised eyebrows, considering those warnings had alerted others that security conditions were rapidly deteriorating in eastern Libya. The warnings were not acted on, and four Americans, including ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed in the 2012 attack.

“You take out everything that is even related to warnings and a bunch of other stuff too,” Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said. “To me it seems like you are more interested in protecting the State Department than the State Department is, and more interested in protecting the FBI than the FBI.”

In his defense, Morell responded: “I simply saw this as a way for CIA to pound its chest and say, ‘look, we warned’; therefore laying all the blame on the State Department. I did not think that appropriate.”

In an email, one day before the talking points were used by then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on national television, where she wrongly blamed a protest, then-CIA Director David Petraeus told Morell the talking points were so devoid of fact that they were useless.

But despite his boss’ reservations, Morell went ahead with the text which limited damage to the State Department.

Read more at Fox News

Here’s What Ex-CBS Reporter Sharyl Attkison Noticed During Wednesday’s Benghazi Hearing

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Screen-Shot-2014-04-03-at-11.22.46-AM-300x151The Blaze, By :

Journalist Sharyl Attkisson, who recently resigned from CBS News, dissected former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell’s Wednesday testimony on the infamous Benghazi talking points. She not only outlined his claims in detail on Twitter, but she also produced a new article on her website,SharylAttkisson.com.

She noted that it’s still unclear “why federal officials seemed so confused and provided so much contradictory info about how the talking points evolved.”

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Ex-CIA leader Morell denies role in Benghazi ‘cover-up’ during heated Hill hearing

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morell2By Guy Taylor:

A high-level former CIA leader flatly denied allegations on Wednesday that he had “inappropriately altered and influenced” the the now infamous Benghazi talking points to downplay the role of terrorism in the incident by inaccurately playing up the idea that the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks had been born out of a spontaneous protest — and then later “covered up” his actions.

“These allegations accuse me of taking these actions for the political benefit of President Obama and then [former] Secretary of State [Hillary Rodham] Clinton,” former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell told lawmakers on the House Select Committee on Intelligence.

“These allegations are false,” he said in prepared remarks given to committee members and the press as the highly-anticipated hearing on the Benghazi talking points got underway — disputes over which have long sat at the center of political fireworks hanging over an exhaustive series of congressional investigations into the attacks that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans more than 18 months ago.

Mr. Morell moved quickly in his testimony to address the heart of the matter: Why did senior CIA and White House officials in Washington ignore pointed assertions by the CIA’s chief of station in Libya that there had been no protest prior to the attacks and why were those assertions not included in talking points that former U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice used on Sept. 16 when she appeared — five days after the attacks — on several news talks shows to claim that there had been a protest.

Mr. Morell said the CIA station chief’s assertions were not used in the talking points because they were outmatched by other streams of information being weighed at the same time by CIA analysts crafting the points.

Read more at Washington Times

 

 

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House Intel Committee to determine if Ex-CIA Director Chose to Lie about Benghazi or was told to

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Ex-CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell.

Ex-CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell.

By Walid Shoebat:

According to a September 15, 2012 email addressed to Mike Morell, who at the time was the Deputy Director of the CIA, the Benghazi attack was “not an escalation of protests”. This is significant because one day later, then U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice told the audiences of five national Sunday talk shows that it was.

On April 2nd, the House Intelligence Committee is scheduled to hear testimony from Morell and that discrepancy is expected to be a central theme. Last year, Shoebat.com reported on the findings that Morell and a man named Jake Sullivan were intimately involved in drafting Rice’s talking points. Today, Sullivan is serving as the top national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.

Earlier this year, Shoebat.com brought you the explosive claims made by Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer (Ret.), who asserted that Morell could be a considered a ‘co-conspirator with al-Qaeda’ if he withheld the contents of the email he received from his station chief.

However, if Morell was told by anyone higher up within the administration to dismiss the contents of the email and work toward drafting the talking points ultimately parroted by Rice one day later, the charge levied by Shaffer would almost necessarily apply to someone higher up the food chain. According to one report, a former intelligence official said that’s exactly what happened.

Another claim that is bound to get attention is the ‘fog of war’ defense and that multiple pieces of conflicting information caused the watering down of the talking points.

Read more at Shoebat.com

The hearing is scheduled to start tomorrow at 10 AM EST.

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REPORT: TOP GOP AIDE IN CHARGE OF BENGHAZI INVESTIGATION FORMS BUSINESS WITH CLINTONISTAS

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rogers-with-allen-in-bg-apBreitbart, by :

One of the top Republican congressional staffers on the Benghazi investigation founded a consulting firm comprised of numerous former Clinton aides and a former CIA director accused of lying to Congress about the attack, Fox News reported Monday.

J. Michael Allen is the founder and managing director of Beacon Global Strategies. He previously served as the staff director for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by GOP Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan and perhaps the most important panel investigating Benghazi.

Allen’s new business partners at Beacon include:

  • Philippe Reines, a dyed-in-the-wool Clinton hatchet man who worked for Clinton from 2002 until founding Beacon
  • Andrew Shapiro, a former top State Department official (under Clinton) and senior policy adviser to Clinton
  • Josh Kirshner, a former top State Department official under Clinton who also worked for her as a Senate aide in 2006
  • Ashley Woolheater, who previously led a team “responsible for crafting and executing the strategic media goals of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton” at the State Department
  • Jeremy Bash, a former chief of staff to Leon Panetta at the Defense Department and CIA under President Obama
  • Julianne Smith, a former top aide to Vice President Joe Biden
  • Sarah Davey, a former aide to Michelle Obama who helped craft the “Let’s Move!” initiative
  • Meredith Steen, a low-level Democratic aide who interned for Democrat James Moran

Eight colleagues. All Democrats. Four worked in senior positions under Clinton, the other three at the Obama White House.

The Fox News report by Catherine Herridge notes that one month after Allen interviewed Morell about the Benghazi attack in May 2013, Beacon approached him to hire him. Allen was then one of the most senior GOP officials on the issue and Morell the deputy director at the CIA.

A representative at Beacon told Fox that no conflict of interest existed because Morell was approached to be hired after he had already conducted the interview.

Benghazi Investigation – Potential Conflict Of Interest – Special Report 3/24/14

Benghazi and the Politicization of Intelligence

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timthumb (3)By Clare Lopez:

As we now know, within about 15 minutes after the start of the attack on the U.S. Special Mission Compound (SMC) in Benghazi on 11 September 2012, top U.S. civilian and uniformed officials were informed that it was a terrorist attack. The information was clear, unambiguous, and remained consistent over the chaotic hours that followed. It did not change. If anything, the exceptionally accurate final mortar strike on the CIA Annex that took the lives of former Navy SEALs Glenn Doherty and Ty Woods, and gravely injured others, provided conclusive evidence of a carefully pre-planned attack. There is simply no room for equivocation on this: it was a well-organized, military-style assault by terrorists armed with assault rifles, RPGs, and eventually a mortar.

Mike Morell, then-head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC), had the task of helping to prepare talking points for then-U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, who was slated to appear on five Sunday morning talk shows a few days later. Morell was personally responsible for “cutting some 50 percent of the text,” including all “references to Al Qaeda” and the many earlier terror attacks against U.S. and other Western targets in Benghazi. When the Senate Intelligence Committee finally succeeded in prying loose the emails that had flowed back and forth to the CIA, State Department and the White House during the talking points editing process, it was clear that Morell not only had misrepresented his own role, but also had been less than forthcoming about the close oversight role played by the White House in ensuring that all references to al-Qa’eda terrorism would be scrubbed. Morell also made sure to scrub from the talking points the honest assessment that “We cannot rule out that individuals had previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.”

With the President in a close re-election race and touting the obviously inaccurate meme that al-Qa’eda was on the run and close to defeat, it wouldn’t have helped to admit that Islamic terrorists, after what was likely weeks of planning and rehearsal, had just overrun a U.S. diplomatic post in North Africa and killed four Americans. Better to obfuscate until the election was safely behind them. Besides, “What difference does it make?” that the most senior officials of the U.S. government deliberately subverted the intelligence process as long as it helped ensure the President’s re-election?

Read more at AIM

Evidence casts doubt on ex-CIA leaders’ claims on Benghazi mortar attack

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benghazi 8By , :

If former CIA Director David Petraeus and his ex-deputy Michael Morell are recalled to testify on Benghazi, they can expect hard questions about the mortar attack on the CIA annex which killed two former Navy SEALs.

Republican Mike Rogers, chairman of the powerful House Intelligence Committee, is weighing whether to recall one or both of those officials over their Benghazi congressional testimony.

Rogers said the evidence suggests a highly skilled team carried out the mortar strike. Fox News has confirmed five rounds were fired in under a minute, with three hitting the annex roof — a target roughly the size of two convenience stores.

“This was exceptionally good shooting. It was clearly accurate. They adjusted their fire, which is a term a mortar crew might use, so they went a little long and a little short and they fired for effect,” Rogers said. “When you fire for effect and you have three rounds hit exactly where they were intended that ended up taking the lives of our American heroes there, that tells me that they knew exactly what they were doing. So that was either significantly preplanned, or it was a mortar crew that was exceptionally good.”

In addition to Rogers’ assessment, military experts say the mortar strike on the CIA base was evidence of a planned terror attack, and because it forced the evacuation of the annex, it must have been known immediately in Washington. But in a letter to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in January 2013,Morell said “the nature of the attacks suggested they did not involve significant pre-planning.”

Mortar crews have specialized training to prepare rounds for launch which includes calculations for distance, direction and altitude. Mortars are called “indirect fire” because in most cases, especially urban environments like Benghazi, the crew can’t see the target.

A U.S. official familiar with the investigation said an early lead on the mortar site, a field a half -mile southeast of the annex, did not pan out in part because a forensic review showed the mortars were fired from a greater distance.

Given the accuracy, and the fact the rounds were fired in darkness, five military officers, including retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, concluded the terrorists pre-set the location.

“For this mortar crew to put three rounds of the first five — right on target — means to me that even in the day of GPS … the site for the mortar had to be pre-selected,”Peters explained.”That would be a good score for a U.S. infantry, well-trained mortar crew.”

Retired Army Gen. Bob Scales, who has written extensively on artillery fire, concurred. “This took an enormous amount of planning, an enormous amount of training. It required preparation at a firing point, not only the mortar but also the ammunition, and something like this can’t be done overnight. This is something that probably took weeks in preparation in order to pull it off.”

Separately, Morell is accused by Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee of misleading lawmakers over the White House’s role in the so-called Benghazi talking points by stating the text was provided to the administration for their awareness, not for their input. Emails later released by the administration showed otherwise. Morell, who excised half of the talking points text, previously told Fox News that “neither the Agency, the analysts, nor I cooked the books in any way.”

Read more at Fox News

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