The Hemingway Report

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

'Spinning up as we speak': Email shows Pentagon was ready to roll as Benghazi attack occurred

Video 181

And this doesn't even scratch the surface.

Makes you wonder what else was in the 31,000 emails she deleted.

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Benghazi questions yet unanswered ahead of Clinton testimony.

As the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was unfolding, a high-ranking Pentagon official urgently messaged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top deputies to offer military help, according to an email obtained by Judicial Watch.

The revelation appears to contradict testimony Defense Secretary Leon Panetta gave lawmakers in 2013, when he said there was no time to get forces to the scene in Libya, where four Americans were killed, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.

“I just tried you on the phone but you were all in with S [apparent reference to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton],” reads the email, from Panetta’s chief of staff Jeremy Bash. “After consulting with General Dempsey, General Ham and the Joint Staff, we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.”

- Jeremy Bash, Pentagon chief of staff

The email was sent out at 7:19 p.m. ET on Sept. 11, 2012, in the early stages of the eight-hour siege that also claimed the lives of Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith and two former Navy SEALs, Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, private CIA contractors who raced to the aid of embattled State Department workers.

Although the email came after the first wave of the attack at the consulate, it occurred before a mortar strike on the CIA annex killed Woods and Doherty.

“This leaves no doubt military assets were offered and ready to go, and awaiting State Department signoff, which did not come,” Judicial Watch, a nonprofit government watchdog said in a statement.

Parts of the email from Bash were redacted before release, including details on what military forces were available.

In defending the Obama administration’s lack of a military response to the attack, Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee nearly two years ago that “time, distance, the lack of an adequate warning, events that moved very quickly on the ground prevented a more immediate response.”

The first assault occurred at the consulate at 3:40 p.m. ET. The second attack on the CIA annex a little over a mile away began three hours later. Bash’s email was sent approximately 40 minutes after that attack began.

Bash’s email, which bore the subject line “Libya,” was sent to Clinton’s then-deputy chief of staff Jacob Sullivan, Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Thomas Nides.

The attack came in three waves at two locations. It began when a handful of attackers scaled the wall of the diplomatic post at dusk and opened a gate, allowing dozens of armed men inside who then set the building on fire. Stevens and Smith died after breathing in smoke while hiding in a safe room, and later died.

Hours later, a nearby CIA annex was attacked twice. Woods and Doherty died there while defending the annex from the rooftop. A team of six security officials summoned from Tripoli and a Libyan military unit helped evacuate the remaining U.S. personnel who were taken to an airport and flown out of Benghazi.

The Obama administration later falsely claimed that the attack was triggered by an Internet video that insulted Islam.

Lawmakers investigating the events surrounding Benghazi already had acquired the e-mail, along with tens of thousands of others related to the probe, according to Matt Wolking, spokesman for the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

“The Select Committee has obtained and reviewed tens of thousands of documents in the course of its thorough, fact-centered investigation into the Benghazi terrorist attacks, and this information will be detailed in the final report the Committee hopes to release within the next few months," Wolking told FoxNews.com. "While the Committee does not rush to release or comment on every document it uncovers, I can confirm that we obtained the unreacted version of this email last year, in addition to Jake Sullivan’s response."

Michael Brown, whose Ferguson death made him household name, lies in relative obscurity

Get out the violin.

This story is trying to paint Michael Brown as some sort of forgotten hero.

You remember this ...

The "gentile giant" displaying his interaction skills

The simple truth is Michael Brown was a crook. "Hands up don't shoot"..."He was shot in the back''..."He was on his knees when shot" was told repeatedly by lying witnesses, egged on by Sharpton, who were desperate to hold a white cop responsible no matter what the consequences.

Darren Wilson, who's life has been dramatically changed, could have been prosecuted had it not been for the fact forensic evidence does not have an axe to grind.

This is a page right out of the Tyshawn Lee playbook.

"In the weeks after Brown's death, hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised through fundraising websites to defray the family's funeral, burial, travel and living expenses."

So they only had $4.95 left to buy a can of orange spray paint?

What happened to the rest of the money?

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In this photo taken Thursday, Nov. 5, 2015, Michael Brown's grave site is shown in Normandy, Mo. More than 15 months since his life ended at age 18 during a mid-street confrontation with Darren Wilson, fanning the "Black Lives Matter" campaign, Brown is among the most-famous residents of 160-year-old St. Peter's Cemetery, though there is still no headstone marking his grave. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson) (The Associated Press)

NORMANDY, Mo. – Michael Brown once told an uncle that the world would know his name one day, and he was right. Fifteen months after the black 18-year-old's killing by a white Ferguson police officer made him a key figure in the debate over the treatment of blacks by U.S. law enforcement, though, Brown lies buried in relative obscurity.

Brown is among the most notable residents of 160-year-old St. Peter's Cemetery, but there is no headstone marking his grave. Instead the burial plot — Section 10, Block F, Lot 12, Grave 4 — is visible only when gazing down at a concrete slab simply spray-painted in orange with "MB."

Other matters have interfered in getting the permanent headstone in place, said Lyah LeFlore, vice president of the Michael O.D. Brown "We Love Our Sons & Daughters" Foundation that Brown's mother, Lesley McSpadden, helped launch in her late son's memory. Among the distractions: The unfolding wrongful-death lawsuit that McSpadden and Brown's father filed against Ferguson, the St. Louis suburb's former police chief and Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed Brown during an August 2014 confrontation.

The cost presumably isn't an issue: In the weeks after Brown's death, hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised through fundraising websites to defray the family's funeral, burial, travel and living expenses.

"Everybody has to do things kind of at their own pace," LeFlore said of efforts to mark Brown's grave. McSpadden "just wants something beautiful, poetic and wonderful in her son's memory. It has just taken time.

Translation:

We spent the money.

Brown was unarmed when he was killed by Wilson, who is white and who has since left the police force. Brown's death revived long-simmering questions about the police treatment of minorities throughout the U.S. and energized the national Black Lives Matter movement.

The Justice Department later cleared Wilson, concluding that evidence backed his claim that he shot Brown in self-defense after Brown tried to grab his gun during a struggle through the window of Wilson's police vehicle, then came toward him threateningly after briefly running away.

Now buried four miles from where he died, Brown is among an estimated 90,000 eternal residents of the 119-acre graveyard, superintendent Bill Baumgartner said. Among the more famous people buried there are Negro League baseball player James Thomas "Cool Papa" Bell, who was considered among the fastest players ever, and Wendell Oliver Pruitt, a pioneering black military pilot and Tuskegee Airman killed during a 1945 training exercise.

Baumgartner believes reporters make up most of those looking to see Brown's final resting place — at least often enough that he has a ready stash of photocopied maps in the cemetery office, each with a black line directing them to Brown's spot among a section of low, undistinctive headstones.

LeFlore said McSpadden worries that her son's gravesite might be defaced. Last Christmas, an unidentified motorist — whether intentionally or accidentally — plowed through a shrine in the street where Brown fell dead. And last April, a tree planted in a Ferguson park in Brown's memory was vandalized within hours and its dedication marker was stolen.

"You don't want to think someone's going to trash your child's gravesite. That's a real fear," LeFlore said. "There are more supporters of the cause of making a change than there are those hate-mongerers. You just cannot stop what is inevitable."