It looks a lot to me as though the professional State Department lifers are bailing out on their political appointee bosses Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton, hanging them out to dry in advance of today’s hearings on the Benghazi 9/11 attack. Bradley Klapper of AP noted that these officials on a conference call to media were not authorized to speak publicly, and ttheir identities are being protected by the media on the conference call.
The officials, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said Ambassador Chris Stevens arrived in Benghazi and held meetings on and off the consulate grounds on Sept. 10.
Dana Hughes and Luis Martinez of ABC News explain how they were protecting themselves and the State Department bureaucrats:
Asked about the initial reports of the protests, the official said that while “others” in the administration may have said there were protests, the State Department did not.
“That was not our conclusion,” the official said. “I’m not saying that we had a conclusion.”
They are, in other words, pre-empting Clinton and Rice from blaming subordinates (them) for the lies told to the public, pretending Benghazi was not an Al Qaeda operation on the anniversary of 9/11. The president was loath to admit that the killing of Osama bin Laden hadn’t ended the AQ threat. In fact, even now he maintains that the terror organization is “on its heels,” perhaps even now hoping to maintain the false narrative of a spontaneous response to a YouTube vide.
Keep in Mind that Chris Stevens, the American Ambassador who was dragged through the streets of Benghazi and reportedly violently publicly sodomized, was one of the State Department’s lifers, a career bureaucrat in the Foreign Service.
Hillary Clinton is now the woman-on-the-spot.
Does she protect herself and point out that she never stated that the terror attack was really another angry mob of Muslims ticked off about insults to their prophet? This implicitly would hang out Susan Rice to dry.
via Blog: State Department bureaucracy versus Obama administration.
