Posts Tagged ‘White House’

by Katie Pavlich
It is no surprise by now if you’ve been paying any attention to the Benghazi scandal that the Obama administration totally ignored reports from the ground in Libya on September 11, 2012 when it came to developing talking points for the American public. From the beginning, President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary of Clinton, UN Ambassador Susan Rice and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney all told the American people the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were a result of a protest over a YouTube video raging out of control. As we’ve known for months and revisited Wednesday through testimony from whistleblower Greg Hicks, there was no protest. The video claim is completely fabricated. What happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack and was reported as such to Hillary Clinton at 2 a.m. Reports of a protest outside of the consulate were never issued from Libya to Washington because there wasn’t one.

Regardless, the White House, not the intelligence community, came up with falsified talking points. According to ABC News, they were changed 12 times.

ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.

White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department. The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.

FLASHBACK:

That would appear to directly contradict what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about the talking points in November.

“Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened,” Carney told reporters at the White House press briefing on November 28, 2012. “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”

And about that whole al Qaeda thing? State Department Spokesman Victoria Nuland really didn’t like that, so she had it scrubbed. A final meeting at the White House before the talking points were used publicly eliminated any reference to al Qaeda and the warning signs about an attack and terrorism in Benghazi.

The CIA in its earlier versions of the talking points:

“The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa’ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya. These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.”

In an email to officials at the White House and the intelligence agencies, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland took issue with including that information because it “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either? Concerned …”

The paragraph was entirely deleted.

The CIA and the intelligence community were thrown under the bus by the Obama administration on Benghazi from day one, yet, the CIA was the only agency willing to actually tell the truth about what happened. The CIA gave the White House and the State Department accurate and factual information about al Qaeda and terrorist threats in Benghazi. They were ignored before the attack and then stripped after the threats came to fruition.

by Zeke Miller

For over two years, crews have torn up the North Lawn of the White House just outside the West Wing for what the General Services Administration calls a “utility upgrade.”
But it seems everyone — including people who work at the White House — think something else is going on.
One West Wing official told The New York Times last month that “It is security-related construction,” adding “Even we don’t know exactly what.”
There are two other bunkers on the White House grounds — the hardened Situation Room, and the nuclear shelter under the East Wing. Is this a third? Is this some other secret underground project?
Tell us what you think in the comments below.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/obamas-new-bunker-2011-11#ixzz2HCbyo11m

Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), Chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Monday said the White House appears to be responsible for leaking classified national security information.

‘‘I think the White House has to understand that some of this is coming from their ranks,’’ Feinstein said at a World Affairs Council forum, according to the Associated Press (AP).

Republicans, such as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), have accused the Obama administration of leaking national security information to win votes. Specifically, McCain mentioned the computer virus program that disabled some of Iran’s nuclear facilities — and other sensitive national security matters.

The uproar intensified when the The New York Times ran a story titled, “Obama order sped up wave of cyberattacks against Iran.” The Times has also published stories on Obama’s “kill lists” with sources that were all affiliated with the Obama administration. TheTimes has denied that the Obama administration leaked information to them.
Democrat Pat Caddell has pointed the finger at National Security Adviser Tom Donilon as the primary leaker of sensitive national security information.

Rush Limbaugh often takes opportunities to demonstrate his sense of humor, and to give credit to funny people, even when they come from a different position than him. The conservative talker has lent his voice, for instance, to the highly anti-conservative television show “Family Guy” as a favor to the show’s creator, with whom Limbaugh is friends.

And today, after Obama’s abrupt flip flop on marriage, Limbaugh decided to quote a sarcastic tweet from progressive consultant Jesse Berney, who took to Twitter after the President’s interview to post the following (apparently entirely facetious) Tweet:
Listen to the segment where Limbaugh quoted the Tweet below, courtesy of the Daily Rushbo:
Limbaugh’s website has also produced a satirical image riffing off the concept, reproduced below:

The White House was forced on the defensive on Wednesday as it sought to explain controversial remarks President Barack Obama made earlier in the week about the Supreme Court’s review of his signature healthcare reform law.

“What he did was make an unremarkable observation about 80 years of Supreme Court history,” Carney told reporters during a White House briefing dominated by the topic.

Obama expressed confidence on Monday that the Court would not take an “unprecedented, extraordinary step” by overturning the law, provoking a storm of protest that he had been inaccurate and was challenging the nation’s top judges in an election year.

The Supreme Court could decide to reject his Affordable Care Act to expand health insurance to millions of Americans, striking down a key achievement of his presidency and potentially harming Obama’s bid for re-election on Nov. 6.

The president, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, qualified the remark a day later by stressing he meant action by the Court on a matter of commerce, a legal distinction that cut little ice with his critics.

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who backs Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination to confront Obama, told Fox News the president was “bullying the Supreme Court,” and the White House was grilled on whether he had gone too far.

During robust questioning when Carney was told at one point that he had mischaracterized what the president had said, the press secretary was forced to repeatedly defend the remarks of his boss as an observation of fact.

“Since the 1930s the Supreme Court has without exception deferred to Congress when it comes to Congress’s authority to pass legislation to regulate matters of national economic importance such as health care, 80 years,” Carney said.

“He did not mean and did not suggest that … it would be unprecedented for the court to rule that a law was unconstitutional. That’s what the Supreme Court is there to do,” Carney said.

Arguments in the case were heard over three days last week. A decision by the Supreme Court is expected by late June. (Reporting By Alister Bull)

White House officials held talks with representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood in Washington this week, as the Islamist group threw itself into the fray in Egypt’s presidential election.
The meeting on Tuesday with low-level National Security Council staff was part of a series of US efforts to broaden engagement with new and emerging political parties following Egypt’s revolution last year, a US official said.
The White House pointed out that Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, and other US lawmakers and officials had also met with Brotherhood representatives in Egypt and elsewhere in recent months.
“We believe that it is in the interest of the United States to engage with all parties that are committed to democratic principles, especially nonviolence,” said National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor.
“In all our conversations with these groups, we emphasize the importance of respect for minority rights, the full inclusion of women, and our regional security concerns.”
The Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, said on Saturday it would nominate Khairat al-Shater, a professor of engineering and business tycoon, to contest Egypt’s first presidential election since a popular uprising ousted Hosni Mubarak last year.
The Islamists, who control parliament, had repeatedly said they would not put forward a member for the election in order to mitigate fears that they were trying to monopolize power.