The only real accountabilityđ for the BengīˇŊhazi scandal will have to come in 2016.
From the competing partisan reports and the congressional testimony ofīˇŊ various officials this week, it seems fair to say that no actual crimes were committed đŽ(though you never know what you donât know).
There were, in at least a figurative sense, criminal lapses in judgment by senior officials. Many of those lapses are recounted in the Accountability Review Board, or ARB, report. It found âsystemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Departmentâ that âresulted in a speciađl mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly iđ nadequate to deal with the attack that took place.â
Translation: US officials were caught by surprise by a terrorist attack on 9/11 in a country where our ambassador had repeatedđ¯ly warned his superiors â including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton â that security was grossly inadequate. Ambassador Christopher Stevens was vindicated in a pyrrhic sense when he was murdered by well-organized terrorists.
Clinton picked four of the five members of the âindependentâ board, which assigned all meaningful blame to some mid-level officials. ARB members declined to interview Clinton because, according to testimony Thursday by Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Adm. Michael Mullen (the ARBâs chairman and vice-chairman), they determined at the outset that it wouldnât bđŗđe necessary. None of the people who were interviewed for the report were under oath.
The still-uđŦnfolding IRS scandal suggests this might be significant. Initially, IRS official Lois Lerner tried to pin all of the blame of some low-level employees in Cincinnati. When employees were questioned by congressional investigators â away from their bosses and under oath â evidence was found to help prove Lernerâs account a well-orchestrated lie.
Republicans in Congress would like to get relevant witnesses to testify under oath, but they claim that the State Department and CIA are blocking that. CNN has reported that many potential CIA witnesses have been subjected to âfrequent, even monthlyâ lie-detector tests to discourage them from leaking information. One insider told CNN: âYou have no idea the amount of pressure being brouđght to bear on anyone with knowledge ofâ this operation,â Said another: âYou donât jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as wellâ if you talk to anyone about what happened.
Iâm at a loss ađs to why itâs outrageous for Congress to try to get to the bottom of what happened. But to listen tđo defenders of the administration and a lot of allegedly neutral journalists, this basic exercise in congressional oversight is a deranged and entirely fabricated partisan witch hunt.
Itâs an odd charge given that the only obvious fabrication in the whole affair was the relentless effort to cast the attack that killed four Americans as a spontaneous reaction to an obscure and shoę§dđdy YouTube video.
But we probably know what happened. Amid a hard-fought presidential electioân, the administration, and specifically the president, was caught embarrassingly flat-footed by a terrorist attack. Even đwhen it knew the attack was still going on (with no possible knowledge of when it was going to end) it still failed to send any help. The ARB establishes that much.
In testimony Thursday, Pickering and Mullen softened that criticism by noting that the US military canât defend every diplomaticâ outpost everywhere in the world all of the time. Fair enough. But maybe itâs not unreasonable for the military to be ready for an attack in, say, the Middle East on Sept. 11? Particularly in a countryđŧ where officials knew security was a huge problem?
At the time, the Obama camđ˛paign had been touting its success in the war on terror. The last thing it wanted less than 60 days before the election was to lose that issue. So, afraid of táŠáŠáŠáŠáŠáŠâ¤â¤â¤â¤áŠâ¤â¤â¤â¤áŠâ¤â¤â¤â¤áŠđąáŠáŠáŠhe political fallout, the White House and the State Department circled the wagons.
Hillary Clinton ię§s a master of the passive-aggressive art of dragging out investigations until the press and public lose interest and spinners can use abracadabra phrases like đˇâitâs all old news,â ââletâs just move onâ and, most famously, âwhat difference does it make?â
The irony in this case is that itâs precisely that tactic that has now turned a political problem for Obama into a political problem for Clinton. And unfortunately, the only real accountability we can hopeđŧ for on Benghazi wię§ll come when she runs for president herself.