Fox News has been leading the charge during the current phase of the Benghazi scandal, but they're not the only ones digging up interesting stories... quite literally in the case of Foreign Policy magazine, whose reporters incredibly managed to find more important documents buried in the rubble of the destroyed consulate... six weeks after the attack, and after the FBI team had already searched the place.
This is absolutely jaw-dropping. Obama and his apologists are constantly telling us they can't say a word about Benghazi until some kind of intricate internal review is completed, long after the election, of course. But the FBI was parked in Tripoli for weeks before they finally got to spend about three hours collecting evidence from the "crime scene."
And reporters are still strolling through the rubble, poking around in the ashes and finding important stuff the U.S. government missed. We know the FBI checked the room where the latest batch of ash-covered documents were found, because they glued a little piece of paper with an alphabetic code to the wall, just like they do when they check out a crime scene on TV. Someone carved a swastika into the wall next to the FBI label. Someone also wrote "I am Chris from the dead" in the dust on the bathroom mirror in the Ambassador's safe haven.
Foreign Policy writers Harald Doornbos and Jenan Moussa write about their visit:
When we visited on Oct.26 to prepare a story for Dubai based Al Aan TV, we found not only Stevens's personal copy of the Aug. 6 New Yorker, lying on remnants of the bed in the safe room where Stevens spent his final hours, but several ash-strewn documents beneath rubble in the looted Tactical Operations Center, one of the four main buildings of the partially destroyed compound.
Some of the documents - such as an email from Stevens to his political officer in Benghazi and a flight itinerary sent to Sean Smith, a U.S. diplomat slain in the attack - are clearly marked as State Department correspondence. Others are unsigned printouts of messages to local and national Libyan authorities.
The two unsigned draft letters are both dated Sept. 11 and express strong fears about the security situation at the compound on what would turn out to be a tragic day. They also indicate that Stevens and his team had officially requested additional security at the Benghazi compound for his visit - and that they apparently did not feel it was being provided.
(Emphases mine.) Gosh, that all sounds kind of germane to the double-secret super-serious internal review that Obama plans to finish sometime after he has been safely re-elected. The most disturbing thing the FBI apparently missed was a letter that will sound eerily familiar to anyone who has been paying closer attention to this story than Barack Obama wants you to:
One letter, written on Sept. 11 and addressed to Mohamed Obeidi, the head of the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs' office in Benghazi, reads:
"Finally, early this morning at 0643, September 11, 2012, one of our diligent guards made a troubling report. Near our main gate, a member of the police force was seen in the upper level of a building across from our compound. It is reported that this person was photographing the inside of the U.S. special mission and furthermore that this person was part of the police unit sent to protect the mission. The police car stationed where this event occurred was number 322."
The account accords with a message written by Smith, the IT officer who was killed in the assault, on a gaming forum on Sept. 11. "Assuming we don't die tonight. We saw one of our ???police' that guard the compound taking pictures," he wrote hours before the assault.
Remember that little detail? It is now clear that Smith wasn't the only one who noticed the Libyan cops casing the joint. Obeidi, the Libyan official named in the letter, says he never received it, adding "I did not even know that the U.S. ambassador was visiting Benghazi." Except the Libyan police say they did inform the Ministry of Stevens' presence. Another letter was sent to the police chief of Benghazi, who got fired by the new Libyan national government after the September 11 attack, but refused to step down, and is not available for comment, because he's currently on sick leave. His nominal replacement describes Benghazi police headquarters as "a mess" and warns "you will find there no police." Maybe they're all out snapping photos of American embassy staff.
How comforting! Entrusting these guys with our Ambassador's security was a great idea!
The State Department, of course, cited the mythological "independent review" as the reason they can't discuss any of these details, at least not until after the polls close on November 6.
