1. There Was a Stand Down Order
Though some the details are still fuzzy, someone issued a stand down order that prevented Special Forces from traveling to Benghazi to intervene after the attack.
Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission for the U.S. in Libya and the highest ranking official in the country at the time of the Benghazi attacks, testified that either AFRICOMM or SOCAFRICA issued the stand down order, though he didn’t have a name or where the command originated.
Hicks said Lt. Col. Gibson, a Special Operations Command (SOC) Africa commander, was “furious” after receiving the stand down order. “Lt. Col. Gibson was furious. I had told him to go bring our people home. That’s what he wanted to do,” he said.
However, the burning question remains: Who, with the appropriate authority, actually gave the stand down order? And why?
2. Whistleblower ‘Effectively Demoted’ After Questioning Benghazi Talking Points
Gregory Hicks told members of Congress that he has been “effectively demoted” from his position as deputy chief of mission shortly after he questioned United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice’s explanation that the Benghazi attack was the result of a spontaneous protest sparked by a YouTube video.
Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission under murdered U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, now holds the title of foreign affairs officer in the Office of Global Intergovernmental Affairs.
“In hindsight I think it began after I asked a question about Ambassador Rice’s statement on the TV shows,” Hicks said, after being asked what the “seminal” moment had been in all of his new professional criticism.
3. Benghazi Witness Told Not to Speak With Congressional Investigator Alone
Hicks on Wednesday also revealed that he was told by Obama administration officials not to talk with Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) unsupervised.
A State Department lawyer accompanied the delegation and tried to be in every single meeting he was involved in, Hicks claimed.
Chaffetz, who traveled to Benghazi after the attack to investigate, also claimed back in October that the administration assigned a State Department attorney to follow him in his every “footstep” during his investigative trip.
4. Who Is Lt. Col. Gibson?
Benghazi whistleblower Gregory Hicks repeatedly brought up a man by the name of Lt. Col. Gibson. Other than the fact that he was a Special Operations Command (SOC) Africa commander, we don’t know much else about him.
But more importantly, we don’t know what else he knows about the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2012. On the night of the Benghazi attack, Gibson was “furious” when a stand down order was given, preventing Special Forces from intervening in Libya, Hicks testified.
Hicks said Gibson wanted to bring the Americans trapped in Benghazi home, but was unable to act. Does Gibson know who personally issued the stand down order? Does he know how far up the chain of command the order originated?
These are questions to keep in mind as the investigation proceeds.
5. State Department Official Fingered Terror Group Day After Attack
One of the biggest points of contention in the Benghazi investigation has been: Why did the Obama administration initially blame the terrorist attack on a YouTube video when there was no apparent evidence to support that theory? During the House Oversight Committee hearing on the Benghazi attack, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) read from an email sent by Beth Jones, the acting assistant secretary for Middle Eastern affairs at the State Department, to Benghazi whistleblower Gregory Hicks and other top administration officials. In it, she fingered Ansar al-Sharia, a radical Islamic terror group, as the perpetrator behind the attack after the Libyan government speculated that they might be ex-Gadhafi forces.
The email was sent the day after the attack on Sept. 12, 2012 — well before the Obama administration started pushing the YouTube video narrative.
“I spoke to the Libyan ambassador and emphasized the importance of Libyan leaders continuing to make strong statements,” the email read. “When he said his government expected that former Ghadafi regime elements carried out the attacks, I told him that the group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al-Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic terrorists.”
Gowdy said the email was previously unreleased, but not classified.
Source: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/08/here-are-the-5-key-things-to-take-away-from-wednesdays-benghazi-hearing/
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ATF gunwalking scandal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Weapons recovered by Mexican military in Naco, Sonora, Mexico on November 20, 2009. They include weapons bought two weeks earlier by Operation Fast and Furious suspect Uriel Patino, who would buy 723 guns during the operation.[1]
“Gun walking”, or “letting guns walk”, was a tactic of the Arizona Field Office of the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). They ran a series of “gunwalking” sting operations[2][3] between 2006[4] and 2011[2][5] in the Tucson and Phoenix area where the ATF “purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers, hoping to track the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders.”[6] These operations were done under the umbrella of Project Gunrunner, a project intended to stem the flow of firearms into Mexico by interdicting straw purchasers and gun traffickers within the United States.[7]
The stated goal of allowing these purchases was to continue to track the firearms as they were transferred to higher-level traffickers and key figures in Mexican cartels, with the expectation that this would lead to their arrests and the dismantling of the cartels.[6][8][9] The tactic was questioned during the operations by a number of people, including ATF field agents and cooperating licensed gun dealers.[10][11][12][13][14] During Operation Fast and Furious, by far the largest “gunwalking” probe, the ATF monitored the sale of about 2,000[1]:203[15] firearms, of which only 710 were recovered as of February 2012.[1]:203 A number of straw purchasers have been arrested and indicted; however, as of October 2011, none of the targeted high-level cartel figures have been arrested.[6]
Guns tracked by the ATF have been found at crime scenes on both sides of the Mexico–United States border, and the scene of the death of at least one U.S. federal agent, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. The “gunwalking” operations became public in the aftermath of Terry’s murder.[2] Dissenting ATF agents came forward to Congress in response.[16][17] According to Humberto Benítez Treviño, former Mexican Attorney General and chair of the justice committee in the Chamber of Deputies, related firearms have been found at numerous crime scenes in Mexico where at least 150 Mexican civilians were maimed and killed.[18] As investigations have continued, the operations have become increasingly controversial in both countries, and diplomatic relations have been damaged as a result.[2]
As a result of a dispute over the release of Justice Department documents related to the scandal, Attorney General Eric Holder became the first sitting member of the Cabinet of the United States to be held in criminal contempt of Congress on June 28, 2012.[19][20] Earlier that month, President Obama had invoked executive privilege for the first time in his presidency over the same documents.[21][22]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal
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