{"id":20550,"date":"2014-09-15T15:55:04","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T22:55:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=20550"},"modified":"2014-09-15T15:55:04","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T22:55:04","slug":"benghazi-bombshell-dropped-just-in-time-for-the-new-committees-maiden-hearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=20550","title":{"rendered":"Benghazi “Bombshell” Dropped Just In Time For The New Committee’s Maiden Hearing"},"content":{"rendered":"

The theatrics that go into the Fox News production of right-wing scandal mongering rival the most ambitious Broadway presentations. There is drama and conflict and complex stage management that grabs the audience and drags them through a narrative that is lurid and mysterious.<\/p>\n

\"GowdyThat applies nowhere more fully than to their long-running Benghazi blockbuster. It is what they turn to whenever they need a quick jolt of fabricated controversy. And with the first public hearing of Trey Gowdy’s brand spanking-new “Committee to Politicize Benghazi”<\/em><\/a> scheduled for this week, Fox News has aired a promotional extra to accompany the premiere. Anchor Eric Shawn introduced the segment and correspondent Doug McKelway saying…<\/p>\n

“We have a Fox News Alert, a ‘bombshell’ as they say, in the Benghazi terror attacks investigation. Turns out a former State Department employee speaking out in a new report now claims that aides to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, they claim, took part in after-hours sessions to quote ‘separate’<\/em> damaging documents before those allegedly damaging documents were handed over to investigators.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Golly willikers, this can’t be good news for Miss Hillary. Even though Fox has, in conjunction with Darrell Issa’s Committee on Overstepping, declared numerous other disclosures to be bombshells that turned out to be nothing but duds, this one is fer-sure a bona fide bombshell. That’s because it was discovered by Sharyl Attkisson, the disgraced former CBS reporter<\/a> who was fired as a result of her shoddy and biased reporting including about Benghazi. Attkisson’s new story<\/a> was published by The Daily Signal, an arm of the uber-rightist Heritage Foundation. It contains zero evidence of the alleged activities and relies on a single, and decidedly partial, source. No wonder she was fired by CBS, but found work at the Heritage rag. Attkisson writes that…<\/p>\n

“As the House Select Committee on Benghazi prepares for its first hearing this week, a former State Department diplomat is coming forward with a startling allegation: Hillary Clinton confidants were part of an operation to ‘separate’ damaging documents before they were turned over to the Accountability Review Board (ARB) investigating security lapses surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There were a couple of notable omissions by Fox News that even Attkisson’s blatantly biased article included. First of all, Alec Gerlach, a State Department spokesman, said that \u201cThe range of sources that the ARB\u2019s investigation drew on would have made it impossible for anyone outside of the ARB to control its access to information.\u201d<\/em> In other words, no documents could have been separated out and withheld because they would have been available elsewhere. Secondly, Attkisson’s sole source, Raymond Maxwell, was not someone who could be plausibly described as neutral. He was a deputy assistant secretary who had responsibility for North Africa. The New York Times reported<\/a> in December of 2012 that he was one of…<\/p>\n

“…four State Department officials [who] were removed from their posts on Wednesday after an independent panel criticized the ‘grossly inadequate’ security at a diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that was attacked on Sept. 11, leading to the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maxwell was a disgruntled employee who had filed grievances with the State Department\u2019s Human Resources Bureau and the American Foreign Service Association. Whether or not his allegations are true, he cannot be regarded as impartial due to his obvious personnel entanglement. However, the ARB’s investigation does contain a certain measure of credibility because it was headed by Thomas Pickering, a veteran diplomat who served in the Ford, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations, and Admiral Michael Mullen (Ret), a Navy vet who was appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by George W. Bush. These are not Clinton partisans hired to whitewash her record as Secretary of State.<\/p>\n

The emergence of this phony bombshell on the eve of the Benghazi committee’s debut is an extraordinary coincidence. And its presentation on Fox News that left out critical details is likewise a convenient happenstance. If nothing else it allowed anchor Shawn to conclude with a smarmy “Some wonder if this could be a smoking gun of a potential cover-up.”<\/em> So the bombshell is also a smoking gun, and it’s all part of a cover-up. At least to a mysterious “some”<\/em> who are wondering. This masterpiece of fiction has blockbuster written all over it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The theatrics that go into the Fox News production of right-wing scandal mongering rival the most ambitious Broadway presentations. There is drama and conflict and complex stage management that grabs the audience and drags them through a narrative that is lurid and mysterious. That applies nowhere more fully than to their long-running Benghazi blockbuster. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Benghazi \"Bombshell\" Dropped Just In Time For The New Committee's Maiden Hearing","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,684,8],"tags":[1091,389,208,31,1088],"class_list":["post-20550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","category-media-bias","category-propaganda","tag-benghazi","tag-eric-shawn","tag-heritage-foundation","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-trey-gowdy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/gowdy-doody.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-5ls","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":29971,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=29971","url_meta":{"origin":20550,"position":0},"title":"How Fox News Proved That Hillary Clinton Won The Benghazi Games","author":"Mark NC","date":"10\/23\/2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The long awaited battle between Hillary Clinton and the Republican's Committee to Politicize Benghazi is now in the history books. It was a marathon eleven hour affair that featured the top names in partisan propaganda as they tried in vain to wear down Clinton and force an error. The details\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"Trey Gowdy Hillary Clinton","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/gowdy-clinton.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/gowdy-clinton.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/gowdy-clinton.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":13955,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=13955","url_meta":{"origin":20550,"position":1},"title":"Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Painfully Desperate And Stupid Attack On Elizabeth Warren","author":"Mark NC","date":"5\/11\/2014","format":false,"excerpt":"By now everyone with a pulse knows that Fox News is an unabashed mouthpiece for the Republican Party and their Tea-sotted radicalism. So it is not much of a surprise when they brazenly twist, mutilate, and ignore facts to advance their conservative agenda. However, every now and then the unparalleled\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"Fox Nation","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/foxnation-reality-warren-benghazi.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/foxnation-reality-warren-benghazi.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/foxnation-reality-warren-benghazi.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":19441,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=19441","url_meta":{"origin":20550,"position":2},"title":"Congress Allocates More Money To Phony Benghazi Investigations Than To Veterans","author":"Mark NC","date":"7\/8\/2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Two months ago GOP House Speaker John Boehner announced that he would concede to pressure from Fox News and the Tea Party by creating the House Select Committee On Politicizing Benghazi. He then packed the committee on the Republican side with rabidly partisan attack dogs, led by alpha dog Trey\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"Gowdy Doody","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/gowdy-doody.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/gowdy-doody.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/gowdy-doody.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":13645,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=13645","url_meta":{"origin":20550,"position":3},"title":"Benghazi Committee Commences As Phony Fox News Scandal Falls Apart","author":"Mark NC","date":"5\/5\/2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The Republican House Speaker, John Boehner, announced today that he has chosen the rabidly partisan South Carolina Tea Party congressman, Trey Gowdy, to chair a special committee to waste more time and money investigating their trumped up Benghazi scandal. In naming Gowdy, Boehner praised his determination and desire for truth\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"Gowdy Doody","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/gowdy-doody.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/gowdy-doody.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/gowdy-doody.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":22680,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=22680","url_meta":{"origin":20550,"position":4},"title":"Republican Intelligence Committee Report Blows Up The Benghazi Hoax [Updated]","author":"Mark NC","date":"11\/21\/2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The Republican-led House Intelligence Committee responsible for investigating Benghazi released its final report in a pre-Thanksgiving Friday news dump. 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