BENGHAZI AND WATERGATE

How different history might have been if the news media then were as blasé about Watergate as they’ve been about Benghazi, if Republicans then were as disinterested in truth as Democrats are now.

If Watergate had not brought Richard Nixon low, the "emerging Republican majority" Kevin Phillips predicted in his 1969 book might well have.

 Democrats wouldn’t have won the lopsided majorities in the 1974 congressional elections that led to the vast expansion of domestic spending that now threatens to bankrupt the country. President Nixon, if unweakened by scandal, wouldn’t have abandoned South Vietnam when the North Vietnamese invaded.

The Watergate burglars were caught while removing a bug on the phone of a Democratic National Committee official they believed supplied prostitutes for visiting Democrat big shots. 

President Nixon and his senior aides were furious when they found out. They were undone by their attempt to cover up a crime in which they were not involved.  A crime in which no one died, like those in Benghazi.

The Obama administration’s cover up of what happened in Benghazi on 9/11/2012 is more extensive, we learned yesterday (5/08). 

*He’d told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during it this was a terrorist attack, so his "jaw dropped" when he heard UN Ambassador Susan Rice blame a Youtube video, Gregory Hicks, then the Deputy Chief of Mission, told the House Oversight Committee.

*As soon as word of the attack reached the embassy in Tripoli, a small rescue force was assembled by "LtCol. Gibson," a Special Forces officer assigned to SOCOM Africa, but he was ordered twice to "stand down," Mr. Hicks testified.

Shocked and angry, LtCol. Gibson told him, "This is the first time in my career that a diplomat has more balls than someone in the military," Mr. Hicks said.

He was told not to mobilize the Foreign Emergency Support Team of special operators, testified Mark Thompson, deputy coordinator for operations at the State Department’s counter-terrorism bureau.

*The consulate in Benghazi was one of only 14 diplomatic posts where the risk of attack was considered "critical" or "high," but it failed to meet the minimum standards for security set after al Qaida attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, testified Eric Nordstrom, Regional Security Officer in Libya until July 2012.

Despite this, State refused requests for more security, and reduced the number of Diplomatic Security Service agents assigned to Libya, he said.  Security for the consulate was placed mostly in the hands of a militia suspected of ties to al Qaida.

Only the secretary of state can waive security standards when threat levels are so high, Mr. Nordstrom said.

*We know now security in Libya was unbelievably lax, that the Secretary of State knew this, that no effort was made to upgrade security as the anniversary of 9/11 approached, as was routine in the Bush administration.  But we don’t know why.

*We know senior administration officials were lying when they blamed the Youtube video for the attack, but we don’t know why they lied.

*We know now Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s claim no order to "stand down" was issued wasn’t true, as far as LtCol. Gibson’s team is concerned.  Mr. Panetta’s claim other military forces couldn’t have arrive in time also is false, a special operator whose identity was concealed told Fox News April 29.

Could help have arrived in time to save former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods?  If so, why wasn’t it sent? 

Richard Nixon ultimately was forced to resign because most Republicans cared more about the truth.  But every Democrat on the House Oversight Committee cares more about protecting the Obama administration.  One blamed lax security in Libya on budget cuts, which the State Department had flatly denied in October.  Another claimed Hillary Clinton didn’t know what the security situation was.

The revelations of the whistleblowers should put CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson, the Woodward and Bernstein of Benghazi, in line for a Pulitzer.  Instead, they may cost her her job.  The suits at CBS are unhappy with her dogged pursuit of the truth, reports Politico.

The whistleblowers’ testimony makes it harder for Mr. Obama’s apologists in the news media to claim the GOP probe is motivated purely by partisanship.  There was "tragic incompetence" in how the administration handled Benghazi, but no coverup, said Michael Hirsh of the National Journal. 

The lies told by senior officials, the stonewalling of requests for information by congressional committees (and Ms. Attkisson), and the intimidation of witnesses suggest otherwise.  Some would say prove otherwise, beyond reasonable doubt.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.