FBI has STILL not questioned Hillary about her emails

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The former secretary of state's light campaign schedule has fed speculation that Clinton was perhaps meeting with the feds in her free timeClinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill told DailyMail.com today that it is 'still true' that Clinton has not been interviewed, thoughA report earlier this month said the FBI would question her in the 'coming weeks' as part of its investigation into the security of her private serverState Department Inspector General report released today said Clinton disregarded guidelines and never sought approval for the arrangement

Hillary Clinton has not been interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation about her emails yet.

The former secretary of state's light campaign schedule over the last few weeks has fed speculation that Clinton was perhaps meeting with the feds in her free time.

Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill told DailyMail.com today that it is 'still true' that Clinton has not been interviewed, though.

Hillary Clinton has not been interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation about her emails yet, her campaign said today. She's pictured above at a rally this morning in Buena Park

A CNN report earlier this month said the FBI would question her in the 'coming weeks' as part of its investigation into the security of her private server that she kept in the basement of her Chappaqua, New York home, and emails. 

Clinton said days later that she had not been personally contacted by the FBI, however.

CNN suggested the FBI had been in touch with her lawyers, or soon would be, to schedule the interview for a time Clinton could escape her travelling press corps without raising suspicion.

The Democratic candidate has taken several days off since then, sometimes to fundraise. Other times her schedule has been blank.

Clinton has an 'insurmountable' lead over Bernie Sanders in her party primary, her campaign says, and has shifted focus to the general election, holding events in states that have already voted in addition to taking full days off from campaigning.

The FBI has already interviewed top Clinton State Department aides, including Huma Abedin, who now works on Clinton's campaign and is often seen at her boss' side. 

A State Department Inspector General report released this morning said Clinton disregarded guidelines when she set up the server in her home and revealed that she never sought approval for the arrangement.

Had she asked senior information officers for permission, the request would have been denied, the independent watchdog agency said, because the set up presented a security risk.

Clinton wasn't the only secretary of state to use a personal email address, it acknowledged. 

But they, too, were 'slow to recognize and to manage effectively the legal requirements and cybersecurity risks associated with electronic data communications, particularly as those risks pertain to its most senior leadership.'

The IG report also dinged Clinton for waiting to turn over her work-related emails for 22 months after her she retired in 2013.

'At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act,' it said.

Clinton, Abedin and other advisers close to the cabinet official also refused meetings with the Inspector General's office as it investigated the matter, it opined. 

A State Department Inspector General report released this morning said Clinton disregarded guidelines when she set up the server in her home and revealed that she never sought approval for the arrangement

A protester holds a sign outside of a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton at Harrell College this afternoon. Clinton was due to speak in Salinas later in the day on Wednesday

The FBI has already interviewed top Clinton State Department aides for its investigation, but Clinton is yet to take her turn

Wednesday morning Clinton's campaign dismissed the report's negative findings.

It said 'while political opponents of Hillary Clinton are sure to misrepresent this report for their own partisan purposes, in reality, the Inspector General documents just how consistent her email practices were with those of other Secretaries and senior officials at the State Department who also used personal email.'

Her campaign contended that the report showed recordkeeping issues were 'longstanding and that there was no precedent of someone in her position having a State Department email account until after the arrival of her successor.

'Contrary to the false theories advanced for some time now, the report notes that her use of personal email was known to officials within the Department during her tenure,' a statement read, 'and that there is no evidence of any successful breach of the Secretary's server. We agree that steps ought to be taken to ensure the government can better maintain official records, and if she were still at the State Department.' 

COMMENTS

Sanders rally chant: 'She's a liar!'

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Tweets from https://twitter.com/politico/lists/team-politico

The crowd booed loudly at first, then cheered when the sound cut out. | Getty

DES MOINES, Iowa — The room at Bernie Sanders' rally here turned ice cold when Hillary Clinton's speech took over the televisions here.

The crowd booed loudly at first, then cheered when the sound cut out. The sound soon returned and Clinton was drowned out by further boos when she said "I'm a progressive who gets things done."

It escalated from there: Chants of "She's a liar!" took over the room before the campaign just entirely shut off the stream, cutting away from MSNBC entirely.

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COMMENTS

Subject: Fwd: So the Clintons weren't so bad, eh?

------ Forwarded Message

If you’re under 50 you really need to read this.  If you’re over 50, you lived through it, so share it with those under 50.  Amazing to me how much I had forgotten!
When Bill Clinton was president, he allowed Hillary to assume authority over a health care reform.  Even after threats and intimidation, she couldn’t even get a vote in a democratic controlled congress.  This fiasco cost the American taxpayers about $13 million in cost for studies, promotion, and other efforts.
Then President Clinton gave Hillary authority over selecting a female attorney general. Her first two selections were Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood – both were forced to withdraw their names from consideration.  Next she chose Janet Reno – husband Bill described her selection as “my worst mistake.”  Some may not remember that Reno made the decision to gas David Koresh and the Branch Davidian religious sect in Waco, Texas resulting in dozens of deaths of women and children. Husband Bill allowed Hillary to make recommendations for the head of the Civil Rights Commission.  Lani Guanier was her selection.  When a little probing led to the discovery of Ms. Guanier’s radical views, her name had to be withdrawn from consideration. Apparently a slow learner, husband Bill allowed Hillary to make some more recommendations.  She chose former law partners Web Hubbel for the Justice Department, Vince Foster for the White House staff, and William Kennedy for the Treasury Department.  Her selections went well: Hubbel went to prison, Foster (presumably) committed suicide, and Kennedy was forced to resign.Many younger voters will have no knowledge of “Travelgate.” Hillary wanted to award unfettered travel contracts to Clinton friend Harry Thompson – and the White House Travel Office refused to comply.  She managed to have them reported to the FBI and fired.  This ruined
their reputations, cost them their jobs, and caused a thirty-six month investigation.  Only one employee, Billy Dale was charged with a crime, and that of the enormous crime of mixing personal and White House funds.  A jury acquitted him of any crime in less than two hours.
 Still not convinced of her ineptness, Hillary was allowed to recommend a close Clinton friend, Craig Livingstone, for the position of Director of White House security.  When Livingstone was investigated for the improper access of about 900 FBI files of Clinton enemies (Filegate) and the widespread use of drugs by White House staff, suddenly Hillary and the president denied even knowing Livingstone, and of course, denied knowledge of drug use in the White House.  Following this debacle, the FBI closed its White House Liaison Office after more than thirty years of service to seven presidents. Next, when women started coming forward with allegations of sexual harassment and rape by Bill Clinton, Hillary was put in charge of the “bimbo eruption” and scandal defense.  Some of her more notable decisions in the debacle were: She urged her husband not to settle the Paula Jones lawsuit.  After the Starr investigation they settled with Ms. Jones. She refused to release the Whitewater documents, which led to the appointment of Ken Starr as Special Prosecutor.  After $80 million dollars of taxpayer money was spent, Starr's investigation led to Monica Lewinsky, which led to Bill lying about and later admitting his affairs. Hillary’s devious game plan resulted in Bill losing his license to practice law for 'lying under oath' to a grand jury and then his subsequent impeachment by the House of Representatives. Hillary avoided indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice during the Starr investigation by repeating, “I do not recall,” “I have no recollection,” and “I don’t know” a total of 56 times while under oath. After leaving the White House, Hillary was forced to return an estimated $200,000 in White House furniture, china, and artwork that she had stolen. What a swell party – ready for another four or eight year of this type low-life mess? Now we are exposed to the destruction of possibly incriminating emails while Hillary was Secretary of State and the “pay to play” schemes of the Clinton Foundation – we have no idea what shoe will fall next.  But to her loyal fans - “what difference does it make

Inspector General: Clinton emails had intel from most secretive, classified programs | Fox News

www.foxnews.com

 

EXCLUSIVE: Hillary Clinton's emails on her unsecured, homebrew server contained intelligence from the U.S. government's most secretive and highly classified programs, according to an unclassified letter from a top inspector general to senior lawmakers.

Fox News exclusively obtained the unclassified letter, sent Jan. 14 from Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III. It laid out the findings of a recent comprehensive review by intelligence agencies that identified "several dozen" additional classified emails -- including specific intelligence known as "special access programs" (SAP).  

That indicates a level of classification beyond even “top secret,” the label previously given to two emails found on her server, and brings even more scrutiny to the presidential candidate’s handling of the government’s closely held secrets.

“To date, I have received two sworn declarations from one [intelligence community] element. These declarations cover several dozen emails containing classified information determined by the IC element to be at the confidential, secret, and top secret/sap levels,” said the IG letter to lawmakers with oversight of the intelligence community and State Department. “According to the declarant, these documents contain information derived from classified IC element sources.”

Intelligence from a "special access program,” or SAP, is even more sensitive than that designated as "top secret" – as were two emails identified last summer in a random sample pulled from Clinton's private server she used as secretary of state. Access to a SAP is restricted to those with a "need-to-know" because exposure of the intelligence would likely reveal the source, putting a method of intelligence collection -- or a human asset -- at risk. Currently, some 1,340 emails designated “classified” have been found on Clinton’s server, though the Democratic presidential candidate insists the information was not classified at the time.

“There is absolutely no way that one could not recognize SAP material,” a former senior law enforcement with decades of experience investigating violations of SAP procedures told Fox News. “It is the most sensitive of the sensitive.”

 

 In a statement, Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said, "This is the same interagency dispute that has been playing out for months, and it does not change the fact that these emails were not classified at the time they were sent or received. It is alarming that the intelligence community IG, working with Republicans in Congress, continues to selectively leak materials in order to resurface the same allegations and try to hurt Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

"The Justice Department's inquiry should be allowed to proceed without any further interference." 

Executive Order 13526 -- called "Classified National Security Information" and signed Dec. 29, 2009 -- sets out the legal framework for establishing special access programs. The order says the programs can only be authorized by the president, "the Secretaries of State, Defense, Energy, and Homeland Security, the Attorney General, and the Director of National Intelligence, or the principal deputy of each."

The programs are created when "the vulnerability of, or threat to, specific information is exceptional,” and “the number of persons who ordinarily will have access will be reasonably small and commensurate with the objective of providing enhanced protection for the information involved," it states.

According to court documents, former CIA Director David Petraeus was prosecuted for sharing intelligence from special access programs with his biographer and mistress Paula Broadwell. At the heart of his prosecution was a non-disclosure agreement where Petraeus agreed to protect these closely held government programs, with the understanding “unauthorized disclosure, unauthorized retention or negligent handling … could cause irreparable injury to the United States or be used to advantage by a foreign nation.” Clinton signed an identicalnon-disclosure agreement Jan. 22, 2009. 

Fox News is told that the recent IG letter was sent to the leadership of the House and Senate intelligence committees and leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and State Department inspector general. 

Representatives for the ODNI and intelligence community inspector general had no comment.

In a statement, State Department spokesman John Kirby said, “The State Department is focused on and committed to releasing former Secretary Clinton’s emails in a manner that protects sensitive information. No one takes this more seriously than we do.”

The intelligence community IG was responding in his message to a November letter from the Republican chairmen of the Senate intelligence and foreign relations committees that questioned the State Department email review process after it was wrongly reported the intelligence community was retreating from the “top secret” designation. 

As Fox News first reported, those two emails were “top secret” when they hit the server, and it is now considered a settled matter.

The intelligence agencies now have their own reviewers embedded at the State Department as part of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process. The reviewers are identifying intelligence of a potentially classified nature, and referring it to the relevant intelligence agency for further review. 

There is no formal appeals process for classification, and the agency that generates the intelligence has final say. The State Department only has control over the fraction of emails that pertain to their own intelligence.

While the State Department and Clinton campaign have said the emails in questions were “retroactively classified” or “upgraded” – to justify the more than 1,300 classified emails on her server – those terms are meaningless under federal law.

The former federal law enforcement official said the finding in the January IG letter represents a potential violation of USC 18 Section 793, “gross negligence” in the handling of secure information under the Espionage Act.

Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent.

Hillary Clinton Emails Held Info Beyond Top Secret: IG

www.nbcnews.com

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Emails from Hillary Clinton's home server contained information classified at levels higher than previously known, including a level meant to protect some of the most sensitive U.S. intelligence, according to a document obtained by NBC News.

In a letter to lawmakers, the intelligence community's internal watchdog says some of Clinton's emails contained information classified Top Secret/Special Access Program, a secrecy designation that includes some of the most closely held U.S. intelligence matters.

Two American intelligence officials tell NBC News these are not the same two emails from Clinton's server that have long been reported as containing information deemed Top Secret.

The letter doesn't make clear whether Clinton sent or received the emails in question, but in the past, emails containing classified information have tended to have been sent to Clinton, not written by her.

The new revelation underscores the extent to which the email classification issue could continue to dog Clinton, as State Department and intelligence officials review sensitive information within messages that were blacked out before being released to the public.

Clinton, who tops national primary polling as a Democratic presidential candidate, has repeatedly said that none of the information she sent or received while secretary of state was marked classified, and nothing has emerged to contradict that. But it's become clear that classified information bled into the emails, which were sent over unencrypted channels open to interception by foreign intelligence agencies.

Charles McCulllough, the intelligence community's inspector general, said in a letter to the chairmen of the Senate intelligence and foreign affairs committees that he has received sworn declarations from an intelligence agency he declined to name.

The declarations cover "several dozen emails containing classified information determined by the IC element to be at the CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET and TOP SECRET/SAP information."

An intelligence official familiar with the matter told NBC News that the special access program in question was so sensitive that McCullough and some of his aides had to receive clearance to be read in on it before viewing the sworn declaration about the Clinton emails.

Clinton's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

While she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, Clinton conducted government business over private email. The arrangement was particularly unusual because the email system relied not on Yahoo or Google but her own server, which she kept in her home in Westchester County, N.Y.

The State Department is under court order to release Clinton's government-related emails under the Freedom of Information Act. Clinton has turned over about 55,000 emails, and almost all have been released, though they have been heavily censored. The last batch is due to be made public Jan. 29.

While Republicans have criticized Clinton over the issue, her defenders have pointed out that the State Department has long faced the problem of how to communicate about sensitive matters. Unlike the CIA, State does most of its business over an unclassified email system, and many officials do not have easy access to a classified messaging system.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said that the State Department is "focused on and committed to releasing former Secretary Clinton's emails in a manner that protects sensitive information. No one takes this more seriously than we do. We have said repeatedly that we anticipate more upgrades throughout our release process. Our FOIA review process is still ongoing. Once that process is complete, if it is determined that information should be classified as Top Secret we will do so."‎

COMMENTS

AGAIN Donald Trump is the only Republican mentioned during Dem debate

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Bernie Sanders cited his head-to-head polling lead over Trump as evidence he should win nomination, hinting at how much the Democrats fear The Donald Martin O'Malley attacked Trump's call to temporarily ban non-citizen Muslims from entering the country'If Donald Trump wants to start a registry, in our country, of people by faith,' O'Malley boomed, 'he can start with me!' Sanders claimed Trump believes 'climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese'For more on the Democratic debate visitwww.dailymail.co.uk/DemDebate

Republican presidential front-runnerDonald Trump drew less than one-half as much interest from debating democrats Sunday night, compared with their last on-stage contest in December.

But he was still the only GOP contender who drew any fire by name as Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley tussled in Charleston, South Carolina.

Clinton, the presumptive favorite to win the Democratic nomination, left Trump out of her rhetoric. But Sanders and O'Malley launched broadsides as his positions on Islamic terrorism and global warming.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEOS 

GLOBAL WARMING WARRIOR: Vermont's Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders took a climate-change shot at Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday during the Democrats' debate in Charleston, South Carolina

'IT'S A HOAX': Trump had claimed in late December that the climate change movement was a 'hoax' and a 'money-making industry'

SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT: The South Carolina debate brought bitter rivals Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders within spitting distance of each other, and included Martin O'Malley as a feisty third wheel

'The debate is over. Climate change is real. It is already causing major problems,' Sanders said in the second half of Sunday night's contest. 'And if we do not act boldly and decisively, a bad situation will become worse.'

'It is beyond my comprehension,' he added moments later, 'how we can elect as President of the United States somebody like Trump who believes that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese.'

That line brought laughter from a partisan audience gathered downtown at the Gaillard Center.

Trump indeed said during a December 30 rally in Hilton Head, South Carolina that the modern climate change movement is 'a hoax. I mean, it's a money-making industry, okay? It's a hoax, a lot of it.'

He insisted that 'we don't have to destroy our economy' in order to protect the natural environment.

Trump never said during that appearance that China invented the purported hoax, but did point a finger at Beijing for failing to abide by the same rules the United States agreed to follow in a recently inked multinational climate change deal.

'They're buying all of our coal. We can't use coal anymore, essentially. They're buying our coal, and they're using it,' he said.

In 2012 The Donald tweeted – in a moment he later called a 'joke,' that '[t]he concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.'

O'Malley, a former Maryland governor, said Sunday night that he objected to Trump's call for a temporary ban on non-citizen Muslims entering the United States until the federal government can determine 'what is going on' in the wake of a deadly Islamist attack in San Bernardino, California.

DRUNK IN LOVE WITH HILLARY: A Clinton supporter advertised her support from Beyonce during a rally outside Sunday night's debate site

He spoke of a 'political front' in the war against the ISIS terror army. 

'If Donald Trump wants to start a registry, in our country, of people by faith,' O'Malley boomed, 'he can start with me!'

'And I will sign up as one who is totally opposed to his fascist appeals that wants to vilify American Muslims. That can do more damage to our democracy than anything.'

Sanders had already drawn the billionaire's blood, saying earlier that all three Democrats on stage had 'denounced Trump's attempt to divide this country, the anti-Latino rhetoric, the racist rhetoric, the anti-Muslim rhetoric.' 

The focus on Trump to the exclusion of all the other Republicans may indicate that Democrats fear the real estate tycoon more than the establishment candidates who want to unseat him at the top of the GOP pyramid.

ROUNDING UP CATHOLICS? Martin O'Malley (left) said that if Donald Trump (right) wants to segregate Americans by religion – meaning Muslims – 'he can start with me!'

IT'S GO TIME: The lawn of Charleston's Gaillard Center became a forest of yard signs Sunday night

Sanders made a point of emphasizing his poll numbers in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup with The Donald when he made his case that the Democratic Party should nominate him instead of Clinton.

'In terms of polling, we are running ahead of Secretary Clinton in terms of taking on my good friend Donald Trump,' Sanders said.

In the December 19 Democratic debate there were no fewer than nine separate mentions of Trump's name – including a controversial claim from Clinton that her league-leading Republican counterpart 'is becoming ISIS' best recruiter. They are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.'

That contention was never backed up, although propaganda videos introduced later featured both Trump and Clinton.

O'Malley said that night that the United States 'must never surrender our American values to racists, must never surrender them to the fascist pleas of billionaires with big mouths.' 

THE 2016 FIELD: WHO'S IN AND WHO'S OUT 

A whopping 15 people from America's two major political parties are candidates in the 2016 presidential election.

The field includes two women, an African-American and two Latinos. All but one in that group – Hillary Clinton – are Republicans.

At 12 candidates, the GOP field has already lost two current governors, two former governors and a sitting senator, but is but still deeper than ever.

A much smaller group of three Democrats includes a former secretary of state, a former governor and a current senator.

DEMOCRATS IN THE RACE

Hillary ClintonFormer sec. of state

Age on Election Day: 69

Religion: United Methodist 

Base: Liberals 

Résumé:Former secretary of state. Former U.S. senator from New York. Former U.S. first lady. Former Arkansas first lady. Former law school faculty, University of Arkansas Fayetteville.

Education: B.A. Wellesley College. J.D. Yale Law School.

Family: Married to Bill Clinton (1975), the 42nd President of the United States. Their daughter Chelsea is married to investment banker Marc Mezvinsky, whose mother was a 1990s one-term Pennsylvania congresswoman.

Claim to fame: Clinton was the first US first lady with a postgraduate degree and presaged Obamacare with a failed attempt at health care reform in the 1990s.

Achilles heel: A long series of financial and ethical scandals has dogged Clinton, including recent allegations that her husband and their family foundation benefited financially from decisions she made as secretary of state. Her performance surrounding the 2012 terror attack on a State Department facility in Benghazi, Libya, has been catnip for conservative Republicans. And her presidential campaign has been marked by an unwillingness to engage journalists, instead meeting with hand-picked groups of voters.

Bernie Sanders* Vermont senator

Age on Election Day: 75

Religion: Jewish

Base: Far-left progressives

Résumé:U.S. senator. Former U.S. congressman. Former mayor of Burlington, VT.

Education: B.A. University of Chicago.

Family: Married to Jane O’Meara Sanders (1988), a former president of Burlington College. He has one child from a previous relationship and is stepfather to three from Mrs. Sanders' previous marriage. His brother Larry is a Green Party politician in the UK and formerly served on the Oxfordshire County Council.

Claim to fame: Sanders is an unusually blunt, and unapologetic pol, happily promoting progressivism without hedging. He is also the longest-serving 'independent' member of Congress – neither Democrat nor Republican.

Achilles heel: Sanders describes himself as a 'democratic socialist.' At a time of huge GOP electoral gains, his far-left ideas don't poll well. He favors open borders, single-payer universal health insurance, and greater government control over media ownership.

* Sanders is running as a Democrat but has no party affiliation in the Senate.

Martin O'Malley   Former Maryland governor

Age on Election Day: 53

Religion: Catholic

Base: Centrists 

Résumé:Former Maryland governor. Former city councilor and mayor of Baltimore, MD. Former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

Education: B.A. Catholic University of America. J.D. University of Maryland.

Family: Married to Katie Curran (1990) and they have four children. Curran is a district court judge in Baltimore. Her father is Maryland's attorney general. O'Malley's mother is a receptionists in the Capitol Hill office of Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski.

Claim to fame: O'Malley pushed for laws in Maryland legalizing same-sex marriage and giving illegal immigrants the right to pay reduced tuition rates at public universities. But he's best known for playing guitar and sung in a celtic band cammed 'O’Malley’s March.'

Achilles heel: O’Malley may struggle in the Democratic primary since he endorsed Hillary Clinton eight years ago. If he prevails, he will have to run far enough to her left to be an easy target for the GOP. He showed political weakness when his hand-picked successor lost the 2014 governor's race to a Republican. But most troubling is his link with Baltimore, whose 2016 race riots have made it a nuclear subject for politicians of all stripes.

DEMOCRATIC DROPOUTS

Jim Webb, former Virginia senator

     (withdrew Oct. 20, 2015)

Lincoln Chafee, former Rhode Island governor

     (withdrew Oct. 23, 2015)

COMMENTS

EXCLUSIVE–Linda Tripp: ‘Bill Had Affairs with Thousands of Women’ - Breitbart

www.breitbart.com

In a rare interview, Linda Tripp, a pivotal figure in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, revealed on Sunday it was common knowledge while she worked in the West Wing that Bill Clinton had affairs with “thousands of women.”

Speaking on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio,” Tripp for the first time divulged that she personally knew another White House staffer aside from Lewinsky who was also having an affair with Clinton. That unnamed staffer was mentioned by Tripp in various depositions but she has not spoken about it publicly.

She charged that Hillary Clinton not only knew about her husband’s exploits, “She made it her personal mission to disseminate information and destroy the women with whom he dallied.”

Tripp says she cringes at the sight of Clinton presenting herself as “a champion of women’s rights worldwide in a global fashion, and yet all of the women she has destroyed over the years to ensure her political viability continues is sickening to me.”

Tripp documented evidence of Lewinsky’s phone calls about her relationship with Bill Clinton and submitted the evidence to independent counsel Kenneth Starr, leading to the public disclosure of the affair. She explained to Klein that she did so because she believed her own life and Lewinsky’s were in danger, saying that Lewinsky was threatening Clinton with outing the relationship.

Tripp also used the interview to criticize what she says is the news media’s unwillingness to investigate the Clintons. She singled out and thanked Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report, declaring that without him “things would have been very, very different.”

Drudge’s website was the first media outlet to break the Lewinsky scandal after Newsweek sat on the story.

Tripp had unique access to the Clintons because her office was directly adjacent to Hillary’s second floor West Wing office for the entire time she served in the Clinton White House from 1993 to the summer of 1994 with the exception of the first three months of the Clinton administration, when she sat just outside the Oval Office.

Tripp’s nonpartisan position was a carryover from the George H. W. Bush administration in which she served.

‘Monica Lewinsky is alive today because of choices I made’

She told Klein that her role in the Lewinsky case followed “years of alarm at what I had seen in the Clinton White House, particularly Hillary and the different scandals, whether it was Filegate, Travelgate, Whitewater, Vince Foster.”

“All of the scandals that had come before and were so completely obliterated in the mind’s eye of the American people because of the way all of them were essentially discounted. So I watched a lying President and a lying First Lady present falsehoods to the American people.

“So my dismay predated the January 1998 period when the Monica Lewinsky scandal surfaced. To me it was very important that the American people see what I was seeing. My years with the Clintons were so disturbing on so many levels.”

Tripp maintains that she went public with the Lewinsky evidence to ensure the intern’s safety as well as her own.

She told Klein:

I say today and I will continue to say that I believe Monica Lewinsky is alive today because of choices I made and action I took. That may sound melodramatic to your listeners. I can only say that from my perspective I believe that she and I at the time were in danger, because nothing stands in the way of these people achieving their political ends.

I think that had it not become public when it did, particularly in light of the Paula Jones lawsuit, which was coming to a head with President Clinton’s deposition, that we may well have met with an accident. It’s a situation where unless you lived it as I did you would have no real framework of reference for this sort of situation.

Tripp said the young Lewinsky, 21-years-old when she entered the White House as an intern, was unaware of the danger that she faced.

She described Lewinsky as a “young girl, smart, clever … but in this one area she was blinded and she fancied herself in love.”

Trip continued:

He fancied himself entitled. It was nothing more than a servicing agreement. She romanticized that there was an affair. And when it didn’t pan out the way she had hoped it would – he had promised her he would bring her back to the White House as soon as the 1996 election campaign had finished. When he didn’t, she essentially lost her mind and started acting in erratic and frightening ways. Threatening the president.

There came a point in July of 1997 when she not only threatened to expose the affair, as she referred to it. But also she at that time informed him that I knew all about it. So at that time it became dangerous for Monica and for me. This was something that absolutely could never see the light of day. And she never realized the implications of threatening a president or her behavior. And I did.

‘Thousands’ of women

Tripp told Klein that “the biggest fallacy that most people believed is that this was a unique occurrence. Monica was somehow special. And regrettably that’s the farthest thing from the truth.”

She said, “Everyone knew within the West Wing, particularly those who spent years with him, of the thousands of women.

“Now most of your listeners might find that difficult if not impossible to believe. And I can tell you in the beginning I felt the same way. But let me be clear here. This is a pattern of behavior that has gone on for years. And the abuse of women for years.”

Asked whether Clinton was having affairs with others in the West Wing, Tripp replied, “I know that to be true. One in particular who I will not name told me this herself.”

“But as to the hundreds or thousands, remember I worked closely with the closest aides to the president. And it was a loosey-goosy environment so there was not a lot of holding back. So it was common knowledge, let’s put it this way, within the West Wing that he had this problem. It was further common knowledge that Hillary was aware of it.”

Hillary ‘instilled fear’

Tripp described the tense West Wing atmosphere between what she characterized as two almost diametrically opposed Clinton camps.

The dynamic between the two groups – the Bill Clinton people and the Hillary Clinton people. It was as though they were almost opposing forces. But I can tell you that the one with the power and the one that instilled the fear in the other was the Hillary camp.

And the [Bill] Clinton people would cower if she were coming into the area, just as an example, of the Oval without notice. There would be scurrying around to make sure there was no one in the wrong place at the wrong time, shall we say. It was a fascination to see the amount of energy that was expended covering up his behavior. It was horrifying.

Hillary’s ‘war on women’

Tripp said Hillary personally targeted Bill’s female conquests and accusers, with the future presidential candidate exhibiting behavior that is “egregious and it’s so disingenuous.”

In my case, for instance, right after the Lewinsky story broke, she was heard directing her staff to get anything and everything on Linda Tripp. So the defamation of character and the absolute assurance that my credibility would be destroyed began right away. And it happens with any woman who is involved in any way, either with him in a physical relationship or an assault or anything that can endanger their political viability.

Tripp recalled Hillary’s January 27, 1998appearance on NBC’s The Today Show in which she was seen as standing by her husband while blaming the Lewinsky scandal on a “vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.”

“She didn’t do it in an honest way,” said Tripp of Clinton’s NBC interview. “Instead she lied, which didn’t surprise me. And I will give her credit. She is enormously effective. And became a victim. A wife who was betrayed.”

“This is someone who had no real personal problem with any of this behavior. The problem was in it becoming public. They had to continue to become electable… She was the more aggressive one in ensuring that the political viability was not endangered in any way.”

Tripp told Klein that Hillary “does not possess integrity on any level. I just wish that your listeners could know the person that I knew. Because if they did there is not a chance she would be elected president.”

Disdain for military, classified material, email scandal

Tripp’s ringside seat afforded her rare insight into the scandals of the 1990s and perhaps alleged wrongdoings to come, with the West Wing employee personally witnessing behavior that may have foreshadowed Clinton’s email scandal, in which she is accused of sending classified materials through her personal server.

Tripp said she noticed major differences in the manner in which classified material was handled by both the Clinton and Bush administrations in which she served.

President George H.W. Bush’s administration had “a completely different way of operating on every level, including on classified and secret material,” she said.

She continued:

All the regulations were followed, right down to a cover sheet being essential if the document had had any sort of classifications. The securing of classified documentation in safes. The burn bags that were used if any sensitive material was to be disposed of. All of this was familiar to me and followed every security protocol that I had experienced in the past.

When the Clintons came in this was one of the things that I found appalling right from day one. And it went hand and hand with the disdain for the military. The military was present in the White House in the form of presidential aides. The aide that carried the nuclear football, just as an example. And in the Bush White House they were respected, as they should be. In the Clinton White House, they were disdained. To see it treated this way and to see these people treated this way was disturbing.

Tripp referred to Clinton’s private mail woes as “classic Hillary Clinton in a nutshell.”

“She gets to decide what she does. Look, the rules don’t apply to the Clintons. If you understand that basic premise you understand the Clintons.”

For Tripp, Clinton’s use of a private server was “all about control. She has a need to control every single aspect of her life. And you know anyone in government knows that any key

CIA Spokesman Slams ‘13 Hours' as 'Distortion' of Benghazi Events

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Variety.com

A spokesman for the CIA is criticizing the Michael Bay movie “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” as a “distortion of the events and people who served in Benghazi that night.”

The spokesman, Ryan Trapani, wasquoted in an exclusive Washington Post story, which also features an interview with the CIA chief in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, when Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others were killed in a siege of the diplomatic compound and attack on the CIA annex.

“No one will mistake this movie for a documentary,” Tripani told the Post. “It’s a distortion of the events and people who served in Benghazi that night. It’s shameful that, in order to highlight the heroism of some, those responsible for the movie felt the need to denigrate the courage of other Americans who served in harm’s way.”

Tripani did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The CIA base chief, identified only as “Bob,” takes issue with a key point in the movie, when he tells the six contractors to “stand down” before responding to calls for help at the nearby diplomatic compound. The movie shows the contractors waiting for more than 20 minutes before bucking orders and leaving to try to save Stevens and others.

“There was never a stand-down order,” the CIA chief told the Post. “At no time did I ever second-guess that the team would depart.” The CIA chief told the Post that he spent about 20 minutes trying to enlist local security teams.

Congressional investigators also have concluded there was no “stand down” order.

The filmmakers and Mitchell Zuckoff, who along with the security contractors authored the book upon which it is based,have defended the movie and its portrayal of the events. It starts with a message, “This is a true story.”

Zuckoff told Variety on Thursday, “We have never heard anything from the CIA other than, ‘No [the stand-down order] didn’t happen.’ These guys [the security contractors] are putting their lives and their reputations on the line saying, ‘We were forced to wait,and the record shows it.'”

In interviews, the contractors have been adamant that the “stand down” order was issued. Earlier this week, Rep. Trey Gowdy(R-S.C.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, said in an interview with the Boston Herald that when it comes to the stand down order, “there are witnesses who said there was one and there are witnesses who said there was not one… So the best I can do is lay out what the witnesses say and then you are going to have to make a determination as to who you believe is more credible.”

Update: Zuckoff issued a statement on Friday evening through Paramount, the distributor of “13 Hours.”

“The movie and book got it right. The CIA spokesman’s comments are predictable but not remotely credible.

“If you read “Bob’s” statements to the Washington Post, he would have us believe that he neither prevented the guys from leaving nor approved or ordered their departure. That’s nonsensical on its face and contradicted by facts and logic:

“– Two of our named sources, John Tiegen and Kris Paronto, heard Bob say those words, stand down, which they shared with Jack and D.B., who already understood that they were being held back. Our two key sources are on the record, with their names, while Bob remains shielded by anonymity.

“– Neither Bob nor the CIA disputes that a delay occurred and that the guys ultimately moved out without his authorization. That, logically, adds up to a simple conclusion: he held them back and then they left without his approval.

“– All evidence — and the CIA’s past statements — points to the conclusion (included in the movie and the book) that the delay was caused by a sincere but ultimately misguided attempt to coordinate with 17 Feb militiamen. But from the guys’ perspective, based on a collective century of military experience, that was a fool’s errand because 17 Feb had failed to help Tyrone during the airport standoff; 17 Feb was on a work stoppage for higher pay during the ambassador’s visit; and 17 Feb generally couldn’t be counted on in a live-fire situation with an American ambassador’s life at stake.

“– Bob’s statements, and the CIA’s claims, need to be seen through the lens of hindsight. It must be terrible for him to live with the fact that he delayed the departure, knowing that the deaths of Chris Stevens and Sean Smith were caused by smoke inhalation, which by definition is a function of time.

“– Through the CIA, Bob refused my requests to hear his side of the story during the writing of the book. He is only now coming forward because he doesn’t like his depiction.

“– Bob might have had a different sense of urgency from the guys in part because he did not accompany them to the Diplomatic Compound to assess the weak security situation prior to the ambassador’s visit (as depicted in the movie and the book).

“– Logic suggests that Bob’s career as an intelligence officer did not give him the same tactical experience or knowledge that the guys possessed, as depicted in the movie and the book.”

COMMENTS

'13 Hours' Book Author Defends 'STAND DOWN' Scene

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By JOCELYN NOVECK, AP National Writer

"Stand down," says the actor playing the CIA station chief in Michael Bay's new film, "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi." He's speaking to the security team that wants to go help Americans under siege less than a mile away in a U.S. diplomatic compound under fierce attack. His order keeps the team from leaving for a crucial 20 minutes, before they decide to ignore him and go anyway.

It's the pivotal — and most controversial — scene in the new film, a movie that Bay insists steers clear of politics, but which is bound to spark much political discussion nonetheless. On Friday — the movie's opening day — the Washington Post quoted the now-retired CIA station chief, identified only as Bob, as strongly denying he ever issued such an order or anything like it.

"There never was a stand-down order," the base chief was quoted by the Post as saying. "At no time did I ever second-guess that the team would depart."

The author of the book upon which the film is based, Mitchell Zuckoff, stood by his depiction of the scene on Friday, saying in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that he'd based it on several firsthand accounts. Zuckoff collaborated on his book, "13 Hours," with some of the surviving security contractors.

"It's not credible what he's claiming," Zuckoff said of the station chief, whom he said he had tried to interview when writing the book, but his request was denied.

Four Americans died in the attacks, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

In November 2014, a two-year investigation by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee found that the CIA and military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on the compound. Among other findings, it determined that there was no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, and no missed opportunity for a military rescue.

In Washington, CIA spokesman Ryan Trapani referred to those findings and others as making it clear that the scene in the film is inaccurate. "If one is looking for facts on Benghazi, those reviews contain them," he said.

"No one will mistake this movie for a documentary," Trapani added. "It's a distortion of the events and people who served in Benghazi that night. It's shameful that, in order to highlight the heroism of some, those responsible for the movie felt the need to denigrate the courage of other Americans who served in harm's way."

Trapani called what happened in Benghazi "an amazing tale of heroism, courage under fire, leadership and camaraderie by the CIA security team, other CIA officers, State Department personnel, and those who came on the evacuation mission from Tripoli."

In the Post report, the station chief, Bob, also challenged the movie's depiction of him as treating the security contractors —members of the so-called Global Response Staff — dismissively and derisively as "hired help," in the words of the film script.

"These guys were heroes," he was quoted as saying by the Post.

Zuckoff, who teaches journalism at Boston University, said he wasn't surprised that the movie has sparked political discussion.

"It would be naive to think that some won't view it through a political lens," he said. "But it's not what we set out to do in the book or movie."

Bay, the director, has stressed that he sees the movie as non-political, because it focuses on what he calls "a great human story, that got buried. And that's the story I'm telling: the guys who were on the ground. The men and women that were stuck in the CIA annex, and how they fought for 13 hours to get out of there alive."

Speaking in an interview last week in Miami promoting the movie, Bay also said that the filmmakers took great pains to present the facts accurately.

"We worked very hard to get the facts right from the research of the book that Mitch did to the amazing access I have from working 20 years with the military, from the boots on the ground, the people who were in country to the CIA, at a high-level meeting to get just the facts right, the recently released emails. We just had to get it right."

___

Associated Press writer Joshua Replogle in Miami contributed to this report.

Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

COMMENTS

How the State Department Caved to Hillary Clinton’s Lawyer on Classified Emails

www.thedailybeast.com

SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP01.15.16 5:01 AM ETClinton’s private lawyer got his way when he pushed back after being asked to delete all copies of a classified email—a level of deference an expert calls ‘far from the norm.’

The State Department put up virtually no resistance when Hillary Clinton’s private lawyer requested to keep copies of her emails—even though those emails contained classified information, and even though it was unclear whether the attorney was cleared to see such secrets.

Experts on the handling of classified information tell The Daily Beast that the seemingly chummy arrangement between Clinton’s lawyer and her former State Department aides was “quite unusual.”

Newly released documents, obtained by The Daily Beast in coordination with the James Madison Project under the Freedom of Information Act, include legal correspondence and internal State Department communications about Clinton’s emails. Those documents provide new details about how officials tried to accommodate the former secretary of state and presidential candidate.

In May 2015, a senior State Department official informed Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, that government reviewers had found at least one classified email among the messages she sent using a private account, which she used exclusively while in office. That email was only part of the “first tranche” of the review, a State Department employee noted at the time, leaving open the possibility that more classified information would be found, which it was.

Patrick F. Kennedy, the undersecretary of state for management, who had worked under Clinton, asked Kendall to delete all electronic copies of the message in his possession. (Copies were sent to the State Department.)

But Kendall resisted, saying he needed a full record of his own of the 55,000 pages of emails Clinton had sent, in order to respond to information requests from a House committee investigating the 2012 attacks on U.S. officials in Benghazi, Libya, and from the inspectors general of the State Department and the intelligence agencies.

“I therefore do not believe it would be prudent to delete” the email from the “master copies” that Kendall’s firm was maintaining, he wrote.

There is no indication that Kennedy, who oversees physical and information security for the State Department, protested the private lawyer’s position or tried further to persuade Kendall to delete the classified email. The message had been forwarded to Clinton by one of her senior aides, Jacob Sullivan, in November 2012 and contained references to the attack in Benghazi two months earlier.

Rather, within a few days, State Department employees were told to develop a system that would let Kendall keep the emails in a State Department-provided safe at his law firm in Washington, D.C., where he and a partner had access to them.

“The arrangement with Kendall was far from the norm,” Steven Aftergood, an expert on classification and security policy at the Federation of American Scientists, told The Daily Beast. “There are a number of attorneys around who handle clients and cases involving classified information. They are almost never allowed to retain classified material in their office, whether they have a safe or not. Sometimes they are not even allowed to review the classified information, even if they are cleared for it, because an agency will say they don’t have a ‘need to know.’ In any event, the deference shown to Mr. Kendall by the State Department was quite unusual.”

As early as May 2015, Kendall had been made aware that at least one email in Clinton’s archives included classified information. But that didn’t become public knowledge for some time, and when the Clinton campaign became aware of it is unclear.

As late as July 1, Clinton campaign spokeswoman Karen Finney was pushing back against the notion, telling MSNBC that “the assumption that there was classified information being communicated on this BlackBerry I think has been shown in these emails to just be simply untrue.”

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Kendall did not respond to requests for comment. Brian Fallon, a Clinton campaign spokesman, noted that Kendall had an obligation to retain the former secretary’s emails in order to respond to various government inquiries. “David Kendall was adhering to a preservation request from the FBI, State Department inspector general, and the House Select Committee on Benghazi,” Fallon told The Daily Beast.

State Department spokesperson John Kirby defended the government’s actions. “The State Department takes the protection of sensitive information seriously,” Kirby told The Daily Beast, noting that Kendal had told the department that her emails were still subject to preservation requests. “Accordingly, the department provided Secretary Clinton’s lawyers with instructions on physically securing the documents while additional options were under discussion.”

But a spokesperson for the committee investigating the Benghazi attacks was unpersuaded that the arrangement was appropriate.

“Perhaps if Secretary Clinton had turned her server over to an independent, neutral third-party, such as the State Department Inspector General or the Archivist of the Unites States as the Benghazi Committee suggested when it first uncovered her unusual email arrangement, perhaps the damage to our national security would be less than it is now,” Jamal Ware, a spokesperson for the committee, told The Daily Beast.

The FBI, not the Benghazi committee, is examining the classification issues related to Clinton’s personal email account.

The arrangement with Kendall has been previously reported. But the documents reveal new details about what was happening inside the State Department as officials moved ahead with the unorthodox setup.

At one point, a State Department lawyer questioned whether Kendall or one of his associates, Katherine Turner, was qualified to receive and maintain classified information.

“Do any of the lawyers have TS [top secret] clearances,” Sarah Prosser, a legal adviser at State, asked colleagues in an email in August 2015, after more classified material had been found in Clinton’s emails.

It’s not clear from the emails, portions of which are heavily redacted, what the answer was, but Kendall later said he and Turner did have a top secret-level clearance, given to him previously by the State Department as part of his work representing Clinton before the Benghazi committee. There’s no indication of what legal review State undertook to verify that or determine whether the arrangement was acceptable.

Top secret clearances don’t necessarily entitle someone to all classified information. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) later questioned whether there may have been information in the emails for which Kendall and Turner didn’t have the appropriate clearances, including so-called compartmented information that is derived from some of the most highly classified intelligence-collecting systems in the U.S. government.

The internal State Department correspondence also shows that security officials intended to install a safe and records-keeping system that was suitable only up to the secret level, a lower designation than top secret.

Kendall has long argued, particularly in correspondence with lawmakers, that the emails in his possession were not originally classified and were only deemed so after they were reviewed by government auditors.

One internal email shows that the State Department shared that assessment. “In the first tranche of emails there was one that was subsequently classified,” an executive assistant at State told Gregory Starr, the assistant secretary for diplomatic security, in an email recounting the exchanges between Kennedy and Kendall.

Starr was asked to appoint someone from State’s diplomatic security bureau to go to Kendall’s law firm, Williams & Connolly, “to do a thorough security review to include physical security of area/safe in which document/electronic versions are being kept, who has access to the area/safe, do those individuals have appropriate clearances…”

It’s not clear from the documents what reviews took place.

The question of whether Kendall should be allowed to keep classified email received new scrutiny in July 2015, after investigators found additional Clinton emails that they thought contained classified information.

At the time, Grassley said that at least two emails contained “top secret, sensitive compartmented information.” Investigators found that Clinton’s emails contained information from at least five intelligence agencies.

Kendall gave the thumb drive to the Justice Department on Aug. 6 and gave copies to the FBI.

The internal State Department emails show employees reacting to news that the FBI had taken possession of the thumb drive as well as a server in Clinton’s home in Chappaqua, New York, and that some of the emails were said to contain classified information. On Aug. 11, a State press officer sent around clips of news articles, noting that “this is breaking widely” and providing a brief summary. The nearly 20 recipients included press staff, a senior attorney, and Kennedy.

Prosser, the State Department attorney who’d asked whether Kendall and Turner had proper security clearances, forwarded the email to other attorneys and department security personnel, including some of those she’d been corresponding with about the clearance question.

While State Department officials initially may have felt that non-government lawyers were qualified to maintain classified emails at their office, they changed their tune as investigators began to discover more top secret information among Clinton’s communications.

In late July, as the FBI was preparing to take possession of the thumb drive, Kennedy wrote to lawyers for three of Clinton’s top aides—Sullivan, Philippe Reines, and Huma Abedin—asking them to turn over “all copies of potential federal records” in their clients’ possession.

Kennedy acknowled

Trump rents Iowa theater to show Benghazi movie

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump waves to the crowd after speaking at a campaign stop at The Surf Ballroom on Saturday, Jan. 09, 2016, in Clear Lake.(Photo: Brian Powers/The Register)Buy Photo

Donald Trump has rented space at an Urbandale movie theater and will give Iowans free tickets to a showing of the Benghazi movie that critics of Hillary Clinton have been eagerly awaiting.

“Mr. Trump would like all Americans to know the truth about what happened at Benghazi,” the GOP presidential candidate’s Iowa co-chair Tana Goertz said Thursday night.

Trump will pay for the showing of “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” at 6 p.m. Friday at the Carmike Cobblestone 9 Theatre at 86th Street and Hickman Road, Goertz said.

“The theater is paid for. The tickets are paid for. You just have to RSVP,” she said.

The movie depicts the terrorist raid on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012. It reportedly makes no mention of Clinton, then the U.S. Secretary of State, but has again raised the topic of the Democratic presidential candidate’s role in the tragedy, three months after Republicans grilled her on her response to the attacks during an 11-hour congressional hearing in October.

Trump, a billionaire New York real estate entrepreneur, flies to Iowa for a 10 a.m. campaign rally on Friday at Living History Farms in Urbandale. He’s currently in second place in the GOP presidential race here, trailing Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz by 3 points, the latest Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll shows.

Trump has said he’s willing to spend a billion dollars to win the GOP nomination. “I make $400 million a year so what difference does it make?” he told reporters in Iowa in August.

Tickets for the movie, which opened Thursday, cost about $8 each, the theater’s website shows.

The word "Benghazi" has re-emerged in the GOP race. In the GOP debate in South Carolina Thursday night, presidential rival Jeb Bush was first to bring it up, saying Clinton would “continue down the path of Benghazi” and would be “a national security mess.”

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COMMENTS

’13 Hours’ Review: Riveting Indictment of Obama, Hillary, and The DC Media

by JOHN NOLTE14 Jan 2016936

Director Michael Bay’s riveting, heartbreaking, and infuriating “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” opens with five simple words:  “This Is a True Story.” What it should have read was, “This Is a True Story The Media Has Covered Up For Years.”

God damn these people to Hell.

Let me start things off by pointing and laughing at George Clooney, Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Tim Robbins, John Cusack, Leonardo Di Caprio, Paul Greengrass, Matt Damon, and Paul Haggis — all of whom made films critical of a sitting president’s foreign policy that ended up being, not onlybox office catastrophes, but creative embarrassments; completely forgettable, preachy, pedantic, just plain lousy movies no one will ever see again.

Now I have even worse news for them…

Michael Bay — you know, the guy who makes those “Transformers” movies —  just made a film critical of a sitting president’s foreign policy, and knocked it straight out of the park.

Bay’s “13 Hours” is not only a compelling, unbearably tense, brilliantly choreographed action film, but like a true artist, he does not stoop to being preachy or pedantic to make a damning case against a Obama Administration, that not only has a depraved indifference towards the truth, but also towards American lives.

On September 11, 2012, a horde of armed terrorists launched nothing close to a protest spurred by an anti-Muslim YouTube video. There is no question the attack against our diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, was coordinated, swift and deadly. Despite repeated pleas for additional security (all ignored by Hillary Clinton’s State Department), Ambassador Chris Stevens had only unreliable locals and a handful of State Department agents protecting him.

The battle was lost before it began.

Just a mile away was our not-so-secret CIA outpost. As soon as the militants hit, the outpost called the CIA annex begging for help. Within minutes, six security contractors stationed there, all former special forces-operators, were ready to launch a rescue mission. The CIA annex chief (David Costabile) refused to let them go. Repeatedly, the six men are ordered to stand down.

For 20 agonizing minutes, Jack (John Krasinski), Rone (James Badge Dale), Oz (Max Martini), Tanto (Pablo Schreiber), Tig (Dominic Fumusa), and Boon (David Denman) wait in a bureaucratic hell. One says in frustration and disbelief, “If the consulate had ordered a fucking pizza it would have been there by now.”

From the roof, these warriors watch helplessly as the flames consuming the consulate burn higher. Now that it looks like a suicide mission instead of a rescue mission, they ignore the stand down order and do their duty.

While there is no questions those 20 precious minutes cost the lives of a fine ambassador and Information Management Officer Sean Smith, the six man team is still able to rescue a handful of American personnel and, after a brutal firefight, make it back to the CIA compound.

Unfortunately, their problems have only just begun. Armed militants, who are part of the al Qaeda-affiliated Ansar al-Sharia, gather in the dark, creep, attack in waves, retreat, and then prepare to start all over having learned more about the annex’s defenses.

There is no question, though, that the arch-villain of “13 Hours” is the White House and Clinton’s State Department. Bay never names names, never launches a diatribe, but his fury at the American government for abandoning these men, along with the 30 or so others stationed at the annex, is both palpable and contagious. (An offhand comment about one of the attacking terrorists being a former Gitmo detainee is especially timely.)

Overhead, throughout this terrible night, a military drone witnesses everything, and our government does nothing. Repeatedly, desperate calls are made begging for air support — if nothing else, a simple flyover to scare the militants. Just a few hundred miles away, F-14s sit idle on an aircraft carrier.

Even the next morning, after it is all over, even after two more brave men are dead and all the CIA staffers have been placed safely aboard a departing plane, the American government doesn’t come. Our heroes have to rely on a foreign government to get them home.

The pacing is breathless, the acting superb, and no one’s humanity is forgotten in the process. Ambassador Stevens is portrayed as a heroic idealist, and you cannot help but mourn his loss. Even the CIA chief is not portrayed as a one-dimensional villain. He may be a bureaucrat but he is a competent one.

In the middle of it all, during a rare break in the danger, the incredulous men learn that our corrupt media has already assumed their favorite position as a Tool of the State; that the media is already dutifully reporting the White House lies about protests and YouTube videos; already working hand-in-hand with the Obama campaign to cover-up the truth to re-elect a failed president.

To protect their role in that cover-up, and to drag Hillary Clinton over her own finish line, that cover-up continues to this day. The real injustice, though, has nothing to do with politics. What happened over those 13 hours was a modern-day Alamo, and because our DC Media is nothing more than a pile of boot-licking liars and propagandists, these six heroes have had to wait three years to receive their due.

In case I didn’t mention it, “13 Hours” is nothing close to political.

Michael Bay simply told the truth.

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter@NolteNC               

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