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

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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 Guanier’s radical views, her name had to be withdrawn from consideration.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

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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www.usnews.com

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

www.desmoinesregister.com

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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: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi': Film Review

www.hollywoodreporter.com

Michael Bay's latest action extravaganza portrays the deadly 2012 attack on an American diplomatic compound in Libya.

The vast and underserved heartland audience that made such a smash out of American Sniper a year ago finally has some fresh red meat to call its own in 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. Michael Bay's latest in-between-Transformers picture actually features just as much action as his giant toy extravaganzas, being an account of the waves of intense firefights that occurred at the American compound in Libya's second city on Sept. 11-12, 2012. The big selling point of Mitchell Zuckoff's book about the incident, which cost the life of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others, was its revelation of the hitherto unknown role special ops played in holding marauding local radicals at bay until all American personnel could be evacuated.

But while this adaptation superficially goes out of its way to avoid being overtly political, its patriotic tenor is as unmistakable as its sentimentality. Even if an unmentioned Hillary Clinton has nothing specific to worry about in regard to the film's content, its mere existence will stir up fresh talk about her behavior regarding the incident, and there's no doubt that Donald Trump fans will eat this up more enthusiastically than anyone.

Although it was never presented as such in news accounts, the siege on the diplomatic enclave and the secret CIA facility a mile away resembles in its dramatization nothing so much as the battle of the Alamo, albeit with a better ending as far as the Americans were concerned. As with so many accounts of Western involvement in the Middle East and other regions — Black Hawk Down, for starters — this is the story of a fiasco, one made less so by the fierce and selfless commitment of a few good men whose old-fashioned kick-ass attitudes form the crux of the yarn's appeal.

Anything remotely relating to the ongoing controversy over then-Secretary of State Clinton's actions, emails and what she knew when remains implicit; when it's stated that both American diplomatic outposts in anarchic, post-Muammar Gaddafi Libya, including the relevant one in Benghazi, were among the 12 such sites on the worldwide “critical” list, meaning they were inadequately secured and vulnerable to attack, one is nonetheless left to ponder where the buck stops on this sort of thing.

In any event, the government's answer is to supply a band-aid in the form of several “private security officers,” the first among equals being former Navy SEAL Jack Silva (John Krasinski), who leaves his family behind one more time to take on a precarious assignment. His impersonation of Davy Crockett is flanked by five other guys with nicknames like Tig and Boon and Tanto and Oz and who are played by buff 30-ish actors whose bushy beards make it next to impossible to tell them apart. But, this being a Michael Bay movie, we can rest assured that they're all tough, potty-mouthed and at their best when sporting night-vision goggles and handling multiple forms of heavy artillery.

Read more Box-Office Preview: Michael Bay's Benghazi Movie '13 Hours' Could Be Politically Divisive

Despite the well-conveyed sense of danger that seems to lurk down every street (some of Bay's best work comes in multiple scenes of vehicles becoming trapped by would-be enemies), suspicious characters seen photographing the Yank facilities and the well-known proliferation of competing gangster and/or radical Islamist factions, official American naivete about such matters prevails from the outset; the CIA, led locally by a hard-headed, by-the-book chief (David Costabile), loftily proclaims that, “There is no real threat here,” while Ambassador Stevens (Matt Letscher) arrives to make a ludicrously optimistic speech about future prospects.

The Americans advisedly lay low on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11 and the day passes uneventfully. The night, however, is another matter. Aided by missiles, a mob attacks the compound at dusk, setting parts of it afire. Confusion reigns: Ambassador Stevens and his aide Sean Smith (Christopher Dingli) are separated from the security force and retreating to a safe room doesn't protect them from heavy smoke that seeps in under the door (Stevens was determined to have died from smoke inhalation). The closest other Americans are 400 miles away in Tripoli and the nearest Air Force jets are based in Sicily; there's no help to be had.

Although terrible damage has been done, the invaders are eventually repulsed by the small band of Americans doing some very expert shooting. Fighting continues on the streets in scenes that carry a violent video-game feel, a new wave of marauders is turned back and, as at the Alamo, a period of low-simmering anxiety permeates the night as a follow-up bombardment is awaited.

On the plus side, the logistics of the situation are well conveyed; the position of the compound on the edge of the city, the considerable distance between the two American buildings and their easy accessibility by would-be troublemakers due to their being bordered by public streets — all this is clearly presented.

Read more 'Ride Along 2': Film Review

On the other hand, there is a noticeable absence of dramatic modulation. To complain about this sort of stylistic shortcoming in a Transformers movie would seem akin to faulting a dish at Denny's for a lack of subtle seasoning. But in this context, and given the solidly constructed and reasonably comprehensive script by Chuck Hogan (The Town), it's easier to see what Bay's style is all about, which is achieving a high level of intensity and then keeping it there, without variance. To use what, under the circumstances, is a far too convenient metaphor, Bay is interested in accelerating from zero to 100 as quickly as possible and then maintaining speed, rather than skillfully shifting gears and adjusting speeds based on curves, hills and road conditions. In this case, he gets you there, but you know the ride could have been a lot more varied and nuanced.

Just as dawn begins to show itself, the mob launches a well-aimed mortar attack from just outside the nearby gates, which is met by ferocious retaliation from the special ops. Little is spared in terms of showing what very high caliber ammo can do to a human body, and there is no doubt that combat and weapons freaks will get off on the comprehensive and detailed display of the latest equipment. At one point, Bay can't resist repeating a shot he introduced in Pearl Harbor that shows a large mortar shell falling slowly and then exploding.

The film's worst moments reside in its cheap bids at sentiment in some of the men's brief exchanges with distant loved ones, its calculated and banal paeans to family life expressed via video links. Unlike American Sniper, this film doesn't bring up, much less explore, the tension within many men between the lure of danger and excitement and the longing for intimacy and home.

Indistinct as some of them are within the group setting, the actors do their tough and gruff stuff perfectly well, led by Krasinski and James Badge Dale. As very few would claim to know what Benghazi actually looks like, one can only presume that the vivid and evocative locations in Malta and Morocco serve their purpose very well, while production designer Jeffrey Beecroft's reproduction of the American compound appears accurate down to the smallest detail. All craft contributions are robust, while the musical score by Lorne Balfe achieves some weird and creepy effects.

Read more Michael Bay Returning as Director for 'Transformers 5'

Distributor: Paramount Production: 3 Arts Entertainment, Bay Films Cast: James Badge Dale, John Krasinski, Max Martini, Pablo Schreiber, Toby Stephens, Dominic Fumusa, Matt Letscher, David Denman, David Giuntoli, David Costabile, Demetrius Gross, Alexia Barlier, Christopher Dingli Director: Michael Bay Screenwriter: Chuck Hogan, based on the book 13 Hours by Mitchell Zuckoff and members of the Annex Security Team Director of photography: Dion Beebe Production designer: Jeffrey Beecroft Costume designer: Deborah Lynn Scott Editors: Pietro Scalia, Calvin Wimmer Music: Lorne Balfe Casting: Denise Charmian, Edward Said

Rated R, 144 minutes

COMMENTS

Benghazi Victim's Mother SCREAMS: "Hillary Is a Liar!" After Watching '13 Hours' (VIDEO)

Pat Smith, mother of State Department official Sean Smith who was murdered at the Benghazi Consulate on 9-11-3012, screamed out, “Hillary is a liar!” after watching the movie ’13 Hours.’

Pat Smith joined Megyn Kelly tonight after attending the opening of ’13 Hours’ last night in Dallas, Texas.

She sobbed as she told Megyn about the movie.

I left as soon as Sean came on screen, or the person who portrayed him. I couldn’t handle it. HILLARY IS A LIAR! I know what she told me!

Smith was referring to Hillary’s bogus claims that a YouTube video was behind the deadly attacks.

Pat Smith later said she wants Hillary in jail.

COMMENTS

‘13 Hours’ Movie The Benghazi Attack

Cinematic Treatment

www.nytimes.com

The director Michael Bay, left, and Pablo Schreiber on the set of “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.”By MICHAEL CIEPLYJanuary 5, 2016

LOS ANGELES — Michael Bay, known for four “Transformers” films and an action-romance about the Pearl Harbor attack, made a promise to Mitchell Zuckoff on beginning a screen version of the story Mr. Zuckoff told in his book “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi.”

“This is going to be my most real movie,” Mr. Zuckoff recalls Mr. Bay saying.

Next week will tell whether the harsh realities of a 2012 attack on a United States diplomatic compound in Libya are the stuff of transition for Mr. Bay, and cinematic catharsis for viewers whose understanding of the assault, in which Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed, has been blurred by partisan politics since the night it occurred.

The action-drama, called “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi,” will have its premiere next Tuesday in Texas at AT&T Stadium, where the Dallas Cowboys play their home games. The screening is a benefit for the Shadow Warriors Project, which supports private military security personnel, and other groups.

Three days later the film will be released by Paramount Pictures, hoping to capture a January audience that made past hits of the combat-themed films “Lone Survivor” and “American Sniper.”

To hear those involved with “13 Hours” tell it, success demands something more than ticket sales.

“This is what we experienced, we hope you listen to it,” said Mark Geist, who was wounded while helping, as a security consultant, to defend a Central Intelligence Agency annex that was attacked in tandem with the diplomatic compound.

One of five survivors who collaborated on both Mr. Zuckoff’s book and Mr. Bay’s film, Mr. Geist said he and his peers hoped the movie would help close rather than reopen debate about political motives in Washington’s lack of readiness for and response to a 13-hour attack that began on Sept. 11, 2012.

“The political side of it needs to focus on the truth, and not focus on the spin,” said Mr. Geist, who spoke by telephone last week, and is often called Oz, both in life and in the film.

“People need to listen to the people on the ground,” he added.

While Mr. Geist did not address specific failures in the official response to the attack, the film bluntly portrays several. The film’s operatives openly question inadequate security measures at the diplomatic compound in advance of the attack. C.I.A. staffers deride and disregard the operatives, and play down the dangers in Libya. Requested air support never arrives.

Still, Mr. Bay shared the conviction of the operatives, Mr. Zuckoff and Erwin Stoff, a producer of the film, that partisan politics should generally be avoided. Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state when the attack took place — and who has been harshly criticized by Republicans who have tried to tie the attack to what they contend was her mismanagement — is never mentioned. President Obama is only a fleeting voice in “13 Hours.” (Mr. Bay’s mother, whom he said is a close observer of national politics, urged him not to do the film at all.)

In hours of Congressional testimony, Mrs. Clinton has accepted general responsibility for security at the compound, but has said that specific decisions about its protection were made by her department’s security professionals.

In what might be one political sore spot, a printed crawl at the picture’s end points out that in the years after the attack, Libya became a stronghold for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

But for the most part, “13 Hours,” with its focus on “ground truth,” is an unabashed celebration of the armed operatives, who were defying orders when they moved to defend the diplomatic compound. One of the original group, Tyrone Woods, known as Rone, died. Along with Ambassador Stevens, the other Americans killed were Sean Smith, a State Department communications officer, and Glen Doherty, known as Bub, a security contractor who joined in defending the annex after flying from Tripoli.

To an unusual degree, the security operatives on the ground in Benghazi became a force in creating the “13 Hours” film, even before Mr. Bay agreed to direct it.

In an interview last week, Mr. Stoff described the process leading to the film. In May 2013, he said, Richard Abate, a book agent who works with him at the 3 Arts Entertainment management and production company, spoke with Kris Paronto, known as Tanto, another security operative in Libya. That led to conversations with five survivors, including Mr. Geist; John Tiegen, known as Tig; and two others who have not been publicly identified. (In the film, they are called Jack Silva, played by John Krasinski, and Boon, played by David Denman.)

The five quickly resolved to retell their experiences in a book. Mr. Abate asked Mr. Zuckoff, a client and longtime journalist, to write it. Mr. Zuckoff initially declined, partly because the proposed eight-month delivery schedule was tight, and partly from wariness of political crosscurrents around the Benghazi story.

“I didn’t want to wade into that,” Mr. Zuckoff said. But direct conversations with the operatives persuaded him otherwise.

“You realize, I can’t not tell their story,” he said.

Simultaneously, Mr. Stoff recruited Chuck Hogan (who wrote a novel that became Ben Affleck’s “The Town”) to write the film and organize a pitch. Four of the five operatives, Mr. Stoff said, joined the writer and producer in presenting the project to Hollywood studios.

“Everybody wanted to hear it,” Mr. Stoff said. “But only Paramount had the courage to want to make it.”

In July 2014, Paramount executives showed the script to Mr. Bay, who has worked with the studio on four “Transformers” films, and is preparing to direct a fifth. Mr. Stoff told them not to waste their time: Mr. Bay, he knew, had just turned down a competing Benghazi project. But Mr. Bay was intrigued, and agreed to direct.

“I just wanted to do it justice,” Mr. Bay said, speaking by telephone this week. Mr. Bay said that he saw the project as a way to honor the selfless behavior of combat participants, which he earlier witnessed among Navy SEALs when he worked with several of them on “The Rock” in the mid-1990s.

A line on the billboards for “13 Hours” captures Mr. Bay’s enduring fascination with heroics under pressure — something evident in his previous films, like “Bad Boys,” “The Rock,” “Armageddon,” “Pearl Harbor” and the “Transformers” series. “When everything went wrong, six men had the courage to do what was right,” it says.

The bleak outcome in Benghazi, Mr. Stoff noted, edged Mr. Bay onto what for him was new ground. “His movies always present the world as you wish it would be,” Mr. Stoff said. “This is tonally a very different kind of movie.”

Mr. Geist said he regarded “13 Hours” as an authentic portrayal of the attack and response.

Not every detail, he said, is clinically correct. One or another bit of rooftop action, he said, may have been altered.

But “it’s as authentic, I think, as you’re going to be able to get,” Mr. Geist said. All but one of the core operatives have seen it, he added.

“I didn’t hear a negative comment.”

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Zero Dark Thirty