Home
Obama administration officials threatened whistle-blowers on Benghazi, lawyer says
By James Rosen
Published April 29, 2013
FoxNews.com
At least four career officials at the State Department and the
Central Intelligence Agency have retained lawyers or are in the process
of doing so, as they prepare to provide sensitive information about the
Benghazi attacks to Congress, Fox News has learned.
Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official and
Republican counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, is now
representing one of the State Department employees. She told Fox News
her client and some of the others, who consider themselves
whistle-blowers, have been threatened by unnamed Obama administration
officials.
“I'm not talking generally, I'm talking specifically about Benghazi –
that people have been threatened,” Toensing said in an interview
Monday. “And not just the State Department. People have been threatened
at the CIA.”
Toensing declined to name her client. She also refused to say whether
the individual was on the ground in Benghazi on the night of Sept. 11,
2012, when terrorist attacks on two U.S. installations in the Libyan
city killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris
Stevens.
However, Toensing disclosed that her client has pertinent information
on all three time periods investigators consider relevant to the
attacks: the months that led up to the attack, when pleas by the
ambassador and his staff for enhanced security in Benghazi were mostly
rejected by senior officers at the State Department; the eight-hour time
frame in which the attacks unfolded, and the eight-day period that
followed the attacks, when Obama administration officials incorrectly
described them as the result of a spontaneous protest over a video.
“It's frightening, and they're doing some very despicable threats to
people,” she said. “Not ‘we're going to kill you,’ or not ‘we're going
to prosecute you tomorrow,’ but they're taking career people and making
them well aware that their careers will be over [if they cooperate with
congressional investigators].”
Federal law provides explicit protections for federal government
employees who are identified as “whistle-blowers.” The laws aim to
ensure these individuals will not face repercussions from their
superiors, or from other quarters, in retaliation for their provision of
information about corruption or other forms of wrongdoing to Congress,
or to an agency’s inspector-general.
Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican from California who chairs the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote to Secretary of
State John Kerry on Friday to complain that the department has not
provided a process by which attorneys like Toensing can receive the
security clearances necessary for them to review classified documents
and other key evidence.
“It is unavoidable that Department employees identifying themselves
as witnesses in the Committee’s investigation will apply for a security
clearance to allow their personal attorneys to handle sensitive or
classified material,” Issa wrote. “The Department’s unwillingness to
make the process for clearing an attorney more transparent appears to be
an effort to interfere with the rights of employees to furnish
information to Congress.”
The Obama administration maintains that it has been more than
forthcoming on Benghazi and that it is time for the State Department to
move on. At a recent hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
Kerry noted that administration officials have testified at eight
hearings on Benghazi, provided 20 briefings on the subject and turned
over to Congress some 25,000 documents related to the killings.
“So if you have additional questions or you think there's some
document that somehow you need, I'll work with you to try to get it and
see if we can provide that to you,” Kerry told committee Chairman Rep.
Ed Royce, R-Calif., on April 17. But Kerry added: “I do not want to
spend the next year coming up here talking about Benghazi.”
Asked about Issa’s complaints about attorneys not receiving security
clearances, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell on Monday
indicated that – far from threatening anyone – the administration hasn’t
been presented with any such cases. “I'm not aware of private counsel
seeking security clearances or -- or anything to that regard,” Ventrell
told reporters. “I'm not aware of whistle-blowers one way or another.”
Ventrell cited the work of the FBI – whose probe of the attacks
continues almost eight months later and without any known instances of
perpetrators being brought to justice – and the Accountability Review
Board. The board was an internal State Department review panel led by
former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Thomas Pickering and former
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen. An unclassified
version of the board’s final report that was released to the public
contained no conclusions that suggested administration officials had
willfully endangered their colleagues in Benghazi or had misled the
public or Congress.
“And that should be enough,” Ventrell said at Monday’s press
briefing. “Congress has its own prerogatives, but we've had a very
thorough, independent investigation, which we completed and [which was]
transparent and shared. And there are many folks who are, in a political
manner, trying to sort of use this for their own political means, or
ends.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/29/obama-administration-officials-have-threatened-whistle-blowers-on-benghazi/#ixzz2Rtw37Kef
By James Rosen
Published April 29, 2013
FoxNews.com
At least four career officials at the State Department and the
Central Intelligence Agency have retained lawyers or are in the process
of doing so, as they prepare to provide sensitive information about the
Benghazi attacks to Congress, Fox News has learned.
Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official and
Republican counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, is now
representing one of the State Department employees. She told Fox News
her client and some of the others, who consider themselves
whistle-blowers, have been threatened by unnamed Obama administration
officials.
“I'm not talking generally, I'm talking specifically about Benghazi –
that people have been threatened,” Toensing said in an interview
Monday. “And not just the State Department. People have been threatened
at the CIA.”
Toensing declined to name her client. She also refused to say whether
the individual was on the ground in Benghazi on the night of Sept. 11,
2012, when terrorist attacks on two U.S. installations in the Libyan
city killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris
Stevens.
However, Toensing disclosed that her client has pertinent information
on all three time periods investigators consider relevant to the
attacks: the months that led up to the attack, when pleas by the
ambassador and his staff for enhanced security in Benghazi were mostly
rejected by senior officers at the State Department; the eight-hour time
frame in which the attacks unfolded, and the eight-day period that
followed the attacks, when Obama administration officials incorrectly
described them as the result of a spontaneous protest over a video.
“It's frightening, and they're doing some very despicable threats to
people,” she said. “Not ‘we're going to kill you,’ or not ‘we're going
to prosecute you tomorrow,’ but they're taking career people and making
them well aware that their careers will be over [if they cooperate with
congressional investigators].”
Federal law provides explicit protections for federal government
employees who are identified as “whistle-blowers.” The laws aim to
ensure these individuals will not face repercussions from their
superiors, or from other quarters, in retaliation for their provision of
information about corruption or other forms of wrongdoing to Congress,
or to an agency’s inspector-general.
Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican from California who chairs the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote to Secretary of
State John Kerry on Friday to complain that the department has not
provided a process by which attorneys like Toensing can receive the
security clearances necessary for them to review classified documents
and other key evidence.
“It is unavoidable that Department employees identifying themselves
as witnesses in the Committee’s investigation will apply for a security
clearance to allow their personal attorneys to handle sensitive or
classified material,” Issa wrote. “The Department’s unwillingness to
make the process for clearing an attorney more transparent appears to be
an effort to interfere with the rights of employees to furnish
information to Congress.”
The Obama administration maintains that it has been more than
forthcoming on Benghazi and that it is time for the State Department to
move on. At a recent hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
Kerry noted that administration officials have testified at eight
hearings on Benghazi, provided 20 briefings on the subject and turned
over to Congress some 25,000 documents related to the killings.
“So if you have additional questions or you think there's some
document that somehow you need, I'll work with you to try to get it and
see if we can provide that to you,” Kerry told committee Chairman Rep.
Ed Royce, R-Calif., on April 17. But Kerry added: “I do not want to
spend the next year coming up here talking about Benghazi.”
Asked about Issa’s complaints about attorneys not receiving security
clearances, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell on Monday
indicated that – far from threatening anyone – the administration hasn’t
been presented with any such cases. “I'm not aware of private counsel
seeking security clearances or -- or anything to that regard,” Ventrell
told reporters. “I'm not aware of whistle-blowers one way or another.”
Ventrell cited the work of the FBI – whose probe of the attacks
continues almost eight months later and without any known instances of
perpetrators being brought to justice – and the Accountability Review
Board. The board was an internal State Department review panel led by
former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Thomas Pickering and former
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen. An unclassified
version of the board’s final report that was released to the public
contained no conclusions that suggested administration officials had
willfully endangered their colleagues in Benghazi or had misled the
public or Congress.
“And that should be enough,” Ventrell said at Monday’s press
briefing. “Congress has its own prerogatives, but we've had a very
thorough, independent investigation, which we completed and [which was]
transparent and shared. And there are many folks who are, in a political
manner, trying to sort of use this for their own political means, or
ends.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/29/obama-administration-officials-have-threatened-whistle-blowers-on-benghazi/#ixzz2Rtw37Kef
» Judy, MilitiaMan, Walkingstick and more......Wednesday AM 3-29-2023
» The Turkish Energy Minister denies fining his country $1.4 billion in the case of exporting Kurdista
» Integrity: the arrest of a wanted former trade official after his return from outside Iraq
» Report: Paving the Silk Road passes through pumping more Chinese loans to transit countries
» The Finance Committee breaks its silence: Al-Halbousi is alone discussing the budget in his private
» What is the benefit of the return of Iranian-Saudi relations to Iraq? Parliament answers
» Ports: 3 Travelers Were Arrested In Possession Of 522 Master Card Cards Intended For Smuggling
» Seizing A Factory For Industrial Fraud And Counterfeiting Trademarks, And Arresting Its Owner In Bag
» Iraq and Romania are discussing a mechanism for mutual coordination to support expertise between the
» The Agricultural Bank launches car purchase advances
» Al-Sudani calls for solving citizens' problems without waiting for the Prime Minister's directives
» Parliamentary Work: We have obligated local and foreign companies to employ the Iraqi workforce and
» Iraq Ports Company: The completion rate of the Al-Faw Grand Port project has reached more than 44.5%
» The head of the Service Council mortgages the launch of appointments to two issues and talks about t
» The Iraq Stock Exchange ends the day's trading, down 0.49%
» The arrest of a former official in the Ministry of Commerce after his return from abroad
» “Al-Kazemi incites Washington by inciting against Al-Sudani.” An American network warns the former p
» Deputy likely date of inclusion of the draft budget law on the agenda of Parliament
» The Central Bank of Iraq announces the imminent issuance of a decision regarding the possibility of
» Rashid: The United Nations has shown interest in helping Iraq solve water problems
» Exposing corruption and waste of public money worth 123 billion dinars in Basra (documents)
» After abolishing it years ago.. Restoring the provincial councils for the benefit or for the interes
» With rising prices, drought and lack of subsidies threaten the livestock market in Iraq
» The Iraqi Central Bank wants to issue a denomination of 20,000 dinars: we will issue a decision to p
» International trade obliges Iraq to pay compensation to Ankara in the arbitration case
» Declining Central Bank of Iraq sales of dollars
» An Iraqi bank launches car purchase advances
» International Trade orders Iraq to pay compensation to Ankara in the arbitration case
» Experts: Growing crude sales to China reflect positively on the economy
» Integrity monitors 5,000 lagging projects worth $20 billion over 5 years
» The maximum limit is 150 million.. An Iraqi company determines deposit compensation rates
» DNO begins closing oil fields in Kurdistan
» New talk from the Central Bank regarding the exchange rate and the possibility of printing a denomin
» Minister of Labor We await approval of the budget to include 600,000 families with social protection
» Al-Sudani calls for expediting registration for health insurance: services at subsidized prices
» Investors Association: Foreign investors are now selling their shares from Iraqi companies
» Baghdad and Muscat are finalizing the memorandum of understanding in the field of combating corrupti
» Parliament hosts the representative of the International Monetary Fund
» Parliamentary Oil confirms its intention to dismiss a number of officials of the Iraqi Oil Marketing
» The Iraqi charge d'affaires in Manama (tickles) the King of Bahrain, and its government officially p
» Al-Rafidain launches a new meal from the predecessors of employees and associates electronically
» The start of the tasks of the government services team in Baghdad
» Amending the election law raises controversy
» Parliamentary Committee: Basra Oil incurred 10 billion dinars as delay fines
» Lawmakers: The three-year budget cuts the path of corruption
» Kurdistan parties do not agree on an electoral system
» The central bank records the highest cash reserve in its history
» Kurdistan loses its most prominent supporters.. Washington is "angry" with its Kurdish allies, and t
» The Sudanese registers in the health insurance electronic form
» With a value of 123 billion dinars.. Parliamentary integrity reveals corruption and waste of public
» With fears of disruption to Kurdistan's supplies, oil is approaching $79 a barrel
» The President of the Republic stresses the need to support the oil industry
» Oil: directives to expedite the investment of 200 cubic meters per day of associated gas in Dhi Qar
» A Norwegian oil company closes wells and withdraws from the Kurdistan region
» Dollar prices recorded a noticeable decline in Baghdad markets
» The Iraqi Central Bank’s sales of dollars reach more than 200 million
» In numbers.. the new taxes in the budget and its “citizen victim”
» Oil: directives to expedite the investment of 200 cubic meters per day of associated gas in Dhi Qar
» On his visit to the Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).. The Minister of Education discusses the developmen
» The Iraqi government withdraws the bill to confiscate the funds of the pillars of Saddam's regime
» Parliament passes the election law with security intervention after chaos
» Iraq makes the water file sovereign and tends to store the Turkish increase in releases
» An international report: 75% of the displaced farming families did not return to their homes
» The delegation of the Kurdistan region returns to Baghdad to discuss the settlement of previous diff
» The coordination framework is preparing to abolish the Judicial Commission and the Kirkuk elections
» Central Bank: Our measures contributed to the stability of the exchange rate
» The general amnesty returns to the fore... and a political consensus to speed up its approval
» Al-Sudani conveys the issue of water from his artistic side and makes it a sovereign file
» The Minister of Foreign Affairs directs to return the Iraqi Chargé d'Affairs to Bahrain to Baghdad
» The Minister of Finance is discussing cooperation with France and Britain in 3 sectors
» Electricity announces the operation of a crutch generation station on free national gas
» Al-Mandalawi and Al-Hakim stress the need to expedite the legislation of the budget law
» Retirement begins with the disbursement of the second meal for the beneficiaries of the category of
» Agriculture shows the mechanism of importing crops
» The Central Bank expects a decrease in the difference between the official and parallel exchange rat
» Deputy: It is expected that 15 laws will be presented to Parliament during the coming weeks
» Social protection: transgressors are held accountable and the money they received is returned
» Cabinet decisions at its meeting today
» The Social Protection Authority clarifies the mechanism for recovering money from those who violated
» Sudanese advisor: Central Bank reserves reached 115 billion dollars
» International oil prices continue to rise and are approaching $78 a barrel
» Demands for Iraq to move to put pressure on Türkiye to obtain its share of water
» Among them is the budget.. Al-Mandalawi and Al-Hakim discuss the importance of approving legislation
» KTFA Monday Night CC "Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls" 3-27-2023
» The House of Representatives is close to approving a law that has been suspended for more than a dec
» Advisor to the Prime Minister: Iraq's economy is strong and moving towards improvement
» Sudanese advisor: The official exchange rate will match the parallel exchange rate within a few week
» The most prominent of which is the discussion of the oil file.. A delegation from the regional gover
» Parliamentary Finance: We have received the draft budget and it is not necessary to return it to the
» Parliamentary mobilization for statement "One" against the dictatorship of Al-Halbousi during the se
» Framework: We will not make any concessions in order to pass the election law
» Al-Bayati: The budget will be decided during next April, and the Kurds will not hinder its passage
» With an area of 330 dunums.. revealed the details of an economic and commercial city project in Ba
» Framework: Reviewing the strategic agreement with America will be a next priority after its failure
» A parliamentary move to host the Minister of Commerce due to the delay in disbursing the ration card
» Kurdistan's oil is stacked in storage tanks after exports to Turkey stopped
» Parliament was surprised by Al-Halbousi's behavior by hiding the budget and putting forward politica
» Expert: The American presence on the borders undermines the country's security and threatens its saf