Lindsey Graham: The White House Must Permit Benghazi Survivors to Speak

Without doubt. Graham is right to push this.

Watch Jay Carney's lie right here. In the first part of the sentence, he claims the White House is not blocking these people from talking. In the second part, he adds in that they are, of course, precluded from discussing sensitive topics due to their positions...

The second part of the sentence blows up the first part. This is the game the White House is playing: They are putting these people on notice they might be prosecuted for revealing state secrets if they say something Obama doesn't like.

We don't have to hear about whatever they were doing in Benghazi as far as secret business -- perhaps they were part of the operation to covertly arm the Syrian rebels. Fine, we don't need to hear about that.

But surely they can talk about the things our enemies already know, like how our enemies mounted a coordinated attack against our embassy.

The press just rolls over for Obama on this. They want people kept in the dark. The only people being prevented from knowing "state secrets" are the American public. Al Qaeda knows all about the details of its operation, after all.

Graham urges subpoenas:

I think that Speaker Boehner is very much in the mindset of trying to get to the bottom of Benghazi. But yes, I will urge Speaker Boehner to use the powers of the House not to chase rabbits, but to get to the bottom line. We have not heard from the people who went through this debacle who were there on the ground. I guarantee if this had been a good news story we would have heard from them the next day. The fact we haven’t heard from them for six months should make every American worried about what this administration is covering up.

I would say they should also offer immunity from prosecution via legislation, but the Senate Democrats would block that and thus renew the very threat that keeps these people quiet. But the House is working on protections for them nonetheless.

Any Benghazi survivor who talks to his committee would be protected from prosecution or job termination from the Obama administration, Rogers said. “We’ll make sure of that. That is whistle bower standard protection. If they’re fired for talking to us, there’ll be some hell to pay.”

Issa agrees, saying, “Any kind of retaliation against any of the witnesses we’ve already had would not be tolerated.

posted by Ace at 11:03 AM

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