It looks like what we have suspected all along concerning the Benghazi attacks has come to light and that is that the White House knew it was a terrorist attack within two hours.
The records obtained by Reuters consist of three emails dispatched by the State Department’s Operations Center to multiple government offices, including addresses at the White House, Pentagon, intelligence community and FBI, on the afternoon of September 11.
The first email, timed at 4:05 p.m. Washington time – or 10:05 p.m. Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the US diplomatic mission allegedly began – carried the subject line “US Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” and the notation “SBU”, meaning “Sensitive But Unclassified.”
The text said the State Department’s regional security office had reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was “under attack. Embassy in Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well.”
A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07 p.m. Washington time, carried the subject line: “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.”
Fox News was told that an estimated 300 to 400 national security figures received these emails in real time almost as the raid was playing out and concluding. People who received these emails work directly under the nation’s top national security, military and diplomatic officials, Fox News was told.
The White House has responded to these emails coming to light. Press Secretary Jay Carney commented on the emails while on Air Force One:
“There were emails about all sorts of information that was coming available in the aftermath of the attack. The email you’re referring to was an open source unclassified email referring to an assertion made on a social media site that everyone in this room had access to and knew about instantaneously. There was a variety of information coming in, the whole point of an intelligence community and what they do is to assess strands of information and make judgments about what happened and who was responsible and I would refer you to what we’ve already said about, and what the DNI has said about the initial assessments of the inelegant community and the fact that throughout this process I and others make very clear that our prelim assessments were preliminary, that an investigation was underway and as more facts became available, we would make the American people aware of them. Again this was an open source, unclassified email posting on a facebook site.
I would also note, I think within a few hours that organization itself claimed that it had not been responsible. Neither should be taken as fact. That’s why there’s an infestation underway.”
Now if we could just get our hands on the documents pertaining to Fast and Furious that the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed, along with Kevin O’Reilly’s testimony, we might just demonstrate that the White House also knew about that Operation as well.
