Obamacare Donor-Gate Scandal Looming Over White House
THE NEXT KENYAN CABAL ILLEGAL ACTION IN THE SERIES OF CROOKED SHADY DEALINGS BY OBAMA AND CREW. SO HOW MUCH MORE DO YOU NEED ?
A group members of the U.S. House of
Representatives have sent Secretary of the Department of Human and
Health Services, Kathleen Sebelius, a letter questioning her reported
actions of soliciting donations from non-profit organizations that are
“directly implementing” Obamacare. Florida’s Representatives Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen, Jeff Miller, Bill Posey and Trey Radel are among the 26
members of Congress who penned their signatures on the letter to
Sebelius. The letter asks Secretary Sebelius if
she indeed made the calls,how many did she make? In addition, Sebelius
was asked if Department resources were used, and how much money was
raised? If it is confirmed that Sebelius did
solicit funds from organizations, who are tasked to implement Obamacare,
could this be another Obama scandal in the making?
NOW THEY ARE GOING AFTER MICHELLE BACHMANN...
House committee to probe Sebelius soliciting money for ObamaCare signups
House Republicans are starting a probe into Health and Human Services
Secretary Kathleen Sebelius soliciting donations from companies her
agency might regulate, to help sign up uninsured Americans for
ObamaCare. Sebelius in recent weeks has asked various charitable foundations,
businesses executives, churches and doctors to donate money to nonprofit
organizations, such as Enroll America, that are helping to implement
President Obama's health care overhaul. The agency said Friday there is a special section within the Public
Health Services Act that allows the secretary to solicit financial
support for nonprofit organizations conducting public health work. However, the solicitations, through speeches and phone calls, have
raised questions about whether a federal official can ask for money from
groups he or she oversees. The Republican-led House Energy and Commerce Committee began a probe
by sending a letter Monday to Sebelius and groups that she might have
contacted. The letter to Sebelius asks her to provide several pieces of
information by May 27 related to the solicitations, including names of
those contacted “in this unusual fundraising pitch” as well as phone
logs and whether other agency officials were involved. Committee Chairman Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., said: “Despite HHS’
insistence that the secretary did not directly ask for funds, one source
said, ‘There was a clear insinuation by the administration that the
insurers should give financially to the nonprofits.’ ” The 11 companies receiving letters include insurance groups Cigna,
Kaiser Permanente, United Healthcare and Blue Shield of California. “Please describe the substance of the communications,” the letter states in part. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
President met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief the day before
agency targeted Tea Party.
“For me, it’s about collaboration.” — National
Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelleyon the relationship between the anti-Tea Party IRS union
and the Obama White House Is President Obama directly implicated in
the IRS scandal? Is the White House Visitors Log the trail
to the smoking gun? The stunning questions are raised by the following set of
new facts. March 31, 2010. According to the White House Visitors Log, provided here in searchable
form by U.S. News and World Report, the president of the
anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley,
visited the White House at 12:30pm that Wednesday noon time of
March 31st. The White House lists the IRS union leader’s visit this way:
Kelley, Colleen Potus 03/31/2010 12:30
In White House language, “POTUS” stands for “President of the
United States.” The very next day after her White House meeting with the
President, according to the Treasury Department’s Inspector
General’s Report, IRS employees — the same employees who belong to
the NTEU — set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and
conservative groups around America. The IG report wrote it up this
way:
April 1-2, 2010: The new Acting Manager, Technical Unit,
suggested the need for a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party
cases. The Determinations Unit Program Manager Agreed.
In short: the very day after the president of the quite publicly
anti-Tea Party labor union — the union for IRS employees — met
with President Obama, the manager of the IRS “Determinations Unit
Program agreed” to open a “Sensitive Case report on the Tea party
cases.” As stated by the IG report. The NTEU is the 150,000 member union that represents IRS
employees along with 30 other separate government agencies. Kelley
herself is a 14-year IRS veteran agent. The union’s PAC endorsed
President Obama in both 2008 and 2012, and gave hundreds of
thousands of dollars in the
2010 and
2012 election cycles to anti-Tea Party candidates. Putting IRS employees in the position of actively financing
anti-Tea Party candidates themselves, while in their official
positions in the IRS blocking, auditing, or intimidating Tea Party
and conservative groups around the country. The IG report contained a timeline prepared by examining
internal IRS e-mails. The IG report did not examine White House
Visitor Logs, e-mails, or phone records relating to the
relationship between the IRS union, the IRS, and the White
House.
In fact, this record in the White House Visitors Log of a 12:30
Wednesday, March 31, 2010 meeting between President Obama and the
IRS union’s Kelley was not unusual. On yet another occasion, Kelley’s presence at the White House
was followed shortly afterwards by the President issuing Executive
Order 13522. A presidential directive that gave the anti-Tea Party
NTEU — the IRS union — a greater role in the day-to-day operation
of the IRS than it had already — which was considerable. Kelley is recorded as visiting the White House over a year
earlier, listed in this fashion:
Kelley, Colleen Potus/Flotus 12/03/2009
18:30
The inclusion of “FLOTUS” — First Lady Michelle Obama — and
the 6:30 pm time of the December event on this entry in the
Visitors Log indicates this was the White House Christmas Party
held that evening and written up here in
the Chicago Sun-Times. The Sun-Times focused on
party guests from the President’s home state of Illinois and did
not mention Kelley. Notably, the Illinois guests, who are reported
to have attended the same party as Kelley, included what the paper
described as four labor “activists”: Dennis Gannon of the Chicago
Federation of Labor, Tom Balanoff of the Service Employees
International Union, Henry Tamarin of UNITE, and Ron Powell of the
United Food and Commercial Workers. Six days following Kelley’s attendance at the White House
Christmas party with labor activists like herself, the President
issued Executive Order 13522 (text found here, with an
explanation here).
The Executive Order, titled: “Creating Labor-Management Forums To
Improve Delivery of Government Services” applied across the federal
government and included the IRS. The directive was designed to:
Allow employees and unions to have pre-decisional
involvement in all workplace matters….
However else this December 2009 Executive Order can be
described, the directive was a serious grant of authority within
the IRS to the powerful anti-Tea Party union. A union that by this
time already had the clout to determine the rules for IRS
employees, right down to who would be allowed a Blackberry or what
size office the employee was entitled to. The same union that would
shortly be doling out serious 2010 (and later 2012) campaign
contributions to anti-Tea Party candidates with money supplied from
IRS employees. The union, as noted last week
here in this space, already has the authority to decide all
manner of IRS matters, right down to who does and does not get a
Blackberry. It is the same union whose IRS employee-members were being
urged in 2012 by Senate Democrats (Chuck Schumer, Al Franken,
Max Baucus, and others) to target Tea Party and other conservative
groups. Which, as the IG records, they did. Both Mr. Obama and the NTEU’s Kelley have been by turns evasive
and tight-lipped about their roles in the blossoming IRS
scandal. Kelley refused to open up to the Washington Post. In an
article titled ”IRS, union mum on employees held
accountable in ‘sin’ of political targeting,” the
Post quoted the following:
“NTEU is working to get the facts but does not have any
specifics at this time. Moreover, IRS employees are not permitted
to discuss taxpayer cases. We cannot comment further at this time,”
NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said via e-mail. A call to the NTEU office in Cincinnati resulted in a similar
response: “We’ve been directed by national office. We have no
comment.”
The President approached things in a more evasive manner.
Last Thursday at the President’s press conference with the
Turkish prime minister, Julianna Goldman of Bloomberg News
asked the following question, bold print for
emphasis:
“Mr. President, I want to ask you about the IRS. Can you
assure the American people that nobody in the White House knew
about the agency’s actions before your Counsel’s Office found out
on April 22nd? And when they did find out, do you think
that you should have learned about it before you learned about it
from news reports as you said last Friday? And also, are you
opposed to there being a special counsel appointed to lead the
Justice Department investigation?”
The President’s response? (Again bold print emphasis.)
“But let me make sure that I answer your specific question.
I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything
about the IG report before the IG report had been leaked
through the press.”
Take note: Goldman’s question was:
“Can you assure the American people that nobody in
the White House knew about the agency’s actions before your
Counsel’s Office found out on April 22nd?”
The President evaded by answering:
“I can assure you that I certainly did not know
anything about the IG report…..”
The question was not whether he knew about the IG report ahead
of time. The question was whether he could “assure the American
people that nobody in the White House knew about the
agency’s actions.” In response, the President ducked. In other words, the IRS union chief went to the White House to
meet personally with the president on March 31. The union already
had Executive Order 13522 behind it, issued by the President barely
three months earlier. An Executive Order directing that the IRS
must “allow employees and unions to have pre-decisional
involvement in all workplace matters….”. The very next day after that March 31 meeting at the White
House, the IRS, with the union involved in its decision-making, was
setting up its “Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party.” Which raises the famous question from Watergate: What did the
President know and when did he know it? While potentially explosive now, in fact the Obama
Administration hadn’t been in office a month before Kelley was
boasting of the IRS union’s influence in the White House. In a February 15, 2009
interview given to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
(Pittsburgh is Kelley’s home town), there was this question from
the PG reporter, with the now Washington-based Kelley boasting as
below, key point in bold print:
Q: Has the Obama staff been receptive? A: Yes. We have worked with the
transition team, given them suggestions;
and throughout the campaign, President Obama talked about working
with the federal employees and unions. He’s recognized the
contributions federal employees make. I was just at the
White House (Jan. 30) while he was signing some executive
orders to undo some things the prior administration did.
Catch that? The boast? “I was just at the White House…” Which is to say, the election of 2008, in which the union had
endorsed Obama, was no sooner over than the head of the IRS union
had “worked with the transition team” and “given them suggestions.”
Literally ten days after the Obama January 20 inaugural in 2009 —
January 30 the article notes — Kelley was boasting that “I was
just at the White House while he (the President) was signing some
executive orders to undo some things the prior administration
did.” And what did Kelley see as the IRS union’s relationship with the
White House she had already visited ten days into the President’s
first term? Kelley responded candidly, again with the bold print added for
emphasis:
“We are looking for a return to what we used to
call partnership. I don’t really care what it’s
called. For me, it’s about collaboration.”
Catch those words? Collaboration. Partnership. In addition to Kelley’s three visits to see the President — in
January of 2009, December of 2009, and March of 2010 — she is
listed for three other visits, the contact names those of
presidential aides: “Kelley, Colleen Weiss, Margaret 11/04/2009
10:00” “Kelley, Colleen Weiss, Margaret 12/01/2009
12:00” “Kelley, Colleen Nelson, Greg 01/14/2010
13:40”
The obvious question instantly arises with the revelation that
Kelley was meeting with the President personally — the day before
the IRS kicked into high gear with its “Sensitive Case Report on
the Tea Party”. Were the President of the United States and the President of the
NTEU meeting in the White House at 12:30 on Wednesday, March 31,
2010 — and engaged in “collaboration” and “partnership”? A
“collaboration” and “partnership” that was all about targeting the
Tea Party? And did that collaboration and partnership result in the IRS
letting loose the hounds on the Tea Party and conservative groups
— the very next day after the Obama-Kelley meeting? To add to the administration’s IRS-NTEU woes is the fact that
beyond the Inspector General, there is another IRS-connected agency
in the Treasury Department: the IRS Oversight Board. And on that board sits a presidential appointee named Robert M.
Tobias. Tobias, oddly, was a Clinton appointee in 2005, confirmed
by the Senate for a five-year term. He is still there. He is the
longtime NTEU general counsel and Kelley’s predecessor as the union
president. Here’s the statement,
from the IRS Oversight Board, on all of this. It is
headed:
IRS Oversight Board Deeply Troubled by
Breakdownin IRS Process in Reviewing Tax-Exempt
Applications.
There was no reference to the influence of the anti-Tea Party
NTEU in the statement. Why would there be when the union’s
ex-president sits on the Oversight Board itself? Obama’s problem here is considerable. By not forthrightly answering Goldman’s question, he seems to be
evading the issue in the manner that brought so much trouble in the
form of congressional investigations, special prosecutors, and
impeachment threats to Presidents Nixon and Clinton, with Nixon
being forced to resign the presidency and Clinton brought to a
Senate trial. The President’s too-clever-by half evasion added to Kelley’s
silence leaves open the question of whether the union and the White
House, not to mention the IRS Oversight Board, are collaborating —
collaborating right now — on a cover-up. Nixon looked the American people in the television eye and
flatly lied about his personal involvement in the Watergate
scandal, lies that came from a frantic attempt to conduct a
cover-up. Clinton looked the American people in the eye and famously
wagged his finger as he lied that he “did not have sex with that
woman, Ms. Lewinsky.” In Clinton’s case this extended to lying to a
federal grand jury. For a good long while, the American people in fact believed both
Nixon and Clinton. The stories are now legion of Nixon cabinet and
staff believing their man, and Clinton’s cabinet and staff
believing their man’s protestations of innocence as well. Finally, in both cases, the truth was out. As Washington and the country have long since twice-learned the
hard way, the parsing of presidential words in cases like this, not
to mention looking into the cameras and boldly lying on the prayer
of getting away with the lie, always bodes ill for presidents. It
leads inevitably to that simple question famously uttered by
then-Tennessee GOP Senator Howard Baker and posed of Nixon at the
Senate Watergate hearings: “What did the President know and when
did he know it?”
Twice in recent American history the answer to this question,
once for Nixon and once for Clinton, has landed popular, powerful
presidents in impeachment hot water. Ending Republican Nixon’s
presidency altogether and coming close to doing the same with
Democrat Clinton. Leaving the legacy of each permanently
scarred. The notion that the players in the IRS scandal did what they did
to get past the 2012 election will only add to an Obama
presidential reputation as borrowing the Nixon playbook on skirting
scandal in a presidential election year. Ironically re-casting the image of America’s first black
president as the black Nixon. With the examples of how Nixon and Clinton dodged, evaded, and
lied, Obama’s non-answer to Juliana Goldman’s question at last
week’s press conference comes in for much more scrutiny. Matched to
the silence of Kelley it begins raising obvious questions. Such
as: • Did the President himself ever discuss the Tea Party with
Kelley? • Did the President ever communicate his thoughts on the Tea
Party to Kelley — in any fashion other than a face-to-face
conversation such as e-mail, text, or by phone? • What was the subject of the Obama-Kelley March 31, 2010
meeting? • Who was present at the Obama-Kelley March 31 meeting? • Was the Tea Party or any other group opposing the President’s
agenda discussed at the March 31 meeting, or before or after that
meeting? • Is the White House going to release any e-mails, text, or
phone records that detail Kelley’s contacts with not only Mr. Obama
but his staff? • Will the IRS release all e-mail, text, or phone records
between Kelley or any other leader of the NTEU with IRS
employees? • What role did Executive Order 13522 play in the IRS
investigations of the Tea Party and all these other conservative
groups? Doubtless there are others, considerable others and the list of
questions will grow. Not to be lost sight of here is the role of the NTEU in raising
money for Democrats in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles — the
exact period when the IRS was busy going after the Tea Party and
the others to curb any possible influence the groups could have in
the elections of 2010 and 2012. The NTEU, through its political action committee,
raised $613,633 in the 2010 cycle, giving 98% of its
contributions to anti-Tea Party Democrats. In 2012 the
figure was $729,708, with 94% going to anti-Tea Party
candidates. One NTEU candidate after another, as discussed last
week in this space, campaigned vigorously against the Tea
Party.
So the motivations here — defeating the Tea Party in 2010, and
failing at that, making sure that the news of the metastasizing
cancer in the IRS was kept quiet until after the 2012 presidential
election was over — are clear. What is particularly interesting here are the automatic
assumptions of the mainstream media in all of this. Like this “given” from the Washington Post’s
Dan Balz, bold print added for emphasis.
The most corrosive of the controversies is what happened at the
IRS, which singled out tea party and other conservative groups for
special scrutiny in their applications for tax-exempt status.
That Obama knew nothing about it does little to
quell concerns that one of the most-feared units in government was
operating out of control.
But if in fact the President did know about it? Here’s the Washington Post’s “Journolist”
Ezra Klein:
The crucial ingredient for a scandal is the prospect of
high-level White House involvement and wide political
repercussions.… If new information emerges showing a connection between the
Determination Unit’s decisions and the Obama campaign, or the Obama
administration, it would crack this White House wide open. That
would be a genuine scandal. But the IG report says that there’s no
evidence of that. And so it’s hard to see where this one goes from
here.
Exactly. Which is why it will be a curious sight indeed to see the
efforts the media will go to ignore/dismiss the tight,
on-the-record connection between the President personally and a
vociferously anti-Tea Party union. A union that has the literal run
of the IRS — and whose union chief is recorded as having met with
the President in the White House the day before the IRS launched “a
Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases.” A decision with
which, according to the IG report: “The Determinations Unit Program
Manager Agreed.” Check those words from Mr. Klein again:
If new information emerges showing a connection between
the Determination Unit’s decisions and the Obama campaign, or the
Obama administration, it would crack this White House wide
open. That would be a genuine scandal.
The question now is a simple one. In 1974, “the smoking gun” was a tape recording that ended the
Nixon presidency. In 1998, the smoking gun was a blue dress — and it almost undid
Bill Clinton’s White House. Now the all-too-familiar pattern of scandal and its day-by-day
drip-drip-drip nature has begun to set in. Newsmax is now
quoting
Washington attorney and conservative activist Cleta Mitchell as
saying:
“There were nearly 100 groups across the country that got the
very egregious set of letters from the IRS that were almost
identical and they came from offices all over the country, so I
know of at least 85 to 90, maybe more, organizations.”
Regular American all over the country are coming forward with
their stories. Understanding the relationship between the Obama
White House and the IRS union will be a must for congressional
investigators. President Obama is coming perilously closer to becoming the new
Nixon. The next Bill Clinton. And once again, as news of exactly what a president was doing in
the Oval Office on a particular day and time goes public, yet again
the old question becomes new. What did the President know? And when did he know it?
from http://spectator.org/archives/2013/05/20/obama-and-the-irs-the-smoking/
UPDATE: JULY 17 , 2013
BUSTED: THE 2012 ELECTION WAS A FRAUD. IT MUST NOT STAND! IF NOT ALL THE HEARINGS ARE BULLSHIT!!
OBAMA STAND DOWN... IRS Chief Counsel Helped Develop Tea Party Targeting Guidelines: The chief counsel’s office for the Internal Revenue Service
played a role in developing the IRS guidelines that ultimately applied
enhanced scrutiny to Tea Party groups, according to a top IRS attorney,
the Washington Post reports:
In interviews with
congressional investigators, IRS lawyer Carter Hull said his superiors
told him that the chief counsel’s office, led by William Wilkins, would
need to review applications that the agency had screened for additional
scrutiny because of potential political activity.
Previous
accounts from IRS employees had shown that Washington IRS officials were
involved in the controversy, but Hull’s comments represent the closest
connection to the White House to date.
According to a
partial transcript released by House Oversight Committee Chairman
Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chief counsel’s office also discussed using
a template letter to ask questions about the groups’ activities,
despite Hull’s warning that such a boilerplate approach would be
impractical.
The chief counsel’s office is headed by a political appointee made by President Obama.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that IRS agents flagged
organizations applying for tax-exempt status for further review based on
political or ideological grounds. Applicants with names that included
the words “Tea Party” or “patriots,” described issues including
government spending or tax policy, or whose applications criticized how
the government is being run were directed to a group for further
review.
The Liberal Union Behind the IRS. OF COURSE! IT WAS TOO SIMPLE!!
ALL OBAMA HAS TO DO IS BLOW THE DOG WHISTLE
The President couldn’t even bring himself to breathe a word of
the truth. He could fire some hapless Acting Commissioner, but last night
Mr. Obama never came close to discussing that which must never be
discussed. The IRS? It’s about a union: the National Treasury Employees Union. The
NTEU. A left-wing union representing 150,000 employees in 31
separate government agencies, including the IRS. A union that not
only endorsed President Obama for election and re-election, but a
union whose current president, Colleen Kelly, was a 14-year IRS
agent and now is both union president and Obama administration
appointee (of which more in a moment). It’s about 94% of NTEU union contributions going to Democrats in
the Senate and House in 2012 — candidates who campaigned as
vociferous opponents of the Tea Party. And the recently released report from the Treasury Inspector
General? You will not find a single reference to the NTEU. Whose
members are both player and referee in the exploding controversy
over the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Which raises the obvious question: how many NTEU members were
involved in the writing of the Inspector General’s report? Even more to the point, what contact — what coordination — has
the Obama White House had with their allies in the NTEU
leadership as both the White House and the NTEU race to get on top
of a scandal that is rapidly engulfing both? Did I mention that the NTEU has no comment on all of this? And
that when President Obama went in front of cameras to make his
statement on the IRS scandal — he never once mentioned his very
powerful union buddies that have the run of the IRS? Right
down to the control of who gets a Blackberry? Literally. Let’s first see how the IRS/NTEU game with the Tea Party and
conservatives is played, shall we? In the 2012 election cycle, the IRS union gave its money
this way:
For the U.S. Senate:Total to Democrats: $156,750Total to Republicans: $1,000
For the U.S. House:Total to Democrats: $391,062Total to Republicans: $23,000
And the candidates on the receiving end of those IRS employee
dollars? Yes indeed. They were candidates who were running flat out
against the Tea Party, depicting Tea Party-supported candidates as
dangerous, extremists, and crazies. Exhibiting exactly the anti-Tea
Party antipathy on the campaign trail that has been revealed to be
permeating the IRS.
No wonder. These Senate and House races were fueled in part by
money donated by IRS employees. Let’s take a look at specific races where the IRS employee money
was involved. • Wisconsin: One of those IRS employee-backed
Senate candidates was Democrat Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, who in
fact won her Senate race over ex-Republican Governor Tommy
Thompson. The NTEU, the union representing IRS employees, gave Baldwin
$8,500. And what was Baldwin’s view of the Tea Party? If you check
over here at the
Midwest Values PAC, a left-wing political action committee set
up by liberal Senator Al Franken of Minnesota, you will find this
headline:
National Memo: Tammy Baldwin Runs Straight At The Tea
Party
The story begins this way, and I have put the key sentence in
bold print:
Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin wants to be the first
openly gay candidate elected to the United States Senate.
In an exclusive interview with The National Memo over the
weekend, she made clear how she means to go about doing it: running
straight at the Tea Party.
• Indiana: In the Indiana Senate race, the
Democrats’ candidate was Joe Donnelly, who used his $5,000
contribution to run a winning anti-Tea Party race against
Republican Richard Mourdock. Donnelly’s campaign website, presumably
financed in part with the money contributed by IRS employees, has
this headline attacking the Tea
Party:
FACT CHECK: Mourdock Trying to Change Subject from
Extreme TEA Party Views
The text of the Donnelly press release begins this way, with a
direct attack on the Tea Party:
Indianapolis, Ind.—Today, Joe Donnelly’s campaign responded to
Richard Mourdock’s latest ad trying to change the subject
from his pattern of extreme TEA Party views. “Hoosier voters are rejecting Richard Mourdock’s pattern
of TEA Party extreme positions, so he is desperate to
change the subject,” said Paul Tencher, campaign manager. “In fact,
Indiana voters are responding to Joe’s message of working with both
parties to get things done for middle class families. The only
person playing politics in this race is Mr. Mourdock, as he tries
to distract voters from his extreme views that are out of the
mainstream.”
• Missouri: Over in the Missouri Senate race
between Democrat Claire McCaskill and Republican Todd Akin, the IRS
employee money — in the form of a $10,000 contribution to
McCaskill — was used by the McCaskill campaign to help send
this e-mail to supporters that bluntly attacked the Tea Party
as “dangerous”:
Akin’s Rap Sheet Makes It Clear: Tea Party Congressman’s Outside
Of The Mainstream Views, Dangerous Policies Are Wrong for Missouri,
From his record to his rhetoric, everything about Todd Akin’s
Tea Party policies are outside of the mainstream and
dangerous for Missouri families. When Missouri Republicans nominated him last night, they pinned
their Senate hopes on a far right, Tea Party Congressman whose
candidacy diminishes the party’s prospects for November.
And over in House races? At the very top of the high dollar list
were two vividly anti-Tea Party candidates who each received a
$10,000 contribution of IRS employee dollars. • House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: Pelosi’s
strategy was made plain in this
interview with liberal columnist Eleanor Clift of the Daily
Beast:
Stung by the debt-deal loss, the minority leader plans
to get Democrats back on their jobs message and hammer Tea Party
lawmakers as extremists who want to destroy
government.
• House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer: Hoyer
famously
attacked the Tea Party this way, as seen with this
headline:
Hoyer: Tea Party People Come From Unhappy
Families
“There are a whole lot of people in
the Tea Party that I see in these polls who don’t want any
compromise.My presumption is they have unhappy
families.” Understanding all of this — that IRS employees themselves are
paying, through their union the NTEU, for the election of anti-Tea
Party candidates — the absence of any mention whatsoever of the
connection between the IRS and the NTEU puts the IG report in a
very different light. For example. The IG report says — and I will bold print the key phrases —
the following:
The IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for
review Tea Party and other organizations applying for
tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy
positions instead of indications of potential political
campaign intervention. Ineffective management: 1)
allowed inappropriate criteria to be developed and stay in place
for more than 18 months, 2) resulted in substantial delays in
processing certain applications, and 3) allowed unnecessary
potentially involving information requests to be issued. Although the processing of some applications
with potential significant political campaign intervention was started soon after receipt, no work was
completed on the majority of these applications for 13 months. This was due to delays in
receiving assistance from the Exempt Organizations function
Headquarters office. For the 296 total political campaign
intervention applications TIGTA reviewed as of December 17, 2012,
108 had been approved, 28 were withdrawn by the
applicant, none had been denied, and 160 were open from 206 to1,138
calendar days (some for more than three years and crossing two
election cycles). More than 20 months after the initial case was identified,
processing the cases began in earnest. ….IRS officials
stated that any donor information received in response to a request
from its Determinations Unit was later destroyed.
Just in these opening statements of the IG report there is one
very significant and glaring omission.
Where is the NTEU? Note the phrases in bold print: “The IRS”
“identified for review Tea Party and other organizations”
“Ineffective management”
“the processing”
“delays in receiving assistance from”
“approved”
“IRS officials stated”
“request from its Determinations Unit” In each and every case these phrases identify actions taken by
people — by IRS employees. IRS employees are members of the NTEU.
The NTEU that is using money from these very same IRS employees to
fund the campaigns of anti-Tea Party candidates like Baldwin,
Donnelly, McCaskill, Pelosi and Hoyer. Not to mention all the rest
of the Democrats who got a piece of the IRS employee money
action. As one would suspect, given the enormous clout of the liberal
IRS union, it’s all about the politics. Liberal politics and the
financing of the liberal welfare state. A federal version, if you
will, of the recent famous struggle between Wisconsin Governor
Scott Walker and state employee unions. How powerful is the NTEU within the IRS? Look no further than
this IG report from back in January of this year that discusses
the role the union has inside the IRS bureaucracy in the minutia of
which IRS employees get to carry a Blackberry. The report
notes:
In June 2010, the IRS and the NTEU signed an agreement to
standardize IRS policy regarding which IRS employees would be
allowed (referred to as a “profiled” position in the agreement) to
receive certain information technology equipment, including
aircards and BlackBerry® smartphones.
Notice: the NTEU, which gave 94% of its campaign money to
anti-Tea Party candidates, has the clout within the IRS to demand a
say in who can and cannot carry a Blackberry and receive other high
tech communications equipment. The report goes on to say:
Initially, IRS policy limited the assignment of BlackBerry®
smartphones to executives and senior/departmental managers.
However, the agreement between the IRS and the NTEU expanded
availability to employees below the executive and
senior/departmental level.
This doesn’t even mention the power the NTEU has inside
the IRS to decide everything from promotion rules to size of
employee workspaces and on and on. So the obvious. If you are working in the IRS, and you are an NTEU member, and
you know your union leadership is funneling your union dues to
anti-Tea Party candidates, and your union has so much raw power
within the IRS that they even control whether you, an IRS employee,
can get even such mundane tech gear as a Blackberry — what
attitude are you going to display as you review Tea Party
applications that must, by law, come in to the IRS for
approval? You already know what to do. And inside the IRS, that’s exactly
what was done. The Tea Party, in the vernacular, was screwed. By
IRS bureaucrats whose union money is being used to attack the Tea
Party. Of course these IRS employees know what to do — most
probably without even being asked. There is no need to ask. And if
they don’t follow the union program — and want a Blackberry —
tough luck. And what of the NTEU president, Ms. Kelly? The one-time IRS
agent also doubles as an Obama appointee (announced
here by the Obama White House) to the Federal Salary Council.
Identified in the Washington Post as: …a panel obscure to most Washingtonians but one that performs a
vital role in recommending raises for most federal employees.
Got that? The President of the NTEU — a union that has gone out
of its way to use IRS employee money to defeat the Tea Party — has
a “vital role in recommending raises for most federal employees” —
which includes, of course, IRS employees. As if IRS employees don’t have enough incentive to go after the
Tea Party, their anti-Tea Party president has a say in whether they
get not just a Blackberry but a raise as well. Can you say: “conflict of interest”? Let’s stop here and take a look at a famous incident with the
IRS that has made news in the last few days: the Articles of
Impeachment filed against President Richard Nixon. By now, all manner of people have been reminded that President
Nixon’s resignation was prompted by the House Judiciary Committee
passing Articles of Impeachment, with Article 2, Section One
specifically saying:
He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and
agents, endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in
violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential
information contained in income tax returns for purposed not
authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional
rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax
investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory
manner.
But there’s something missing in this recall of the tale of
Nixon and the IRS. In the early 1970s, President Nixon bypassed Congress and
postponed salary increases for General Schedule federal employees.
This included, of course, the IRS. The NTEU was furious with Nixon
and took the President to court in a case called NTEU v.
Nixon. The union won, and the federal government was forced to
pay $533 million in back pay to federal employees. So far, so normal in the world of Washington and relationships
between a president and federal employees. Right? Wrong. Two years later, in 1974, the year the Watergate scandal reached
high tide and Nixon was forced to resign, his abuse of the IRS
cited in Article 2 as one of the reasons, there was another story
out there involving the IRS and Richard Nixon. As the liberal drive to get Nixon increased to the force of a
political hurricane, reporter Jack White of Rhode Island’s
Providence Journal-Evening Bulletin received an illegal
leak — from the IRS. Specifically, an illegal leak from someone
inside the IRS — an IRS employee — that leaked Richard Nixon’s
1970 and 1971 taxes. There was an immediate uproar — not about the
leak or the identity of the leaker — but over the accusation that
Nixon had underpaid his taxes. The House Judiciary Committee took
the information and ran with it, opening an entire line of inquiry
about Nixon’s tax deductions. So public was this it resulted in
Nixon famously answering a question at a press conference this
way:
People have got to know whether or not their President is a
crook. Well, I’m not a crook. I’ve earned everything I’ve got.
And while people are remembering Nixon in the current furor over
the IRS because of his own abuse of the IRS and Article 2, there
was another Article —Article 4 — that was based on the leaked
information from the still-unknown IRS employee to reporter Jack
White. Read Article 4:
He knowingly and fraudulently failed to report certain income
and claimed deductions in the year 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1972 on
his Federal income tax returns which were not authorized by law,
including deductions for a gift of papers to the United States
valued at approximately $576,000.
Nixon vigorously disputed this, of course. But it didn’t matter.
He was out the door, forced to resign. A leak from the IRS to the
media about Nixon’s taxes one big no-never-mind. And what happened to reporter Jack White? The man who received
the illegal leak of Nixon’s tax returns — a violation of law —
and published them? Jack White was rewarded by his liberal media peers with the 1974
Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for National Reporting. So. What’s really going on with the IRS? The Internal Revenue Service , with all of its mighty taxing and
police powers, is in the hands of anti-Tea Party,
anti-conservative, political activists. Liberal political activists
from the NTEU masquerading as neutral career bureaucrats. The money
of IRS employees used to fuel the National Treasury Employees
Union’s open and expensive assault on the Tea Party and
conservatives. And comment on all this from the NTEU?
Here’s this from the Washington Post:
So far, the National Treasury Employees Union, which generally
is not shy with public comment, has next to nothing to say about
that or anything else. “NTEU is working to get the facts but does not have any
specifics at this time. Moreover, IRS employees are not permitted
to discuss taxpayer cases. We cannot comment further at this time,”
NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said via e-mail. A call to the NTEU office in Cincinnati resulted in a similar
response: “We’ve been directed by national office. We have no
comment.”
No comment? No wonder. “IRS employees are not permitted to discuss taxpayer
cases”??!! What a joke.
Here in the Wall Street Journal is author James Bovard
with a short history of the political manipulation of the IRS by
various presidents, and Bovard notes that: “With the current IRS
scandal, we may have seen only the tip of the iceberg.” Aside from Nixon they include FDR, JFK, and Bill Clinton. The
difference is the latter three weren’t forced to resign because of
it — and Clinton’s abuse of the IRS was not include in the
Articles of Impeachment that focused on his lying to a grand jury
over that liberal favorite — sexual harassment. The real question now? With the IRS assuming serious police powers of Obamacare, in
effect the members of one left-wing labor union will have access to
the private health care records of every single American. And notes the Wall Street Journal, again the bold print
for emphasis:
This March the IRS Inspector General reiterated that ObamaCare’s
47 major changes to the revenue code “represent the largest set of
tax law changes the IRS has had to implement in more than 20
years.” Thus the IRS is playing Thelma to the Health and Human
Service Department’s Louise. The tax agency has requested
funding for 1,954 full-time equivalent employees for its Affordable
Care Act office in 2014.
Got that? The real meaning here is that the NTEU is asking for
1,954 more union members whose union dues will be put to use to
“hammer the Tea Party” in the words of Nancy Pelosi. As James Taranto also
noted over in the Wall Street Journal
yesterday:
The Internal Revenue Service last year supplied a left-leaning
nonprofit charity with confidential information about conservative
organizations, which the charity disseminated to the public,
ProPublica reported yesterday.
Once again, IRS employees — they of the anti-Tea Party union
NTEU — were caught leaking private information. Did I mention they were
targeting Billy Graham — 95 year old Billy Graham??!!! Why?
Because the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was urging
“voters to back ‘candidates who base their decisions on biblical
principles….’” You know what terrifies every liberal in America right now? You
want to know the real reason President Obama abruptly felt the need
to go on national television last night and fire the Acting
Commissioner of the IRS last night as Americans were having their
dinner? The distinct possibility that the IRS and the whole confection
of Big Government liberalism built around the federal taxing power
is about to implode in scandal. Big scandal. The kind of scandal that will make Watergate look
like a piker. And the irony? That in seeking to destroy the credibility of the Tea Party, the
Obama administration and its allies have destroyed not just the
credibility of the IRS and one very seriously powerful union. They have destroyed their own
credibility. From http://spectator.org/archives/2013/05/16/the-liberal-union-behind-the-i/6
BENGHAZIGATE: 1000 times BIGGER THAN IRAN CONTRA....Obama’s Secret Gun-Running Program is what the State Run Media and Obama do not want you to know about!
Sept 2016.. Julian Assange has evidence that Clinton and Obama were running guns.Just like in Iran Contra!! READ UP
THE IRS AND AP STORIES WERE LEAKED TO COVER-UP THIS STORY!! SHARE AND SPREAD THE INFO.
UPDATE: SEPTEMBER 8, 2016:
Flashback: Rand Paul Asks Hillary Clinton About Arms Smuggling From Benghazi To ISIS
In
January 2013, Sen. Rand Paul asked then-Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton whether the U.S. was involved in the shipping of weapons from
Libya to Turkey, where they are expected to have found their way into
the hands of Syrian rebels who later joined with al-Qaeda in Iraq to
form ISIS.
SEN. RAND PAUL: My question is, is the U.S. involved
with any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons, buying, selling,
anyhow transferring weapons to Turkey out of Libya?
SECRETARY HILLARY CLINTON: To Turkey? I will have to take that question for the record no one has ever asked me.
RAND PAUL: It has been in news reports that ships have been leaving from
Libya and they might have weapons. What I would like to know, is the
annex that was close by [in Benghazi]. Were they involved with
procuring, buying, selling, obtaining weapons, and were any of these
weapons being transferred to other countries -- to any countries, Turkey
included.
HILLARY CLINTON: Senator, you'll have to direct that question to the
agency that ran the annex. I will see what information is available. I
do not now. I do not have information on that.
Rand Paul: CIA Annex In Benghazi Shipped Arms From Libya To Syria; Clinton Lied About It Sen. Rand Paul says that Hillary Clinton deserves five years in prison
for lying to Congress about the true nature of the CIA operation in
Benghazi that was attacked by terrorists in 2012.
Under oath before Congress in 2013, Hillary Clinton answered a question
from Sen. Paul, saying she knew nothing about the weapons shipments from
Libya to Syria.
However, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said last months that his next
release of Clinton emails may prove that this is not true.
ERIC BOLLING, FOX NEWS: Julian Assange, who has Wikileaks, says there
are some emails that pretty much tie Hillary Clinton to knowing about
some weapons that may have been going through Libya to some of the ISIS
fighters… Now if Wikileaks in fact does have emails proving that she did
know what does that mean to you?
SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): It’s a felony to lie to Congress. You can get
five years in prison. And we can’t continue to say the Clintons are
above the law. I do believe that the CIA annex in Benghazi was procuring
weapons, some of them to get them away from the jihadists in Libya. But
some of it to ferry those weapons through Turkey, into Syria.
There have been many, many first hand accounts, The New York Times,
London Times, Washington Times have all reported on this… I find it hard
to believe that Hillary Clinton, who all the news report have said she
was the biggest advocate for arming the Islamic rebels in Syria, many of
them turned out to be not only enemies of ours, some of them also
turned out to be enemies of Israel.
The Obama Cabal was running guns to Syrian Rebels.
But liberals feign ignorance when the rebels they arm end up
being criminals who kill innocent Americans like the late U.S.
Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.
Obama was packed off to a safe room so that he could have "plausible deniability".. if the shit hit the fan. It did!
Hell... this Man who sat in the situation room for photo op pictures ran off to Las Vegas for a find raiser without checking in as to what is happening???
REALLY How dumb do they think we are?
UPDATED INFO MAY 2014:
The Benghazi Transcripts: Top Defense officials briefed Obama on ‘attack,’ not video or protest
TRANSCRIPTS SHOW THAT OBAMA AND HILLARY AND THEIR NASTY CABAL LIED:
Minutes after the American consulate in Benghazi came under assault
on Sept. 11, 2012, the nation's top civilian and uniformed defense
officials -- headed for a previously scheduled Oval Office session with
President Obama -- were informed that the event was a "terrorist
attack," declassified documents show. The new evidence raises the
question of why the top military men, one of whom was a member of the
president's Cabinet, allowed him and other senior Obama administration
officials to press a false narrative of the Benghazi attacks for two
weeks afterward.
Gen. Carter Ham, who at the time was head of AFRICOM, the Defense
Department combatant command with jurisdiction over Libya, told the
House in classified testimony last year that it was him who broke the
news about the unfolding situation in Benghazi to then-Defense Secretary
Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. The tense briefing -- in which it was already known that U.S.
Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens had been targeted and had gone
missing -- occurred just before the two senior officials departed the
Pentagon for their session with the commander in chief.
According to declassified testimony
obtained by Fox News, Ham -- who was working out of his Pentagon office
on the afternoon of Sept. 11 -- said he learned about the assault on
the consulate compound within 15 minutes of its commencement, at 9:42
p.m. Libya time, through a call he received from the AFRICOM Command
Center.
"My first call was to General Dempsey, General Dempsey's office, to
say, 'Hey, I am headed down the hall. I need to see him right away,'"
Ham told lawmakers on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight
and Investigation on June 26 of last year. "I told him what I knew. We
immediately walked upstairs to meet with Secretary Panetta."
Ham's account of that fateful day was included in some 450 pages of
testimony given by senior Pentagon officials in classified, closed-door
hearings conducted last year by the Armed Services subcommittee. The
testimony, given under "Top Secret" clearance and only declassified this
month, presents a rare glimpse into how information during a crisis
travels at the top echelons of America's national security apparatus,
all the way up to the president.
Also among those whose secret testimony was declassified was Dempsey,
the first person Ham briefed about Benghazi. Ham told lawmakers he
considered it a fortuitous "happenstance" that he was able to rope
Dempsey and Panetta into one meeting, so that, as Ham put it, "they had
the basic information as they headed across for the meeting at the White
House." Ham also told lawmakers he met with Panetta and Dempsey when
they returned from their 30-minute session with President Obama on Sept.
11.
Armed Services Chairman Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., sitting in on
the subcommittee's hearing with Ham last June, reserved for himself an
especially sensitive line of questioning: namely, whether senior Obama
administration officials, in the very earliest stages of their knowledge
of Benghazi, had any reason to believe that the assault grew
spontaneously out of a demonstration over an anti-Islam video produced
in America.
Numerous aides to the president and then-Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton repeatedly told the public in the weeks following the murder of
Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans that night -- as Obama's
hotly contested bid for re-election was entering its final stretch --
that there was no evidence the killings were the result of a
premeditated terrorist attack, but rather were the result of a protest
gone awry. Subsequent disclosures exposed the falsity of that narrative,
and the Obama administration ultimately acknowledged that its early
statements on Benghazi were untrue.
"In your discussions with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta,"
McKeon asked, "was there any mention of a demonstration or was all
discussion about an attack?" Ham initially testified that there was some
"peripheral" discussion of this subject, but added "at that initial
meeting, we knew that a U.S. facility had been attacked and was under
attack, and we knew at that point that we had two individuals,
Ambassador Stevens and Mr. [Sean] Smith, unaccounted for."
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, a first-term lawmaker with experience as
an Iraq war veteran and Army reserve officer, pressed Ham further on the
point, prodding the 29-year Army veteran to admit that "the nature of
the conversation" he had with Panetta and Dempsey was that "this was a
terrorist attack."
The transcript reads as follows:
WENSTRUP: "As a military person,
I am concerned that someone in the military would be advising that this
was a demonstration. I would hope that our military leadership would be
advising that this was a terrorist attack."
HAM: "Again, sir, I think, you
know, there was some preliminary discussion about, you know, maybe there
was a demonstration. But I think at the command, I personally and I
think the command very quickly got to the point that this was not a
demonstration, this was a terrorist attack."
WENSTRUP: "And you would have advised as such if asked. Would that be correct?"
HAM: "Well, and with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta, that is the nature of the conversation we had, yes, sir."
Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February of last
year that it was him who informed the president that "there was an
apparent attack going on in Benghazi." "Secretary Panetta, do you
believe that unequivocally at that time we knew that this was a
terrorist attack?" asked Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. "There was no question
in my mind that this was a terrorist attack," Panetta replied.
Senior State Department officials who were in direct, real-time
contact with the Americans under assault in Benghazi have also made
clear they, too, knew immediately -- from surveillance video and
eyewitness accounts -- that the incident was a terrorist attack. After
providing the first substantive "tick-tock" of the events in Benghazi,
during a background briefing conducted on the evening of Oct. 9, 2012, a
reporter asked two top aides to then-Secretary Clinton: "What in all of
these events that you've described led officials to believe for the
first several days that this was prompted by protests against the
video?"
"That is a question that you would have to ask others," replied one of the senior officials. "That was not our conclusion."
Ham's declassified testimony further underscores that Obama's
earliest briefing on Benghazi was solely to the effect that the incident
was a terrorist attack, and raises once again the question of how the
narrative about the offensive video, and a demonstration that never
occurred, took root within the White House as the explanation for
Benghazi.
The day after the attacks, which marked the first killing of an
American ambassador in the line of duty since 1979, Obama strode to the
Rose Garden to comment on the loss, taking pains in his statement to
say: "We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of
others." As late as Sept. 24, during an appearance on the talk show "The
View," when asked directly by co-host Joy Behar if Benghazi had been
"an act of terrorism," the president hedged, saying: "Well, we're still
doing an investigation."
The declassified transcripts show that beyond Ham, Panetta and
Dempsey, other key officers and channels throughout the Pentagon and its
combatant commands were similarly quick to label the incident a
terrorist attack. In a classified session on July 31 of last year,
Westrup raised the question with Marine Corps Col. George Bristol,
commander of AFRICOM's Joint Special Operations Task Force for the Trans
Sahara region.
Bristol, who was traveling in Dakar, Senegal when the attack
occurred, said he received a call from the Joint Operations Center
alerting him to "a considerable event unfolding in Libya." Bristol's
next call was to Lt. Col. S.E. Gibson, an Army commander stationed in
Tripoli. Gibson informed Bristol that Stevens was missing, and that
"there was a fight going on" at the consulate compound.
WESTRUP: "So no one from the
military was ever advising, that you are aware of, that this was a
demonstration gone out of control, it was always considered an attack
-"
BRISTOL: "Yes, sir."
WENSTRUP: "-- on the United States?"
BRISTOL: "Yes, sir. ... We referred to it as the attack."
Staffers on the Armed Services subcommittee conducted nine classified
sessions on the Benghazi attacks, and are close to issuing what they
call an "interim" report on the affair. Fox News reported in October
their preliminary conclusion that U.S. forces on the night of the
Benghazi attacks were postured in such a way as to make military rescue
or intervention impossible -- a finding that buttresses the claims of
Dempsey and other senior Pentagon officials.
While their investigation continues, staffers say they still want to
question Panetta directly. But the former defense secretary, now
retired, has resisted such calls for additional testimony.
"He is in the president's Cabinet," said Rep. Martha Roby R-Ala.,
chair of the panel that collected the testimony, of Panetta. "The
American people deserve the truth. They deserve to know what's going on,
and I honestly think that that's why you have seen -- beyond the
tragedy that there was a loss of four Americans' lives -- is that the
American people feel misled."
"Leon Panetta should have spoken up," agreed Kim R. Holmes, a former
assistant secretary of state under President George W. Bush and now a
distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation. "The people at the
Pentagon and frankly, the people at the CIA stood back while all of this
was unfolding and allowed this narrative to go on longer than they
should have."
Neither Panetta's office nor the White House responded to Fox News' requests for comment.
Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights Watch
emergencies director, told CNN he has seen the same pattern in armories
looted elsewhere in Libya, noting that "in every city we arrive, the
first thing to disappear are the surface-to-air missiles." He said such missiles can fetch many thousands of dollars on the black market. "We are talking about some 20,000 surface-to-air missiles in all of Libya,
and I've seen cars packed with them." he said. [...] The United States
has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to buy them back [...]
“The rebels came from all over the western mountains, and they just took what they wanted,” said Riyad, a supervisor of the ruined arsenal’s small contingent of rebel guards.
Abdulhakim Belhadj, head of the Tripoli Military
Council and the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, "met
with Free Syrian Army leaders in Istanbul and on the border with
Turkey," said a military official working with Mr Belhadj. "Mustafa
Abdul Jalil (the interim Libyan president) sent him there. -- Ruth Sherlock in Tripoli, 27 Nov 2011, for the Telegraph
Belhadj’s contact with the Syrian Free Army was part of a Lybian
delegation to Turkey offering arms and fighters to the Turkish-backed
Syrian jihadis.
The Daily Telegraph
on Saturday [November 26 2011] revealed that the new Libyan authorities
had offered money and weapons to the growing insurgency against Bashar
al-Assad. Mr Belhaj also discussed sending Libyan fighters to train
troops, the source said. Having ousted one dictator, triumphant young
men, still filled with revolutionary fervour, are keen to topple the
next. The commanders of armed gangs still roaming Tripoli's streets said
yesterday that "hundreds" of fighters wanted to wage war against the
Assad regime.
So we have the United-States, Libya and Turkey working together with
and through Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists like Belhadj to get weapons into
the hands of Syrian rebels, known to be dominated by Al-Qaeda and the
Muslim Brotherhood. We know also that a Libyan-flagged vessel, Al-Entisar, docked at the Turkish port of Iskanderun on September 6, 2012.
A mysterious Libyan ship [the Libyan-flagged vessel Al Entisar, which
means "The Victory,"] -- reportedly carrying weapons and bound for
Syrian rebels -- [...] was received in the Turkish port of Iskenderun --
35 miles from the Syrian border -- on Sept. 6 [...] On the night of
Sept. 11, [Ambassador] Stevens met with the Turkish Consul General Ali
Sait Akin, and escorted him out of the consulate front gate one hour
before the assault began at approximately 9:35 p.m. local time. [A]
source told Fox News that Stevens was in Benghazi to negotiate a
weapons transfer, an effort to get SA-7 missiles out of the hands of
Libya-based extremists. [...] According to an initial Sept. 14
report by the Times of London, Al Entisar was carrying 400 tons of
cargo. Some of it was humanitarian, but also reportedly weapons,
described by the report as the largest consignment of weapons headed for
Syria's rebels on the frontlines. "This is the Libyan ship ...
which is basically carrying weapons that are found in Libya," said Walid
Phares, a Fox News Middle East and terrorism analyst. [...] The
cargo reportedly included surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles, RPG's
and Russian-designed shoulder-launched missiles known as MANPADS. The
ship's Libyan captain told the Times of London that "I can only talk
about the medicine and humanitarian aid" for the Syrian rebels. It was
reported there was a fight about the weapons and who got what "between
the free Syrian Army and the Muslim Brotherhood." "The point is
that both of these weapons systems are extremely accurate and very
simple to use," Fox News military analyst Col. David Hunt explained. He
said the passage of weapons from Libya to Syria would escalate the
conflict. "With a short amount of instruction, you've got somebody
capable of taking down any, any aircraft. Anywhere in the world." [...]
In March 2011, the Reuters news service first reported that President
Obama had authorized a "secret order ... (allowing) covert U.S.
government support for rebel forces" to push the Libyan dictator Muammar
Qaddafi from office. At a hearing on March 31, before the House
Foreign Affairs Committee, several lawmakers raised concerns about the
finding reported by the Reuters news service and whether the Obama
administration knew who constituted the rebel forces and whether
Islamists were among their ranks. "What assurances do we have
that they will not pose a threat to the United States if they succeed in
toppling Qaddafi?" Republican Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla.,
asked. "There are reports that some opposition figures have links to Al
Qaeda and extremist groups that have fought against our forces in Iraq."
[...] A month after the October 2011 death of Qaddafi, Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton announced in Tripoli that the U.S. was
committing $40 million to help Libya "secure and recover its weapons
stockpiles." [...] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/25/was-syrian-weapons-shipment-factor-in-ambassadors-benghazi-visit/
The group accused of moving the weapons is the Foundation for Human Rights, and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH). U.S.
Ambassador Chris Stevens’ last meeting in Benghazi the night he was
killed was with the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin, who is
reported to have been there to discuss a weapons transfer or a warning
about the possible compromise of the Libyan weapons pipeline to Syria.
Whatever the topic of Ambassador Stevens’ discussion with Akin, he
clearly and knowingly put himself in harm’s way to be there, in
Benghazi, on the night of September 11.
One of those jihadis was Abdelhakim Belhadj. 