The House Select Committee on Benghazi should make Hillary Clinton answer this question at today’s much-anticipated hearing:
“Where was Obama during the Benghazi attack? Please reply in detail according to your moment-by-moment memories of the events of September 11, 2012.”
Obama’s whereabouts that deadly evening remain a mystery more than three years after well-armed al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic terrorists assaulted the U.S. consulate and murdered Ambassador Christopher Stephens and three other American diplomatic staffers.
During an Oval Office meeting, then–Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told Obama about the onslaught, soon after it began. After that, Obama — by all accounts — was not in the White House Situation Room, where most Americans would expect the president of the United States to be under such trying circumstances. This secure, state-of-the-art, extremely well-connected facility is the best place in the White House to monitor and respond to unfolding crises, in real time.
So, was Obama in the Oval Office, tracking the mounting carnage and phoning this country’s friends, from Morocco to Egypt to Israel, to ask for help? Was he doing this in the Cabinet Room, or elsewhere in the West Wing?
Or — as Islamic extremists slaughtered these brave Americans — was Obama in the residence, relaxing before the next day’s long flight to a re-election-campaign fundraiser in Las Vegas?
As it happens, Obama already had blown off his presidential daily briefings with top intelligence officers for an entire week before and — unforgivably — two days after the Benghazi bloodshed, according to a Government Accountability Institute analysis of Obama’s public schedule. Evidently, Obama had higher priorities than U.S. national security and the safety of intrepid members of his own administration stationed overseas.
Hillary Clinton should explain everything she knows about this matter, under penalty of perjury. And if it requires more than one day for her to do so, she should return for more questioning — as would be required of any other American citizen.