HILLARY’S BENGHAZI STAND-DOWN ORDER EXPOSED

Benghazi film unlocks the cover-up.

Kenneth R. Timmerman

http://www.frontpagemag.com/

January 13, 2016

Kris Tanto"Paronto (left) and executive producer Scott Gardenhour on the set of '13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi'. (Christian Black/Paramount Pictures)

A preview by Benghazi security officer Kris “Tanto” Paronto of 13 Hours, the block-buster Michael Bay film that premieres on Thursday, raises dramatic new questions about the refusal by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to authorize a military rescue of the besieged U.S. diplomatic facility and the nearby CIA Annex on Sept 11-12, 2012.

In a presentation at a conference organized by the Maryland Citizen Action Network last weekend, Paronto revealed that two AC-130H “Spectre” gunships were “on call” that night, both within range of Benghazi.

One of them was a six-hour flight away, co-located with a U.S. special operations team in Djibouti.

The other was at Naval Air Station Sigonella, in Sicily. “That’s a 45-minute flight,” Paronto said.

The Spectre gunship with its 25mm rapid-fire gatling guns, its 40 mm precision Bofors gun, and its 105mm canon is “good in urban warfare because you have little collateral damage,” Paronto explained.

In fact, it was just what the beleaguered security team needed. They could see the jihadis advancing on the Annex compound throughout the night and lit them up with lasers, which the airborne crew could have used for precision targeting purposes. On-line videos of the Spectre gunship in operation show that it can walk its cannons up narrow streets, killing fighters while leaving the surrounding buildings intact and people inside them unharmed.

“I asked for the Spectre and ISR [an armed Predator drone] at 9:37 pm,” Paronto said, certain that the attacks actually started at 9:32 pm local time, not 9:42 pm as previously reported. “At midnight, they told us they were still working on getting us that Spectre gunship. Not that it was not available, but that they were still working on it.”

And there were more forces immediately available for a rescue effort, in particular, the European Command (EUCOM) Commander’s In-Extremis Force, which was then on a counter-terrorism training mission in Croatia, a 3 hour flight from Benghazi.

Paronto knew people in that unit, and remembers calling them after he and his security team got back to the CIA Annex from the diplomatic compound, where they had just rescued the surviving U.S. personnel. “They were loading their gear into their aircraft and ready to go,” he recalled.

Later, his friends in the unit told him they had been shut down sometime after midnight.

All evidence now points to a specific stand-down order issued by Secretary Clinton, since the Libyan facilities came under her direct authority. Without a specific request for assistance from the State Department, the Pentagon was powerless to act.

Last month, the State Department released a critical email, sent at 7:09 pm Washington time (1:09 am Benghazi time) from Jeremy Bash, a top aide to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, informing Mrs. Clinton’s office of various military assets that were “spinning up as we speak” to deploy to Benghazi.

Among those assets were C-110 in Croatia, two U.S. Marine Corps Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team (FAST) platoons based in Rota, Spain, the Spectre gunships, armed Predator drones, and possibly elements of Marine Expeditionary Units in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

In preparation for deploying C-110 directly to Benghazi from Croatia, General Carter Ham, commander-in-chief of Africa Command (AFRICOM), issued orders transferring authority for C-110 to him from European Command (EUCOM).

General Ham was doing what any smart U.S. military officer would have done, by laying the ground work for a formal order he expected to come down an hour or two later.

“Assuming Principals agree to deploy these elements, we will ask State to secure the approval from host nation,”Bash wrote. “Please advise how you wish to convey that approval to us.”

When Bash sent that email, Paronto and his team-mates had just fought off an assault on the Annex by twenty or more well-armed jihadis. They would continue to fight throughout the night, as larger and increasingly brazen groups of jihadis gathered in dark areas beyond the Annex the security officers referred to as “Zombiland.”

They certainly could have used the support from the Spectre gunship, or the arrival of forty or so well-armed Special Operations combat specialists from C-110.

To date, the State Department has not released any reply from Mrs. Clinton’s office to Bash’s 7:09 PM request. However, we know from the testimony of the top U.S. diplomat in Tripoli at the time, Greg Hicks, that the State Department never requested country clearance from Libya for any U.S. forces that night.

And when the orders finally went out from Panetta’s office an hour later, they included a retransfer of C-110 from AFRICOM back to EUCOM, along with orders for the unit to move to Sigonella the next day and hold in place, instead of flying to Benghazi.

In other words, because Mrs. Clinton refused to authorize those forces to deploy into Libya to assist State Department personnel and State Department facilities, Panetta had no other choice but to put them on hold.

“The State Department was concerned that an overt U.S. military presence in Libya could topple the government,” a senior AFRICOM commander involved in that night’s events told me. “They were in denial. They wanted a narrative that al Qaeda was on the run. Instead, four Americans died.”

With the release of the Bash email and 13 Hours, Mrs. Clinton’s cover has been blown.

I also asked Paronto last weekend if he had heard reports of an Iranian Quds Force presence in Benghazi, as I had been hearing from numerous U.S. military intelligence sources, including senior AFRICOM commanders.

“Everyone knew the Iranians were there,” he replied. “Especially once the Red Cross [Red Crescent] team from Iran was ‘kidnapped’ in Benghazi [on July 31] by Ansar al-Sharia, we knew about them and were tracking them.”

As I reported in Dark Forces: the Truth About What Happened in Benghazi, U.S. military and civilian intelligence agencies produced between 50 to 60 reports on the Iranian presence in Benghazi and Derna in 2012, and Iran’s deep involvement with Ansar al-Sharia, the group that claimed responsibility for the Benghazi attacks. Multiple FOIA requests seeking copies of these reports from the National Director of Intelligence and from AFRICOM have gone without response.

It’s time to remove the wraps of secrecy from those reports as well, so the American public can finally learn the truth about who plotted, organized and paid for the Benghazi attacks.

Kenneth Timmerman is the New York Times best-selling author of "Dark Forces: the Truth About What Happened in Benghazi," and other books.

 Tags: Benghazi, Clinton, Libya

Today's Laugh Track: Ricky Gervais and David Bowie in 'Extras'

Today's Tune: David Bowie - Rebel Rebel

David Bowie Dead at 69

By Kory Grow

http://www.rollingstone.com/

January 11, 2016

David Bowie, the legendary singer-songwriter and actor, has died after a long battle with cancer. He was 69.

The artist's Facebook page announced the news, with the singer's rep confirming his death to Rolling Stone. "David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18-month battle with cancer," the statement read. "While many of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family's privacy during their time of grief."

One of the most original and singular voices in rock & roll for nearly five decades, Bowie championed mystery, rebellion and curiosity in his music. Ever unpredictable, the mercurial artist and fashion icon wore many guises throughout his life. Beginning life as a dissident folk-rock spaceman, he would become an androgynous, orange-haired, glam-rock alien (Ziggy Stardust), a well-dressed, blue-eyed funk maestro (the Thin White Duke), a drug-loving art rocker (the Berlin albums), a new-wave hit-maker, a hard rocker, a techno enthusiast and a jazz impressionist. His flair for theatricality won him a legion of fans.

Along the way, he charted the hits "Space Oddity," "Changes," "Fame," "Heroes," "Let's Dance" and "Where Are We Now?" among many others. Accordingly, his impact on the music world has been immeasurable. Artists who have covered Bowie's songs and cited him as an influence include Nirvana, Joan Jett, Duran Duran, Smashing Pumpkins, Marilyn Manson, Arcade Fire, Oasis, Ozzy Osbourne, Morrissey, Beck, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lady Gaga, Bauhaus and Nine Inch Nails.

Bowie's son, Duncan, tweeted a photo of his father holding him early Monday morning and wrote, "Very sorry and sad to say it's true." The singer's frequent collaborator, Brian Eno, tweeted, "Words cannot express."

"David Bowie was one of my most important inspirations, so fearless, so creative, he gave us magic for a lifetime," Kanye West wrote on Twitter. "I pray for his friends and family."

The singer had kept his cancer diagnosis secret, even to some of his closest friends. Ivo van Hove, who directed Bowie's off-Broadway play Lazarus, said, though, that the singer had told him early on that he was battling liver cancer and would not be able to attend all of the rehearsals. "Bowie was still writing on his deathbed, you could say," van Hove told NPO Radio 4, via DutchNews.nl. "I saw a man fighting. He fought like a lion and kept working like a lion through it all. I had incredible respect for that."

Bowie was born David Robert Jones on January 8th, 1947 in a working-class London suburb. His father, Heywood Jones, worked in promotions for a charity that benefitted children and his mother, Margaret Mary Jones, was a waitress. A fight with a classmate when he was young left the singer with a permanently dilated left pupil. He began learning saxophone at age 13 and attended a high school that would prepare him for a career as a commercial artist. By 20, he had spent time at a Buddhist monastery in Scotland and dabbled in theatrical troupes.

Once he began focusing on music, he played with groups like the King Bees, the Manish Boys (who once recorded with Jimmy Page) and Davey Jones and the Lower Third. He took on the Bowie pseudonym – after the knife – in an effort to prevent confusion with Monkees singer Davy Jones. Bowie put out a folky self-titled album in 1967, but it charted poorly in the U.K. and not at all in the U.S. That would change with his next release.

The album contained the hit "Changes" and its threat/promise "Look out you rock & rollers/ One of these days you're gonna get older," fan favorites "Oh! You Pretty Things" and "Life on Mars" and songs about Bob Dylan ("Song for Bob Dylan") and Andy Warhol ("Andy Warhol"). (He'd portray the latter artist years later in the film Basquiat.) 

It was on 1972's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, though, where Bowie hit his stride. In the role of the titular rock-star also-ran, he innovated a glammy look for himself which he amplified in his highly theatrical live shows where he'd tussle with guitarist Mick Ronson. A far cry from the Sixties hippie idealism he'd come up with, Ziggy was brazen and arrogant, a decadent rogue who was also endearing to fans. In addition to the title track, "Starman," "Suffragette City" and "Five Years" became audience favorites. The album would be certified gold in the U.S. in 1974.

Around this period, Bowie began working behind the scenes for some of his friends. In 1972, he produced and played saxophone on Mott the Hoople's All the Young Dudes album, writing the album's hit title song. That same year, he resuscitated former Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed's career by giving him a glam makeover on Transformer. And in 1973, he mixed Iggy and the Stooges' Raw Power. A few years later, during his Berlin period, Bowie would also work on Iggy Pop's solo breakthrough LPs The Idiot and Lust for Life, touring with Pop as his pianist to support the records.

Bowie kept the Ziggy Stardust persona on 1973's Aladdin Sane, which contained "The Jean Genie," "Drive-In Saturday" and a rag-tag cover of the Rolling Stones' "Let's Spend the Night Together." Pin Ups, Bowie's covers album, followed later that year. He'd attempted to retire Ziggy for 1974's cabaret-ready Diamond Dogs, but the overwhelming glamminess of "Rebel Rebel" suggested otherwise. 

He did an about-face on 1975's Young Americans, incorporating soul, funk and disco into songs like the title cut and "Fame," and he co-wrote "Fascination" with Luther Vandross. It was a risky move, but it reached Number Two in the U.K. and Number Nine in the U.S. He delved deeper into funk on the following year's Station to Station, picking up a well-documented cocaine habit along the way, and scored a hit with the buoyant "Golden Years." The album as a whole, though, signaled a newfound interest in the avant-garde.

It was to be a short-lived transformation, though, as Bowie would disappear to Berlin and dive deeper into experimenting with music and with drugs. Beginning with 1977's Low, which combined art-rock with ambient minimalism, the singer stumbled on an acidic, epic sound, bolstered by collaborating with Brian Eno. The LP contained the U.K. hit "Sound and Vision" and set the tone for his next two records, that year's "Heroes," with its iconic title song, and 1979's Lodger, which contained the hit "Boys Keep Swinging." Minimalist composer Philip Glass would later write a symphony using music from Low.

Bowie quit drugs in the Seventies and emerged in the Eighties with a renewed interest in more radio-friendly music, scoring a Number One hit in the U.K. with "Ashes to Ashes," which continued the story of Major Tom, and the hit "Fashion." Both appeared on 1980's Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps). In 1981, he recorded the duet "Under Pressure" with Queen, weaving his voice with Freddie Mercury's for another Number One in the U.K. and a Top 30 single in the U.S. 

In 1983, he put out Let's Dance, which he co-produced with Chic mastermind Nile Rodgers. The collaboration, which included lead guitar work by Stevie Ray Vaughan, proffered the singles "Let's Dance," "China Girl" and "Modern Love." He'd follow these with the hit "Blue Jean," off Tonight the following year. Bowie notched his final Number One in the U.K. in 1985 with a cover of Martha and the Vandella's feel-good hit "Dancing in the Street," a duet with Mick Jagger. 

With the exception of the Beatlesesque 1986 single "Absolute Beginners," the rest of the Eighties were less fruitful for Bowie musically. He put out Never Let Me Down in 1987, and closed out the decade as a member of the hard-rock group Tin Machine, which would put out another record in 1991.

Bowie changed his musical output again in 1993 and put out the electronic-influenced Black Tie White Noise, another co-production with Nile Rodgers that proved less commercially successful in the U.S. He flirted with industrial on 1995's Outside, and the following year he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 by former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne.

In 1997, he celebrated his 50th birthday with an all-star concert at New York City's Madison Square Garden; Lou Reed, the Cure's Robert Smith, Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan, Pixies' Black Francis, Foo Fighters and Sonic Youth all joined him onstage. He pioneered "Bowie Bonds," a way in which people could invest in him, that year, earning him $55 million. Also, that year, he collaborated with Trent Reznor on the Brian Eno co-produced Earthling, and returned to rock on 1999's Hours…. It's a sound he'd improve upon on 2002's Heathen and the following year's Reality, both of which found him working again with Visconti.

The singer suffered a heart attack in 2004 and subsequently retired from touring, though he'd make occasional appearances, singing with Arcade Fire and David Gilmour, among others. He made his last singing appearance onstage in 2006, where he dueted with Alicia Keys. During this time, he also sang on records by TV on the Radio, Scarlett Johansson and Arcade Fire.

Concurrent with his music, Bowie also enjoyed a long career as an actor. His first starring role was as Thomas Jerome Newton in 1976's The Man Who Fell to Earth, a surrealistic film about a marooned alien attempting to bring water back to his home planet. In 1980, he played the titular role in a theatrical production of The Elephant Man. He played a vampire in Tony Scott's 1983 erotic horror The Hunger and had roles in Julien Temple's 1986 film Absolute Beginners, Martin Scorsese's 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ and David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. In 1986, he played the shrub-haired, codpiece-wearing Jareth the Goblin King in the puppet-starring musical Labyrinth. Beginning in 2000, he hosted a TV series based on The Hunger, and he played himself in Zoolander and the TV show Extras. He also played Nikola Tesla in The Prestige, lent his voice to SpongeBob SquarePants and played himself in the Vanessa Hudgens film Bandslam.

In 2013, Bowie put out his first album in a decade, The Next Day, which went to Number One on the U.K. chart and Number Two in the States. He had recorded the LP in secret and announced its existence on his birthday that year.

Two days before his death, the singer put out ★ (pronounced "Blackstar"), this time on his birthday. The record reflected the ever-evolving artist's interest in jazz and hip-hop. "We were listening to a lot of Kendrick Lamar," producer Tony Visconti told Rolling Stone of the recording sessions. "We wound up with nothing like that, but we loved the fact Kendrick was so open-minded and he didn't do a straight-up hip-hop record. He threw everything on there, and that's exactly what we wanted to do. The goal, in many, many ways, was to avoid rock & roll." 

The artist's latest theatrical foray was the 2015 off-Broadway play Lazarus, which stars Michael C. Hall and continues the story of Newton from The Man Who Fell to Earth. Along with songs from throughout Bowie's career, it also featured new tunes.

Bowie married his first wife, Mary Angela Barnett, in 1970. A year later, Angela gave birth to the couple's son, Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones. The couple would divorce in 1980.

Despite his marriage, Bowie claimed to be gay in the British music press in 1972, and, in 1976, he came out to Playboy as bisexual. He'd later regret the assertion. "The biggest mistake I ever made was telling that Melody Maker writer that I was bisexual," he told Rolling Stone in 1983. "Christ, I was so young then. I was experimenting." He also said he'd never done "drag." He later recanted his unhappiness with coming out as bisexual, saying he didn't like the way Americans put emphasis on it.

In 1992, Bowie married Somali-American model Iman. The couple had a daughter named Alexandria Zahra Jones in 2000.

"He always did what he wanted to do, and he wanted to do it his way and he wanted to do it the best way," Visconti wrote on Facebook after the news of Bowie's passing was out. "His death was no different from his life – a work of art. He made ★ for us, his parting gift. I knew for a year this was the way it would be. I wasn't, however, prepared for it. He was an extraordinary man, full of love and life. He will always be with us. For now, it is appropriate to cry."

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/david-bowie-dead-at-69-20160111#ixzz3x1fL9X1x
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'13 Hours,' like Benghazi itself, notable for Obama's, Clinton's absence

By HUGH HEWITT (@HUGHHEWITT) • 1/10/16 5:00 PM
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/

When the blockbuster movie "13 Hours" opens this week there will follow a hard few days for President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Hard, but not as hard as the years that have followed the families of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

The movie mentions neither the president nor the then secretary of state by name, and no expressed argument is made as to what the two did or didn't do to assist their embattled ambassador, his staff, and the CIA Benghazi outpost on Sept. 11, 2012. But the overwhelming impression of the huge number of people certain to see the first big release of the year, will be that they did not do enough.

In fact, it will be that they did nothing at all. Nothing.

The producers of the movie gave gifted director Michael Bay exactly what he needed: an exact replica of the layout of the special mission and the CIA "annex" as well as the chaos that pulsed through the city before and during the attacks. The warrior heroes of the film get the honor they deserve, but the sense of their bravery is mirrored on the downside by the recognition of the cowardice of the political leadership that put them in Benghazi to fend for themselves in the first place.

Four died. Many more were wounded. And then the lying began.

That lying continues still, though as recently as last week it may have begun to break. Former CIA Director and retired Gen. David Petreaus was in closed session before the House Select Committee on Benghazi as the Trey Gowdy-led panel continues its painstaking inquiry into just what happened that night.

"13 Hours" is going to tell everyone who is interested — and millions will be interested, and riveted, by the intense gunfight that breaks out early and never lets up until the dead are sent home — that the cries for help from the brave civilians and soldiers of Benghazi were many and urgent throughout the hours of attack. But the response was ... silence.

Hillary, of course, famously testified that she talked to the No. 2 in Tripoli, Gregory Hicks, and that later in the evening, as Hicks and his team evacuated to safer quarters and the ambassador's death was confirmed, that she simply went home. It was, after all, late. She was tired. She had a private server at home to keep her up to speed.

We still don't know what the president was doing as brave men fought and some died. We do not know why Hillary didn't call back Mr. Hicks. We do know she cut and ran that night.

We also now know, thanks to the document dump Friday, that Hillary knew the rules about using private email (she was shocked others did so) and that she directed her staff to alter classified documents and send them to her via non-secure means, a violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 1924.

But we don't know if it will matter to the election of 2016. If Donald Trump makes an issue of her lawlessness regarding the server, the public will get the education it deserves on that front.

It is director Bay, however, who will leave those who will open their eyes and ears to see and hear seething about Hillary's massive fail that night in 2012.

Democrats say Americans don't care, that it is old news, that she testified for 11 hours, et cetera, et cetera.

But now they get to see — to feel — what happened. "Game Change" is a book, a movie and yes, now a cliche. "13 Hours" and the latest smoking gun emails aren't "game changes" in that sense. It doesn't make political arguments or seek political changes.

Rather the movie is simply and completely an indictment. Let's hope that at least one from the Justice Department follows on some aspect of the corruption that pervaded the State Department, and the secretary and the president who superintended it.

Hugh Hewitt is a nationally syndicated talk radio host, law professor at Chapman University's Fowler School of Law, and author, most recently of The Queen: The Epic Ambition of Hillary and the Coming of a Second "Clinton Era." He posts daily at HughHewitt.com and is on Twitter @hughhewitt.

‘We were left behind’: The Benghazi soldiers tell all

By Reed Tucker
http://nypost.com/
January 9, 2016


From left, Bay, Mark “Oz” Geist, Author Mitchell Zuckoff and John “Tig” Tiegen on the set of “13 Hours.”Photo: Paramount Pictures
The first shots exploded around 9:40 p.m.

On Sept. 11, 2012, a group of local fighters, AK-47s in hand, burst through the fortified front gate of a US outpost in Benghazi, Libya.

One very long night later, the diplomatic compound was engulfed in flames and a covert CIA base a mile away lay in ruins, partially reduced to rubble by mortar fire. Four Americans were dead, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens and two CIA members.

What happened in between is covered in “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi,” a new film from “Transformers” director Michael Bay in theaters Friday.

It focuses on a team of six military contractors who happened to be stationed at the CIA base when the fighting broke out. They chose to join the battle, spending more than half a day repelling attackers.

The movie is based on the book “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi” by Mitchell Zuckoff and that team of operatives.

“That’s the reason we did the movie,” one of the contractors, ex Marine Mark Geist, tells The Post. “No one has talked about those 13 hours and what happened.”

Not that certain people haven’t been trying to find out. The incident has become one of the most highly politicized events in modern US history. Who was to blame for the debacle? Republicans have been hellbent on pinning it on then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Congress has launched seven investigations, recorded dozens of hours of testimony and generated thousands of pages of documents.

But the men who were there say the movie has nothing to do with Washington, DC, or presidential campaigns.

“We wanted it apolitical,” Kris “Tanto” Paronto, a former Army Ranger and one of the Benghazi six, tells The Post. “From the time we got the call to the time the last [CIA Global Response Staff member] got out of Benghazi 13 hours later, it was a story of heroism. That was getting lost in the politics of it all.”

“For all of us, it was that the four [deceased] guys got honored in the way they should,” operative and ex Marine Sergeant John “Tig” Tiegen, tells The Post.

“Politicians hijacked it. The right use it, the left use it, and the true story got lost,” Paronto says. “The truth isn’t political. Now, the truth may affect political aspirations, but hey, sorry, that’s how it goes. We want people to know the true story, and if they want to use it as a determination of candidates, we can’t stop that. But we’re not going to get up there and say, ‘You should pick this person.’ ”

The day began with signs of trouble.

At 6:43 a.m., a car bearing Libyan police markings filled with three men pulled up to the diplomatic outpost. One man got out, climbed to the second floor of a restaurant overlooking the outpost and began taking photos. By the time security was alerted, the men and the car had vanished.

A mile down the road at the Annex — the walled, 2-acre, multibuilding compound that served as a base of operations for US covert intelligence services — it was business as usual for the soldiers.

Tiegen spent the morning accompanying the station chief, known only as “Bob,” on meetings with Libyan officials. Tiegen also checked in at the outpost, where Stevens had just arrived the day before.

Geist exercised and played video games. Paronto worked on computer-mapping software, then watched the Liam Neeson movie “Wrath of the Titans.”

As the men prepared to turn in for the night, down the road at the outpost a Toyota pickup bearing police insignia pulled in front of the gate and idled there for 40 minutes.

Just as it drove off, shots rang out and there was an explosion. Several dozen heavily armed men poured through the front gate. The Libyans, who had been guarding it, quickly melted away.

The seven Americans inside quickly barricaded themselves in locked rooms. A distress call was sent to the embassy in Tripoli and to Washington. The attackers dumped diesel fuel around the grounds and set it alight.

Over at the Annex, the security team was told to grab their gear and assemble. They loaded guns and body armor into a waiting armored car as they watched flames rise from the nearby outpost.

Before they could leave, however, the men were inexplicably told to “stand down” by Bob, the station chief. He preferred to let a friendly Libyan militia respond. (A congressional inquiry later concluded there was no evidence a “stand down” order was issued, but the “13 Hours” men say it happened.)

As they helplessly waited, a call from the outpost came over the radio: “If you don’t get here soon, we’re all going to die.” The group took matters into its own hands. The three contractors were also joined by ex-SEALs Tyrone Woods and “Jack Silva” (played by “The Office alum John Krasinki in the film) and former Marine “Dave Benton,” both pseudonymous names because their real identities have not been revealed.

The men made the journey to the outpost by car, then approached on foot. They arrived to find Stevens missing and officer Sean Smith dead from smoke inhalation.

As the team prepared to return to the Annex, with Smith’s body in the trunk of their car, the compound came under fire again. A vicious counterattack by the group of Libyans began around 11 p.m.

The team fought back. Tiegen climbed to a rooftop and killed a man aiming a rocket-propelled grenade launcher at one of the buildings. Minutes later, the operators and surviving outpost personnel were packed into two cars, driving the dangerous streets back to the Annex.

Around 12:30 a.m., cars full of enemy fighters began massing outside the Annex walls. A firefight began, and 10 minutes later, the first wave was repelled. More attacks followed before dawn broke. Suddenly, mortars rained down, landing atop a building and killing Woods and Glen Doherty, a former SEAL who’d arrived in the night from Tripoli.

He would be about the only outside assistance the Annex would get. Despite repeated calls for air support, none ever came. The Annex staff was ultimately evacuated to the airport and out of the country with the help of a Libyan militia. (Stevens was found by Libyans inside the outpost nearly dead from smoke inhalation. He later passed away.)

“This wasn’t the worst [firefight of my life], but it was the longest,” Paronto says. “The only difference with this one was that we were left behind. That’s just the truth. No support came. Period.”

“There are pilots that come up to us and say, ‘Sorry, dude. We were ready to go,’ ” Geist says.

The movie suggests that F-16s or gunships could have been scrambled from Europe,though a congressional committee determined none were available to make it in time.

The men who were there disagree.

“A lot of politicians don’t realize that we were all in the military and we know a lot of the military guys, and they tell us things,” Tiegen says. “One pilot said to us that [the government] was afraid of another ‘Black Hawk Down’ scenario.”

Though the men now suffer from post-traumatic stress (they refuse to term it a “disorder”), they say the movie makes them miss their other life and want to return to Libya.

“It’s enjoyable,” Tiegen says. “We’re over there whacking terrorists so they can’t come over here.”

“You’re your best person when you’re over [there]. You’re willing to give your life for someone,” Paronto says. “And you miss the brotherhood. Everything’s dull when you get back to the States.”

http://nypost.com/2016/01/09/we-were-left-behind-the-benghazi-soldiers-tell-all/

Here’s what Sean Penn agreed to do to party with El Chapo

By Laura Italiano
http://nypost.com/
January 9, 2016

El Chapo, meet El Jerko.

Hollywood blowhard Sean Penn secretly met, interviewed, and posed for grip-and-smirk selfies with murderous druglord Joaquin Guzman Loera — even as the world’s most-wanted fugitive continued to elude authorities in the months after tunneling out of a Mexican prison.

“I don’t want to be portrayed as a nun,” El Chapo says in the interview. Nevertheless, to gain access to the kingpin’s secret jungle hideout, Penn agreed that Guzman would have the final edit of the resulting story.

Penn also agreed not to alert authorities to the killer’s whereabouts. Still, Guzman’s capture in a dramatic police shootout Friday came as a direct result of Mexican officials tracking their contacts, authorities there said.

And Mexican officials now are investigating Penn and actress Kate del Castillo, who traveled with the actor to visit the vile drug lord, ABC News reported.

Penn interviewed Guzman — whose nickname means “Shorty” — in person and via cautiously encrypted e-mail and video messages for Rolling Stone magazine.

“He asks me if many people in the United States know about him,” Penn writes of the celebrity-obsessed narcotics magnate.

“‘Oh yeah,” I say . . . He seems to delight in the absurdity of this . . . We eat, drink and talk for hours,” he said of their jungle tête-a-tête.

At one point, the tequila flowing, El Chapo jokes of Donald Trump, “Ah! Mi amigo!”

The clandestine contacts were brokered by del Castillo, who’d struck up a correspondence with Guzman after tweeting her support of him four years ago, the mag said.

The resulting account, published online Saturday night, shows the killer kingpin — described variously as “serene,” and “a simple man in a simple place,” and “a businessman first” — in an almost worshipful light.

In breathless, first-person prose, Penn marvels over El Chapo’s humble, hardscrabble childhood spent harvesting in the drug fields of Sinaloa state.

Scant mention is made of the river of blood in El Chapo’s wake, and none at all of his alleged assassinations of Mexican officials and police. Guzman is credited with responsibility for tens of thousands of deaths of rivals, informants and officials in Mexico and the US, his biggest market.

A 2014 indictment by the US Attorney’s office in Brooklyn charges him with 12 counts of murder among other charges; Mexico officials said Saturday they will cooperate with US efforts to extradite him.

Instead, Penn seems to swoon over the breadth of the fugitive’s deadly drug empire.

“While I was surfing the waves of Malibu at age 9, he was already working in the marijuana and poppy fields of the remote mountains of Sinaloa,” Penn says of Guzman, who, like the actor, is in his early 50s.

“Today he runs the biggest international drug cartel the world has ever known, exceeding even that of Pablo Escobar,” Penn says.

“He shops and ships by some estimates more than half of all the cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana that come into the United States.”

Penn concedes in the piece that he “may be perceived as protecting criminals.”

The actor also wants readers to know that in meeting with El Chapo — who was known to dispatch those who disappoint him with a bullet to the head — he is doing something really, really risky.

“The trust that El Chapo had extended to us was not to be f–ked with,” Penn writes.

“This will be the first interview El Chapo had ever granted outside an interrogation room, leaving me no precedent by which to measure the hazards,” Penn writes.

“I’d seen plenty of video and graphic photography of those beheaded, exploded, dismembered or bullet-riddled innocents, activists, courageous journalists and cartel ­enemies alike.”

But Penn was not afraid.

“I’d offered myself to experiences beyond my control in numerous countries of war, terror, corruption and disaster,” he assures the reader.

Guzman may be a billionaire murderer and peddler of poison, but what of our own guilt, as customers of his wares, Penn muses.

“We are the consumers,” Penn says, “and as such, we are complicit in every murder, and in every corruption of an institution’s ability to protect the quality of life for citizens of Mexico and the United States that comes as a result of our insatiable appetite for illicit narcotics.”

Penn adds, “As much as anything, it’s a question of relative morality.”

Besides, “the War on Drugs has failed,” he announces, decrying “the tunnel vision of our puritanical and prosecutorial culture.”

Penn and del Castillo visited El Chapo in early October, a trip involving a flight to an undisclosed Mexican city and a 90-minute drive across farmlands in a convoy of ­armored SUVs to a dirt airfield.

Their escort on a subsequent, two-hour flight in El Chapo’s six-seat, single-engine prop plane is the drug lord’s 29-year-old son, Alfredo, Penn writes.

The plane has a scrambler that blocks ground radar, Alfredo boasts. After a few fortifying in-flight swigs of tequila, they land, somewhere, in a patch of dirt surrounded by jungle, and scramble into two waiting SUVs.

Nine bumpy hours later — after a drive that included their convoy being waved through a Mexican military checkpoint — “there he is,” standing beside a few “weathered bungalows,” Penn writes.

“He’s wearing a casual patterned silk shirt, pressed black jeans, and he appears remarkably well-groomed and healthy for a man on the run,” Penn notes.

“He pulls me into a ‘compadre’ hug, looks me in the eyes and speaks a lengthy greeting in Spanish too fast for my ears,” Penn says.

About 100 of his soldiers stand guard as El Chapo hobnobs with the two celebrities, del Castillo translating for Penn over tacos, rice and beans.

Penn is allowed no note-taking, so he’s unable to quote El Chapo at length. Did you know Pablo Escobar? the actor asks. “Yes, I met him. Big house,” is the answer remembered by Penn.

What was to be a series of in-person interviews was scuttled, though, when El Chapo’s security caught wind of a looming military siege.

A later, written interview consists of softball questions, including, “Do you consider yourself a violent person?”

The kingpin responds, “No, sir.”

Penn asks, “Are you prone to violence, or do you use it as a last resort?”

“Look,” El Chapo answers. “All I do is defend myself, nothing more. But do I start trouble? Never.”

Penn is no stranger to self-aggrandizement.

In the 2005 aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he was pictured patrolling the streets of New Orleans brandishing a shotgun.

FILED UNDER JOAQUIN GUZMAN ,  ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE ,  SEAN PENN

Storm Clouds Form: Bob Woodward Compares Hillary Scandal to Watergate

By John Fund — January 10, 2016

http://www.nationalreview.com/

Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal has been a difficult one for the public to understand and for journalists to explain. But Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter who helped uncover Watergate 40 years ago, clarified things a lot on Fox News Sunday today when he said that an e-mail in the most recently released batch shows Hillary trying to “subvert the rules” that she expected others to follow.

A few days earlier, Joe DiGenova, a well-respected former district attorney for the District of Columbia, told The Laura Ingraham Show that “there is vitriol of an intense amount developing” in the intelligence community and that FBI agents “are already in the process of gearing themselves to basically revolt if [the Justice Department] refuses to bring charges” against either Hillary Clinton or her former State Department staffers.

It was the State Department’s data dump in the wee hours of January 1 that revealed a particularly eyebrow-raising e-mail from Hillary Clinton: In one note in February 2011, she expressed surprise that a State Department employee was using a private e-mail to conduct State business. She wrote this e-mail, seeming to express dissatisfaction at the employee’s use of private e-mail, on her own private e-mail server — through which she sent all her e-mails while secretary of state.

Four months later, she wrote another e-mail, also released last week, that is now the subject of some controversy. In this note, she expressed impatience that a set of talking points being sent to her was delayed due to trouble with a secure fax. She ordered staffer Jake Sullivan to circumvent the rules: “Turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure.” The subject of the talking points has been redacted from the e-mail, almost certainly because it involved classified or confidential material.

The State Department has weakly responded that it has no knowledge “at this time” that the talking points were in the end sent to her. On Face the Nation today, Clinton insisted she never received them and that “there’s no there there.”

Not only is that implausible, but a report from the State Department’s inspector general released Thursday rebuked State for repeatedly providing inadequate and inaccurate responses to Freedom of Information Act requests about Clinton’s e-mails. That gives us little reason to believe that State’s response to the current controversy includes all the facts.

In fact, State’s record on transparency is so bad that a federal judge had to order officials there to collect Clinton’s e-mails, vet them for classified material, and release them on a monthly basis. The latest batch contains 66 additional examples of classified material that ended up on Hillary’s server, bringing the total to more than 1,200. This demolishes Hillary’s claim that she didn’t send or receive classified material on her personal account. Among the security breaches: Clinton forwarded the name of a confidential CIA source to staff at State through her insecure server. Michael Isikoff, a noted investigative reporter, told MSNBC’s Morning Joe last August that the naming of a CIA source was “evidence of a crime by somebody”

Bob Woodward said the latest revelation about Hillary’s e-mails reminded him of Watergate. He recalled that Hillary served on the staff of the House impeachment committee investigating President Nixon. “And what was the lesson, one of the lessons from that?” he asked. “Never write anything down. . . . Here, many years later, she’s saying, ‘Oh, let’s subvert the rules,’ and writing it out herself?” He concluded:

It shows that she kind of feels immune, that she lives in a bubble and no one’s ever going to find this out. Well, now we have.

DiGenova, who led the prosecution of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard and conducted investigations of the Teamsters Union and former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, says that Hillary’s reckless and cavalier misuse of her e-mail system has infuriated the intelligence community. Last November, he told me that “people who are the least politicized professionals you’ll find in government are appalled at the idea there might be no consequences for leaving classified and secret material vulnerable to foreign hackers.” If the FBI recommends action against Hillary Clinton or her staffers, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch decides to reject the recommendation and bury the case, the intelligence community “will never be able to charge another federal employee with the negligent handling of classified information,” he told Laura Ingraham last week.

A former top Justice Department official told me that he has no doubt that the FBI report will eventually leak, especially if the DOJ ignores its recommendations. Many old hands remember the intelligence problems the Bill Clinton administration caused when it misplaced the nuclear-launch codes, and also when Clinton conducted blackmail-bait, phone-sex conversations with Monica Lewinsky over secured phone lines that Russia and the Israelis were in fact monitoring. “There are a lot of serious people inside the government who think both Clintons have a pattern of being sloppy with national security, and there has to be some accountability,” DiGenova told me.

Hillary Clinton’s latest e-mail imbroglio didn’t catch a lot of attention in mainstream media outlets. But it’s safe to expect, at a minimum, further embarrassing revelations. And if the FBI report is sharply critical of her actions, it could upend the conventional wisdom about the race for the Democratic nomination. Bernie Sanders is either just behind or just ahead of Hillary in the latest polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, and he could capitalize on any further damage to Hillary’s credibility. Hillary already has a big problem with credibility: Only 23 percent of independents view her as “honest and trustworthy” in the latest Quinnipiac poll. Other Democrats, including Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, would be remiss if they weren’t preparing a Plan B in case this number dips even lower, making her a more vulnerable general-election candidate.

— John Fund is NRO’s national-affairs correspondent.

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