Fiddling While Benghazi Burned

While my last post on Benghazi contained four questions, and none appeared to be more important than the other, there is one that should be the main focus: where was the president that night and what did he do as commander-in-chief?

This question isn’t meant to be partisan; it’s intended to understand how this administration intends to protect the public servants it puts in harm’s way. It’s certainly a reasonable question for the president to answer. In the president’s first significant test on how he would react when American interests were under attack he, by all outward appearances, voted “present.”

A lot was made of George W. Bush reading to schoolchildren for another ten minutes when he first learned of the 9/11 attacks. Following that first moment, however, we knew what he and his young administration was doing throughout that awful day and in the days, weeks and months ahead. The current president? Not so much.

But, maybe the president was busier than we all suspect. Instead of working with his senior civilian and military advisors on how to protect the more than 30 Americans still under seize in Benghazi, it appears he was working on his cover story.

After his scheduled 5 p.m. meeting with Panetta and Dempsey, by the president’s own words, he went dark until about 10 p.m. that night when he took a phone call from then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. At that time – six hours into the attack – the White House knew at least one State Department worker was killed and the ambassador was missing. The two former SEALS who, it appears, disobeyed orders and went to the diplomatic annex and then the CIA site to protect co-workers, wouldn’t be the last two American victims of the attack for several more hours.

What did the president and Clinton talk about? Neither are talking in specifics, but we do know at 10:08 Clinton put out a press statement that mentions the dead American and then takes a strange twist by denouncing “inflammatory material posted on the Internet.” This was clearly a reference to the YouTube video that became the accepted administration narrative of what caused the attack.

Was the video excuse cooked up during the conversation Obama and Clinton had only moments earlier? Did Clinton mention the content of the press statement she was putting out shortly after their call ended? Or were they conspiring on how to spin events that night instead of arranging for a rescue attempt? Keep in mind: two more Americans lost their lives only a few hours later. Surely these two heavy thinkers could have come up with a better use of their time than putting out a press statement blaming the video while others were in the heat of battle fighting for American workers and American secrets in Libya at the CIA site.