Benghazi: A Hole in the Tick-Tock

Posted on | May 5, 2014 | 32 Comments

Tick-tock: Journalism jargon for a story that recounts events in chronological order, as if accompanied by the soundtrack of a ticking clock.

Last summer, at the request of American Spectator editor R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., I spent several days trying to get the White House Press Office to answer a simple question:

The President of the United States is not only the most powerful man in the world, but also the most public, his daily life chronicled to the minute by the national press, his every word and action reported and analyzed by journalists and commentators. What the American president says and does is always automatically newsworthy and therefore it is profoundly mysterious that a hushed silence surrounds one of the most disturbing events of Barack Obama’s presidency, the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Where was the president? This is a simple question, one to which the American people might reasonably expect an answer, but more than nine months after that deadly night, we still have not gotten a detailed answer and most in the media seem to have lost all interest in the question. . . .

You can read the rest. The point was, and is, that we never got the “tick-tock” version of the White House’s Benghazi story — we don’t have a timeline of where Obama was and what he was doing, during the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2012. Here we are, nearly a year later, and journalists still haven’t gotten the tick-tock. Patterico did some poking around over the weekend:

Here is an interesting tidbit from the White House Visitor Logs for 9/11/12: Obama met with three people, at an unknown time, for “debate prep.” . . .
Obama appears [from the official White House schedule] to have been gone from the White House for much of the early part of the day. He observed a moment of silence on the South Lawn; visited the Pentagon Memorial; visited veterans at Walter Reed in Bethesda; returned to the White House; and met with Leon Panetta at 5 p.m. There are not too many holes in his schedule during the day — increasing the chances that the “debate prep” took place in the evening, after the meeting with Panetta . . . in other words, when the Benghazi attack was unfolding.

Patterico makes clear we don’t know when that happened, because we never got that tick-tock, and thus the question:

“What difference, at this point, does it make?”

It makes a difference because everybody — including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the likely 2016 Democrat presidential nominee — spent weeks lying about what happened.

When the truth began to trickle out, the White House press corps was negligent in its duty, and let the Benghazi lies go unexamined during the weeks while President Obama got himself re-elected.

We still don’t have the whole truth, but Democrats are calling for a “boycott” of a congressional investigation trying to get the truth, many in the media are dismissive of the investigation, and thus actively participating in this partisan cover-up!

The questions must be answered, and those who participated in the cover-up — including the media — must be held to account.

Category: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Patterico

Comments

32 Responses to “Benghazi: A Hole in the Tick-Tock”

Frankly Bored
May 5th, 2014 @ 8:58 am

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red…
Daniel O'Brien
May 5th, 2014 @ 9:24 am

“What difference, at this point, does it make?” Funny how Hillary said this long back, but now the left and the media are using this same sentiment to dismiss it now. “Dude, that was like two years ago.” “Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi”
lemang01
May 5th, 2014 @ 9:52 am

Althouse is offering a good theory on how the democrats are proceeding to spin Benghazi http://althouse.blogspot.com/2014/05/jane-harman-recited-not-talking-points.html
Evi L. Bloggerlady
May 5th, 2014 @ 9:56 am

The WH needs to send in Tommy to answer questions!

http://batshitcrazynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Screen-Shot-2014-05-04-at-2.18.32-PM.png
Cactus Ed
May 5th, 2014 @ 10:41 am

Oh yeah, that irrelevancy, that it happened two years ago, seems belied by new information that came out THIS WEEK.

It gives lie to their narrative.
Art Deco
May 5th, 2014 @ 12:28 pm

The national media have long been a component of the social nexus which includes the Democratic Party. What’s sort of grotesquely amusing is the degree to which, as their economic fortunes have declined, they have decayed into an extension of the Democratic Party’s press offices.

Politicians trade in a great deal of artifice. I think until the last 15 years or so, bald lying was seldom their stock-in-trade. This mess with the IRS and Benghazi makes Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew look like Parson Weems’ Washington.
FenelonSpoke
May 5th, 2014 @ 12:35 pm

Please consider contacting Rep. Schiff. I’m not from CA, but it doesn’t matter. I told his aide that I was a registered Democrat
(which I am) and that it would make Democrats look bad if they boycotted the hearing. (I didn’t tell her Democrats look bad anyway) Maybe he’ll be shamed into attending; Weasel.

Washington D.C
2411 Rayburn HOB
Washington D.C. 20515
Phone: (202) 225-4176
Facsimile: (202) 225-5828
Monday-Friday 9:00-6:00

245 East Olive Ave., #200
Burbank, California 91502
Phone: (818) 450-2900
Phone: (323) 315-5555
Monday-Friday 9:00-5:00
kbiel
May 5th, 2014 @ 12:36 pm

I’m still waiting for the recriminations of “Bush was reading ‘My Pet Goat'” or some such horse pucky.
Quartermaster
May 5th, 2014 @ 1:26 pm

Separated at birth?
Evi L. Bloggerlady
May 5th, 2014 @ 2:05 pm

There is an uncanny resemblance. But Hermie is the “good twin.”
Lippman's Ghost
May 5th, 2014 @ 2:56 pm

There really must be accountability for the politically implicated journalists who have participated in what may be uncovered to effectually be racketeering in a political party conspiracy to cover up numerous crimes, from the cover-up and the intentionally AWOL President and Secretary of State, to what For The Record has uncovered appears to be a criminal supplying of Al Qaeda and connected terrorists by the White House.

If we hold CFOs of public corporations criminally responsible for material misstatements of their financials, why shouldn’t journalists who participate in a political coverup not be subject to criminal and civil consequences? Or perhaps RICO should be utilized to throw this conspiracy (which may include heads of news agencies, such as CBS News’s president and brother of Ben Rhodes)?

Republicans may not relish the filth that has to be cleaned up, but unless the criminally corrupt media is punished and wrong-doers subject to severe consequences, the nation will never recover.
Adjoran
May 5th, 2014 @ 4:05 pm

The press corpse wasn’t “negligent in their duty” as they saw their duty, which was to turn the whole story into an attack on Romney for calling it terrorism and complaining about the first “apology” for the video which came through our Cairo embassy (State dept).

That set the stage for the whole video cover story. Any talk of terrorism was met with demands of proof, and the video was assumed the cause (in the media).

We now know of course that even the Cairo demonstration had nothing to do with the video, it had been planned for weeks to demand the release of the terrorist Blink Sheik. The Morsi government refused to send troops to guard the embassy, so the “protesters” were able to fly the al Qaeda flag and set some small fires.

Obama and Hillary had planned to blame the video all along. They probably made it available to Egyptian government TV in the first place (the You Tube vid had only a couple hundred hits and no big outcry until it was shown in Egypt the evening of 9/10).

The purpose of the boycott and all the conspiracy talk is to give the Old Media the excuse to not cover the Select Committee hearings. Without intense coverage, Obama can continue delaying and refusing to cooperate, and only the viewers of FoxNews and CSPAN will know.
richard mcenroe
May 5th, 2014 @ 4:07 pm

He was somewhere he shouldn’t have been, doing something he shouldn’t have been doing under the circumstances, and he did nothing to change that. That simple.
richard mcenroe
May 5th, 2014 @ 4:09 pm

you can’t shame Adam Schiff. He is a shitheel’s shitheel.
John Smith
May 5th, 2014 @ 5:17 pm

Under the primitive foreign ideology of liberalism, our boys aren’t sent out to fight, they are sent out to die.

Perhaps, after seeing their brothers abandoned at Benghazi, more of them will begin to realize that simple fact?
maniakmedic
May 5th, 2014 @ 7:02 pm

Oh I love that little bullshit talking point. Because it would have been so much better for the kids if he’d thrown the book down and allowed his security detail to surround him and shuffle him out of the room while a couple of them talked urgently into their radio headsets. Kids aren’t stupid; they would know something bad just happened and that would have freaked them the hell out. At least one kid would have broken out crying, which would have snowballed into almost all of them crying.
K-Bob
May 5th, 2014 @ 7:30 pm

Debate prep, my eye!
Bob Belvedere
May 5th, 2014 @ 7:32 pm

But will Rep. Gowdy subpoena Reggie Love???
Bob Belvedere
May 5th, 2014 @ 7:33 pm

Masturbate Prep, perhaps???
StoneColdChik
May 5th, 2014 @ 7:43 pm

RT @smitty_one_each: TOM Benghazi: A Hole in the Tick-Tock http://t.co/5TpSLu2ka2 #TCOT
K-Bob
May 5th, 2014 @ 7:53 pm

We need to know where Reggie was.
Matt_SE
May 5th, 2014 @ 10:56 pm

I’m not sure I buy the “debate prep” excuse: it’s not embarrassing enough to hide. Whatever he was doing, it must be worse than that.
Luckily, there may be a simple way to get an answer: the Secret Service. They are tasked with knowing the president’s whereabouts, and aren’t included in his inner circle of sycophants so you might actually get the truth out of them.
Subpoena whoever was on duty that night and ask them directly where he was. If nothing else, you might be able to eliminate where he wasn’t.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
May 6th, 2014 @ 1:01 am

You will shoot your eye out!
Adjoran
May 6th, 2014 @ 1:36 am

It started with the Clintons, who used transparent parsing to evade responsibility in every instance, but finally decided to resort to outright lying to avert impeachment and conviction. The rest of the Democrats and the press (but I repeat myself) saw how widely this BS was just accepted, and have been dedicated to the Big Lie ever since.

In Linda Tripp hadn’t convinced her to save the stained blue dress, Monica Lewinsky would be known today as the crazed lying bimbo who stalked the President.
Adjoran
May 6th, 2014 @ 1:39 am

The simple fact was it took those seven minutes to arrange to leave early. Security around the President, his vehicle, and Air Force One is such that it takes a few minutes to bring everyone around.

But the point is we know exactly where Bush was and what he was doing and for how long. Why is Obama’s schedule for that evening still not public?
Adjoran
May 6th, 2014 @ 1:42 am

And it wasn’t “debate prep,” either. There would be no reason to keep that quiet, they could say he asked for updates or whatever, no big deal.

It must be embarrassing for them not to disclose it even after the election.
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