A New Hampshire Union Leader editorial raised several questions that were answered long ago about the September 11, 2012 attacks on American diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, in an effort to attack former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton prior to her October 22 hearing before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. The newspaper has a history of right-wing bias in its reporting and on its opinion page, and has often pushed Benghazi myths but never corrected its errors when facts proved those myths false.
The October 22 editorial claimed that the “Obama Administration has been lying about the attack since it happened” and suggested several questions members of the select committee should ask Clinton during her testimony:
Why did Clinton ignore Stevens' requests for more security? Why did Clinton push the White House to blame a fringe YouTube video for the attack, rather than radical Islamic terrorists? Why has Clinton been stonewalling attempts to get to the truth for the past three years?
The problem with the Union Leader editorial board's questions -- and for that matter, its longtime position on Benghazi -- is that these questions have already been asked and answered.
As the Washington Post and other media outlets reported, Clinton told Congress during previous testimony that the concerns over security at U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi had not been brought to her attention prior to the attack, which the State Department's independent Accountability Review Board report confirmed in its finding that the security situation had “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department.” Even so, Clinton admitted responsibility for the attacks, calling the violence and its consequences “painful, absolutely painful” for her.
As a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence review of Benghazi found, several pieces of intelligence were revealed after the attacks, including some that “suggest[ed] the attacks were likely put together in short order, following that day's violent protests in Cairo against an inflammatory video...”
In addition, as The New York Times reported, the people who carried out the attacks “told bystanders that they were attacking the compound because they were angry about the video,” and the suspected ringleader, Abu Khattala, “told fellow Islamist fighters and others that the assault was retaliation for the same insulting video, according to people who heard him.”
The Union Herald seems to have decided to ignore these and other facts in the public record when they penned this editorial. Ten separate congressional committees have conducted Benghazi investigations, amounting to 32 hearings, approximately 54 hours of publically-available testimony, 2,780 questions asked of 204 witnesses, and 11 reports spanning 784 pages on the attacks.
This latest editorial continues the newspaper's tradition of repeating debunked reports to push its right-wing agenda on Benghazi.