Devastating New Testimony on Obama Administration's Benghazi Cover-Up

You can't come away from watching these hearings and not just shake your head at the immense bankruptcy and corruption of our top Democrat administrative officials, including President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other leftist hack bureaucrats who politicized the response to the attack on the Benghazi consulate. But as devastating as this is, it's already clear that the left-wing partisans in most mainstream media outlets are determined to pooh-pooh today's hearings, and especially the explosive testimony of Gregory Hicks, former deputy Chief of Mission in Libya. Here's Michael Hirsh at National Journal, for example, "Benghazi: Incompetence, But No Cover-up." And also Joe Klein, at Times, "Benghazi Again." (Via Memeorandum.)

I'm going to have more on this throughout the night.

Meanwhile, Fox News Special Report had riveting coverage this afternoon:

And the opening segment with Bret Baier is here, "Benghazi Hearing - Obama Admin Lied & People Died - Wake Up America Our Country In Danger."

Also, from Bryan Preston at Pajamas Media, "7 Things We Learned from the Benghazi Whistleblower Hearing."

Plus, from the editors at the San Diego Union-Tribune, "Benghazi cover-up clear beyond a doubt":

As the events surrounding the Benghazi tragedy become increasingly clear, the Obama administration should no longer even try to deny it has covered up the truth in scandalous fashion.

We now learn that as a U.S. diplomatic outpost in the eastern Libyan city was being attacked by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2012 — an assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and State Department official Sean Smith, a San Diego native — embassy officials in Libya’s capital tried to get the Pentagon to scramble fighter jets over Benghazi in the hopes of deterring further attacks.

When the Pentagon refused, according to testimony slated for Wednesday from deputy embassy head Gregory Hicks, American officials tried to get four U.S. Special Operations troops dispatched to Benghazi early the next morning. They were told to stand down, Hicks said, according to a partial transcript of his testimony.

That morning, a second attack — on a CIA complex near the diplomatic outpost — led to the deaths of CIA contractors Glen Doherty of Encinitas and Tyrone Woods of Imperial Beach.

All of this is bad enough. But even more perplexing is the Obama administration’s continued refusal to come clean about exactly what transpired that horrific night — details that are finally emerging and casting the administration in a shameful and dishonorable light.

The Obama administration’s lengthy trail of deception and denial goes back to the very beginning, when the attacks were mischaracterized as a spontaneous protest over an anti-Islam YouTube video. U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice made the claim repeatedly, and when it became glaringly obvious the video had nothing to do with the attack, Rice was offered up as the sacrificial lamb and yanked from consideration as Hillary Clinton’s successor as secretary of state.

Two other witnesses said Clinton and an aide tried to cut the State Department’s own counterterrorism bureau out of the loop as they and other Obama administration officials contemplated how best to respond to, and characterize, the attacks. One witness, counterterrorism official Mark I. Thompson, said his account was suppressed by the official investigative panel convened by Clinton. He, too, is scheduled to testify Wednesday.

With the latest revelations, it’s looking more and more like a government that’s either incompetent, dishonest or both. The Pentagon says it’s going to “review” Hicks’ testimony, while a State Department spokesman continues to insist the inquiry is “politicized.”

If anything’s politicized, it’s the Watergate-like cover-up, which began in the midst of what then appeared to be a very close presidential election. And that’s only fueling speculation that Democrats in the administration and Congress are more interested in saving face than in coming clean — because now that Obama has been re-elected, they don’t want Benghazi to hurt Clinton’s future political aspirations.

Shameful, just shameful.

Stay tuned.