The top New York lawman who helped launch the investigation into the Twin Towers attacks says the Obama administration lied about its knowledge of the U.S. consulate attack that left Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead and continues to cover it up.
It’s outrageous,’’ Andrew McCarthy, the former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, told Newsmax TV's Kathleen Walter in an exclusive interview.
“The paper trail really just confirms what we knew already, which was that given the availability of technology today and the concentration of it after 9/11, we had every reason to know that the administration and, indeed, the president was aware virtually in real time as the attack took place and also, by the nature of the attack, that it was not a spontaneous demonstration.
Watch the exclusive interview here.
“It was clearly a planned terrorist attack accompanies by rocket propelled grenades and mortars. So there wasn’t any real doubt that not only the appropriate people in the administration, but the president himself knew and his top people, including the vice president and the secretary of state, knew that this was a terrorist attack — a pre-planned, orchestrated attack by enemies of the United States.’’
McCarthy, who was decorated with the Justice Department’s highest honors after his participation in the 9/11 probe and his prosecution of the defendants in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, added:
“There was a lie and there is a cover up. The cover up continues to go on.’’
Asked what would have motivated the Obama administration’s response to the attack by saying it was a incendiary video, McCarthy, who has authored a new book, “Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy,’’ said:
“This is how willful blindness becomes spring fever . . . What happened here is, as John and others have pointed out, this is purely ideological and political. It’s ideological in the sense that the Obama administration, against a lot of critics, decided to launch this unprovoked and unconstitutional war against Libya which, at the time, the Libyan regime of Gadhafi was deemed as an ally of the United States.
“I was interested to hear the president during the debate with [Mitt] Romney on foreign policy last week talk about how Gadhafi had American blood on his hands. Well, if he did, and there’s no question that he did, that didn’t seem to be a problem for Obama in 2009 and 2010 when he not only aided the Gadhafi regime, but actually substantially increased the aid that had previously been provided by the Bush administration.
“However, they decided, for a variety of reasons, which are political and ideological, to jump on the side of the ‘rebels’ who were trying to overthrow Gadhafi. Rebels or opposition are euphemisms that we use because they don’t want to say that the people who actually make up the opposition are, by and large, members of the Muslim Brotherhood and elements of al-Qaida.’’
McCarthy said the Obama policy in Libya “actually had the political and military effect of empowering enemies of the United States who now not only have political power in Libya, but access to the arsenal that Gadhafi had under lock and key.
“So they had that ideological thing to cover up plus the number one campaign meme of the Obama administration, the only element of the president’s record that he can feel comfortable running on, is that he killed bin Laden and from that we are supposed to deduce that al-Qaida’s been devastated.
“Well, this attack, obviously, shows that al-Qaida’s far from devastated. They’re resurgent and they’re resurgent in Libya largely because of the Obama administration’s policies. So if you’re Obama and you’re hoping to get re-elected and you have the choice of trying to get people to understand that what happened in Libya happened because of your disastrous four-year policy or it happened because of a cockamamie movie that nobody saw, I guess you go with the movie.’’
McCarthy agreed with the theory that the White House chose politics over the safety of the Embassy — even after Stevens had asked for reinforcements before the attack — possibly to avoid giving off a Jimmy Carter-like appearance.
“It sure looks like they did,’’ he said. "I actually don’t agree with the consensus of opinion that says that the scandal here starts with the failure to give the additional security that our diplomatic team was asking for.
“The real failure is why do we have a diplomatic installation in a place like Benghazi in the first place? What we learned during the war that Obama started with the Libyan regime was that by percentage of the population, the Libyans sent more Jihadists to Iraq to fight against our troops, to wage terrorist war against our troops in Iraq than any other country in the world.
“And the capital of the Jihad in Libya is places like Benghazi and Eastern Libya. So what we essentially did was put a diplomatic installation in a place that was about as dangerous as it gets for Americans any place on the planet."
McCarthy said he would “question why they had to have an installation there in the first place. But certainly, if you’re going to have one, it has to be a fortress. It has to be monumentally defended by American forces. And the administration not only had an installation there, they decided to contract out the security of our people to the Libyans, which you can’t even wrap your brain around it.’’
He added that he agrees with Obama’s declaration that he is “ultimately responsible for what’s taking place there.’’
“And I hope the voters are going to remind him of that in about 12 days or so,’’ McCarthy said.
The findings of closed hearings being scheduled by the Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate the intelligence and security surrounding the attack may depend “on how the presidential election comes out.,’’ McCarthy said.
“If Romney wins the presidential election, my sense is that if the Republicans do what they usually do and Washington does what it usually does, it will do a cursory investigation.
“It will say mistakes were made and we move on because we have new political leadership coming in in any event. If Obama is still in power, you could get ‘Fast and Furious’ situation where they don’t get everything that they need to investigate it.
“But one way or the other, without the media pushing this – and the mainstream media’s been, in this case, complicit in the cover up. And what we’ve learned over the years from all of these different escapades that happen in Washington with some regularity is that if the media gets behind in a zealous way to find out what the facts are and what happened, then the public tends to get riled up about it and the political class has to expose what happened. If the media decides that they’re going to be complicit in the cover up, we’re never going to find out what happened. ‘’
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