©Jack Cashill
WND.com - September 17, 2014

“In a free democratic republic,” former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson (left) tweeted a week ago on September 11, “what’s the justification for leaders keeping secret what the elected commander in chief [was doing] on the public’s behalf while Americans were under attack on foreign soil?”

For his part, President Barack Obama claimed, “We revealed to the American people exactly what we understood at the time.”

In my forthcoming book, “You Lie! The Evasions, Omissions, Fabrications, Frauds and Outright Falsehoods of Barack Obama,” I have dissected that lie—among roughly 75 others.

At 5 p.m. on September 11, 2012, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and General Martin E. Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with Obama in the White House for a pre-scheduled meeting.

There they discussed the attack on the Benghazi consulate with the President but had no further contact that evening with him and none at all with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

All through that night and early morning in Benghazi, while American defenders were holding off the attackers at the CIA annex, Obama was holed up in the White House, likely in the family quarters.

At 7 p.m. Washington time, Obama spoke for an hour by phone with Benjamin Netanyahu, not to discuss Benghazi, but rather to alleviate any tension over his perceived snub of the Israel prime minister.

This perception, reported Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times, presented “a political problem to a president who is wooing the Jewish vote.” The Sun-Times posted Sweet’s story, based obviously on a self-serving White House release, at 9:18 p.m. that evening.

About an hour later, Secretary Hillary Clinton released a memo titled "Statement on the Attack in Benghazi.”

“Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet,” said Clinton. “The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.”

“But let me be clear,” Clinton continued. “There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.” Yes, murdering innocent Americans is bad, but then again so are blasphemous art forms (except maybe the Book of Mormon on Broadway, which Clinton had seen and applauded).

While the White House dithered, a couple of well-aimed French 81 mm mortars killed former Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty at the CIA annex.

The next morning in Washington, President Obama, packed and ready to leave for a Las Vegas fund-raiser, addressed the nation from the Rose Garden.

“Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths,” said Obama. “We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.” Like Clinton, he blamed the still-unknown videographer.

On Sunday, September 16, US Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on five political talk shows and served America extra helpings of the BS it had already grown used to hearing.

A week after the attack, on September 18, Obama took his first questions about Benghazi—bizarrely, on The Late Show with David Letterman.

LETTERMAN: Is this an act of war? Are we at war now? What happens here?

OBAMA: Here’s what happened. . . . You had a video that was released by somebody who lives here, sort of a shadowy character who—who made an extremely offensive video directed at—at Mohammed and Islam.

LETTERMAN: Making fun of the Prophet Mohammed!

OBAMA: Making fun of the Prophet Mohammed!

It was not until his appearance on The View a week later that Obama admitted at least part of the truth, and he continued to stonewall about his actions on the night of the attack.

Wanting answers, Senator Lindsay Graham held up the confirmation of defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel until he got some. In mid-February 2013, overlooking the call from Netanyahu, the White House sent a letter to the Senate claiming the president did not make any phone calls the night of September 11.

“During the entire attack, the president of the United States never picked up the phone to put the weight of his office in the mix?” asked a disbelieving Graham.

A week later, Fred Lucas of CNSNews.com followed-up on Obama’s time line that evening and got an entirely different answer out of White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

“He was in regular communication with his national security team directly, through them,” said Carney before adding the surprise jolt, “and spoke with the secretary of state at approximately 10:00 p.m. He called her to get an update on the situation.”

The earliest confirmed posting Lucas could find of the Clinton statement was 10:32 p.m. Washington time. The timing suggests she and Obama coordinated this misdirection during their 10:00 p.m. phone call.

A question that remains unanswered is where Clinton got her information. It did not come from Ambassador Chris Stevens’s number two man, Greg Hicks. “The YouTube event was a non-event in Libya,” he told Congress.

It certainly did not come from the military. US Marine Colonel George Bristol, a regional commander who was in communication with the embassy in Tripoli throughout the night, told the House Armed Services Committee that he could remember no one suggesting the Benghazi affair was anything but a planned attack.

In his 2014 bestseller, “Blood Feud,” Edward Klein traced the video alibi to Obama himself. According to Klein’s source, a member of Clinton’s team of legal advisers, “Obama wanted [Clinton] to say that the attack had been a spontaneous demonstration triggered by an obscure video on the Internet that demeaned Mohammed, the prophet and founder of Islam.”

This request was made during his 10 p.m. call. “Hillary,” the president reportedly told Clinton, “I need you to put out a State Department release as soon as possible.”

In May 2013, eight months after the Benghazi attack, a newsman, Chris Wallace of Fox News, finally asked a White House spokesman what Obama did that fateful night.

Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to the president, dodged this way and that to avoid answering the question, in the process all but accusing Wallace of being a conspiracy theorist.

Wallace kept pressing. “Where was he? What did he do? How did he respond?” Pfeiffer would not even acknowledge whether Obama was in the situation room.

Two years after the attack those questions remain unanswered. The fact that Sharyl Attkisson continues to raise them helps explain why she is a “former” CBS reporter.

Who is Jack Cashill?

Webmaster's Note:  Jack Cashill's Book-TV presentation of "Deconstructing Obama" can be viewed at http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/298382-1