RCC: Scandal Trifecta
Today I want to cover the last three scandals of Hillaryâs career. Itâs ironic because I have always said I thought Obama was a great guy, I just didnât like his policies. But at least Obama didnât non-stop scandals his entire presidency. Thatâs when I realize that the only real scandals, were connected to Hillary.
So let us start, at the start. Benghazi. A quick refresher for anyone who doesnât know, at 9:40 PM on September 11th, 2012, a militia group called Ansar al-Sharia, which was formed in Libya and wanted to impose Sharia law in the country, attacked the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya. As a result of a 13-hour long attack (which is used as the name for the movie), four men were killed, Sean Smith, an information manager stationed at the consulate, CIA contractors Tyrone S. Woods stationed at a CIA annex one mile from the consulate, and Glen Doherty who came to help from Tripoli, and of course, our ambassador Stevens was killed in the attack.
Without going into all the details of the attack, which the movie is remarkably accurate to the accounts given by the people who survived, Iâm going to cover the scandal aspect of this event. Now some may be asking why this wasnât just a series of unfortunate events, instead of a scandal that required almost a dozen investigations. Many assume that it was politically motivated.
Was there some political motivation? In the words of my generation âduhâ. There is always political motivation for everything if it involves politicians. Of course there is political motivations involved. The difference is, I donât think that is bad.
Compare it to China. One party rule. Not much in the way of politically motivated scandal investigation, right? Because there are no investigations at all. The communist party has nothing to gain from investigating scandals, and thus⌠they donât. So the idea that investigations that are politically motivated are bad, is simply not true. When they investigated stuff under Reagan, or Bush, or Bush Jr, no one screamed about them being politically motivated, and yet they were, and we all know it.
But there is a real reason as to why this was a huge scandal.
First, there were literally dozens on dozens of warnings leading up to the attack on our consulate. In September the year before, a UK citizen was kidnapped. That same month, the German consulate was shot at from a nearby parking lot. A letter written in Arabic, was spread to the public warning of violence in the streets in September. In April, one current, and one former security guards employed by the US diplomatic mission, tossed IEDs over the wall. No one was injured. In May, militias attacked the international red cross. In June, a bomb was detonated and blew a hole in the consulate wall. Security found notes left by the attackers promising more attacks. That same month, the UK ambassador survived an assassination attempt, involving multiple RPGs, and two of his security detail were injured in the attack. The Tunisia consulate was attacked, and they closed.
Lastly, the Intelligence Community, and the Regional Security Officer asked for more security, twice leading up to the attack, and if during a meeting with Libyan military, they told our people âthe situation scares usâ.
I honestly donât know what more could have possibly be said. Our intelligence community, told the State Department, numerous times that the an attack on US personnel was âlikelyâ.
Hillary Clinton's State Department cut security in Libya before deadly terror attacks, Sen. Ron Johnson says
Not only did the State Department not increase security, but it actually lowered security. A 16-man DOD team was station in Libya one month before the attack, and the State Department choose to not renew the deployment. Instead the State Department determined that State Security personnel, and local Libya security guards could handle it. Yeah, donât worry guys, we donât need these DOD trained and equipment security, we have some bomb-tossing-over-the-fence Libyan guards⌠theyâll protect youâŚ. and keep in mind, they didnât even have the required 5 State security.
Even more crazy, Ambassador Stevens himself, wrote that he found his name on a Islamist hit-list on the internet, including a map of his jogging route around Tripoli. Yet all his request for security were ignored, and the State Department admits it.
This entire thing is Twilight Zone material. So that by itself, is a the bulk of the scandal. The only supposed justification for this, came from some State Department official that said they wanted to keep a low-profile in Libya. Now that should ring a bell, or at least it did me. Wonder where I heard that before? Iâll give you a hint: 1993. Mogadishu, Somalia? Anyone remember? When the US commander asked for heavy gun ships, heavy armored vehicles, and other support, he was denied because the administration wanted a âlow-profileâ in Somali.
Black Hawk Down - Military.com Special Feature
So here we are 19 years later, with the wife of the then president controlling things, and once again we end up with dead Americans because of some odd need to keep a low-profile? Iâm a firm believer in all-in or all-out. We either send enough, and more than enough, and keep our people as protected as possible, or we pull everyone out.
Then we had this problem of it being blamed on this obscure youtube video, called Innocence of the Muslim. The video is rather lame. I saw as much of it as I could before passing out from boredom.
My perception of this has somewhat changed since I first read about it in 2012. At that time, I couldnât image anyone anywhere, even noticing this film. This video clip makes the lowest budget B rated movie, look like Hollywood block busters. Nevertheless, there were numerous protests around the world, and people with signs, calling for the death of the guy who made the film.
Now as a side note, about this film, this is not something any Christian should be involved in. Now donât get me wrong. I am not Muslim. I do not believe in Islam. I donât believe in Mohammad. I think the entire thing is untrue. At the same time, I do believe in Jesus, the world was created in 6 literal days, and that Jesus was killed, and came back to life, and that he is coming back to judge the people of the Earth.
That said, can anyone show me even one passage, one scripture in the Bible, where Jesus went around attacking pagans and their beliefs? No. You canât. Jesus never engaged in such activity, and he most certainly never had any of his followers engage in this activity. Moreover, there is no passage where any of the apostles of Jesus did this, nor did they advocate this. So you shouldnât do it. Donât be going around telling everyone how stupid their views are. Jesus didnât call us to be jerks. By all means, defend YOUR faith, but attacking others is not part of the plan.
However, even with these protests, many of them had other motives. For example, the protest in Egypt had been called for, months before this video came out, and was supposed to be a protest over some shake to be released. Another one was over some artist in another country. Another protest was for killing an Islamic State guy. So while this video clearly ticked off a large group of people, it was typically a convenient excuse used by already planned protests, to gain more angry people.
Here is where things get strange. For some reason, the administration, and the State Department, wanted to keep the entire deal portrayed as a protest over this obscure video. Now at best the claim is absurd. What protest do you know of, where they tell each other âbring your signs, your bull horn⌠and some bombs, assault rifles, and rocketsâ. Yet, Hillary and several other sources, made this claim repeatedly.
But there was no protest. They showed up, they started shooting, and they rampaged over the consulate in a coordinated attack. We knew this. The DOD, and the CIA, and the State Department, all knew this from the moment of the attack. Yet Hillary repeated this lie, directly to the widows and family of the men killed. We find out later, that Hillary knew it herself, and said as much to contacts in Egypt.
Now, lastly there is clear evidence that at least some aspect of the Diplomatic mission in Benghazi was used to smuggle weapons. At first, likely to help Libya rebels oust Gaddafi. Later though, itâs possible that Benghazi was used a staging ground for moving arms into Syria. This would explain why the Chief of the Annex was reluctant to send help to the consulate, and why the administration wanted to explain it away as fast as possible. May even explain why they wanted as few Americans around the area as possible. Less chance for leaks. The key problem here, is that the UN had banned the import of guns into Libya, which if the US had been doing, would have been in violation of the UN.
By the way, what does that sounds like? The Iran-Contra scandal. Funny how when that investigation was going on, you didnât hear any on the left, screaming it was all politically motivated, but now when they are caught doing the exact same thing, itâs just partisanship, and to be ignored.
Now remember though, this is speculation. I have not been able to prove anything for certain, and youâll have to make up your own mind, as this specific aspect of the event. All we know for sure, is that security was kept to a minimum, and that the administration seem to want to avoid facing the fact that many of the militia they supported and armed, attacked our consulate, and killed our people, including an ambassador, who is the direct representative of the American people.
When something this bad happens, the most important thing to do is to determine what the thought pattern was that led us to this situation. What were the conversations, and choices, and discussion, that led us to this result. To that end, we need to track the correspondence between the people who make decisions.
Now at this point you end up with people screaming, that this is all for nothing, and weâre just trying to dig up dirt. I love to hear these people screaming, when itâs not their family members killed. This is big deal. A man volunteered to be a Representative of the American people, and was sent to Libya, and when he requested security, he was denied it, and he was murdered there. This isnât some nut case traveling through Syria by choice, to prove Islamic State is peaceful, and got killed.
But I hear it all the time âyou are just wasting time trying to dig up something!â. No weâre not. âYou guys are just on a witch hunt! Thatâs all! A witch hunt!â. No, I can tell you for certain that we are not on a witch hunt. I know this because we already know thereâs a witch. The only question is, what did she do.
Humor aside, in order to avoid a future catastrophe, we have to find out why what happened, happened, and to that end, the investigators started tracing communications, and in this case Emails.
And thus we start the second massive scandal involving Clintonâs private Email server.
In 2012, a non-profit group submitted a Freedom of Information Act request, to see the Emails of Hillary Clinton. The request came back, nothing found. Later a pathetic hacker from Romania, hacked Sidney Blumenthal phone, and released emails sent from Sidneyâs phone, which disclosed the private email address to clintonemail.com. This information ended up part of the Benghazi probe, because investigators following leads to discussion had about Benghazi in these emails, that ended up on this private home email server.
The very first problem with this, is that this violated the Electronic Freedom of Information Act, which the Records Administration alerted the State Department to violations all the way back in 2009. Now what makes this particularly funny, is guess who signed the Electronic Freedom of Information Act into law? Her husband Bill Clinton, in 1996. I canât make this stuff up. Twilight Zone all the way through this.
FOIA Update: The Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. sect. 552, As Amended By Public Law No. 104-231, 110 Stat. 3048
Regardless, there is likely far more problems with this than we even know, given the fact that Clinton had been using this system for years prior to becoming Secretary of State. As Senator, Hillary used her Blackberry phones, and her private Email server, without any security whatsoever. Before 2009, her Blackberry wasnât even encrypted, meaning it sent raw information that anyone could intercept and see.
Then the other problem was Email server at her home, which also was completely unprotected. Now to understand this aspect of the problem, everyone has to grasp that every email, every text message, everything that you send someone, goes to a computer somewhere, which then sends that information on to the person you are sending stuff to. Only peer-to-peer programs, like Skype, go directly from your device, to the device of the person you are communicating with.
Somewhere, there is a computer that has all your emails, that you have ever sent, and the pictures you sent, or documents you sent. If you use Google Gmail, there is a computer at a Google facility somewhere, that has everything you have ever sent on it, and an employee, or a hacker could get onto that computer, and look at everything. This is true of every email, facebook, or instant message system in the world.
Clinton had this computer at her private residence. We can only assume that the entire purpose was to avoid having her emails available for public record.
How Clintonâs email scandal took root
However, one of the key findings was that this email server contained classified information, while not having proper security. Before 2009, she didnât even have someone to maintain the server, that had any qualifications in security. Even after she did hire someone to run the server, they were not there monitoring the server for hacking attempts. Moreover, they installed security software on the server, which detected possible hacking attempts, and thwarted about 5 of them. However, that software wasnât even installed until 2013, and before that no security software of any kind was in place.
Even more baffling was that in 2011, Hillary and her staff were targeted by hackers, some linked to Russia, and that they were worried about it. Apparently not worried enough to say âhey maybe having classified data on an unsecured serverâŚ. isnât all that brightââŚ. seriously this is twilight zone stuff again. How many warnings do you need.
Not to mention the fact that Hillary actually asked the NSA about having a secured Blackberry, and the NSA said she could not have one. Knowing the State Department would say the sameâŚ. she simply didnât tell them.
Does anyone see why I donât like this woman? How many levels of crazy do you need, before you say, maybe we have a bad egg here?
Of course the defenders come out and say âshe didnât know it was classified informationâ, and one guy pointed out, âSome information is retroactively designated classified. How is she to blame for unclassified discussion, that are later made classified?â.
Now, to that end they have a point. I do not know for certain that Hillary intentionally knew she was putting classified information on her private unsecured server, and nor do I know if conversations were declared classified after the fact.
But as far as Iâm concerned both claims are some of the most lousy pathetic excuses Iâve ever heard. If conversations could be retro-actively declared classified, is that not an even greater reason to not have a private email server to begin with? Hillary Clinton has been in the highest levels of our government for almost 25 years. If she knew that some conversations could be deemed classified, she should never have had a private email server to begin with. And if for the sake of argument, after 25 years in high office, she really didnât know how to tell what was classified and what was not, and didnât know that conversations could be declared classified later, that just makes her completely and utterly incompetent. So sheâs either criminal, or incompetent, and either one disqualifies her from being in any government position.
But it doesnât end⌠the crazy continues. After everything came out, and the whole deal was exposed, instead of completely cooperating with the investigations, it turns out that Clinton used professional software to wipe the server of all the emails, that she didnât want investigators to see. Of course she claims the wiped emails were private, and involved⌠YogaâŚ. and her daughterâs wedding. Twilight Zone. Does anyone believe that details of her YogaâŚ. were so completely personal, that she had to hide it from investigators?
Gowdy: Clinton used special tool to wipe email server
See again, if she truly had nothing to hide, why didnât she turn over the email of her daughters dress size? Seriously? Ridiculous. If she was truly innocent, and open to the mistakes and mishandling, I would have expected her to hand over everything, and conceal nothing. Instead, she went out of her way to make absolutely sure that nothing, but what she wanted handed over, was.
Now all of a sudden, out comes the Russian Hacking scandal.
So a quick run down of the entire event. In July of 2016, WikiLeaks gained about 30,000 documents, most of which were Emails, from the DNC. These emails were extremely damaging to the DNC, especially in regards to the Bernie Sanders campaign.
The FBI and numerous other agencies, began investigating, and most quickly came to the conclusion that Russia had engaged in a hacking operation. At the same time, Trump came out against this accusation.
The first thing that struck me, was how quickly the FBI and other agencies all came out with the Russian claim. Itâs funny how most investigations of any such incident would take months, if not several years to complete, but in this case, they openly made claims against Russia within days.
Itâs possible there were political concerns, given the administration in power at the time, or that they were well aware of Russian hacking activities long before this particular incident.
At the same time, Trump came out and forcefully denied that the Russians were hacking. When this happened a ton of theories came out, that heâs a Russian puppet, that the Russians have dirt on him, and an avalanche of garbage spewed forth.
Quite frankly, they all are nuts. Trump said very openly, and for a long long time now that he intended to have a less hostile, more friendly relationship with Russia, and this isnât a news flash to anyoneâŚ. or shouldnât be. Moreover, Trump knows that this entire thing will be used politically to discredit the authenticity of his presidency. Any president-elect would be hostile to the notion that the only reason they won, is because of some other governments influence.
All that said, this is Russia weâre talking about. People should be very careful about bold claims that Russia didnât hack anything. Of course they did. Russia has been leading the world in intelligence gathering, for almost a century now. If the Russians were not hacking, it would be the biggest story in 50 years.
So the question isnât, was Russia hacking. The question is, was it in fact Russia, that released the emails to Wikileaks. That question is a bit harder to answer, since we donât actually know the sources of the WikiLeaks information.
Interestingly, Julian Assange himself, has said openly that it wasnât Russia, and pointed out that many of the Emails have dates, that happened after the claimed hacking by Russia happened. Meaning at the time of the hack, the emails had not yet been written.
I have looked and looked for evidence to support this claim, and I was not able to find anything anywhere, showing that this was either true, or false.
So we donât know where the data came from. A ton of people have been asking âhave they even proved it yet?â. Thatâs a sticky question, and Iâm going to explain it.
Proving who hacked someone, is exceptionally difficult. This is why police and investigators, routinely get warrants to confiscate computer equipment, and take it back to be analyzed. The only way to conclusively prove someone did such and such, is to find the computer, with the information that was stolen, on that computer.
Of course logically, the Kremlin isnât going to let our CIA or FBI do a raid on hackers in Russia. So find the absolute concrete proof of such a hacking attempt, isnât likely to happen. Now you might be wondering, then how do we find all these hackers? Well occasionally they hack so poorly, that we can trace it back to them, but more often the problem is that hackers are generally doing it for the fame. They want to be talked about in the news. They want to hear their hacker name, and get credit for it.
The prior mentioned hacker that original hacked Sidney Blumenthalâs phone, was a combination of both. Not only did he fail to completely cover his tracks, but he moronically got on websites, and started boasting about his actions, which eventually led to his capture.
Pride comes before a fall, as they say, and only an idiot runs around saying âOh yeah? Look what I did!â, because eventually someone will⌠look and see what you did.
The next logical question becomes, if all this is true, why did everyone jump on the blame Russia bandwagon? And there is an answer to this.
The act of hacking involves, simply trying to log into someoneâs account, and guessing what their password, or the answers to their security questions might be.
But there is another way. A more complicated way. This involves phishing. Phishing, as the name implies, means bating a hook, and then hoping someone bites. They are typically in the form of an email with an attachment that when opened, infects your computer, and causes problems.
In this case, there is a really complex malware that installs on your computer, and uploads files it finds on your computer another computer somewhere on the internet. It does this very carefully to be hidden from view, and escapes notice. After doing this, it deletes itself, so that you canât prove anyone did anything.
But on occasion, you find the software before it is activated. Two of these software packages have been found, and linked to groups in Russia.
However, again we canât conclusively prove it. The software doesnât have a help desk number hard-coded into it, that calls the Kremlin. Nor does it show an address linked to the Kremlinâs computer network.
Even if the software runs, it doesnât send the data directly to the person who is stealing it. Instead it routes the data through multiple other system and networks, to avoid the ultimate end destination. So while the last person in the link, might be Russian, it might be routed through the UK, Canada, China and so on, before getting to Russia.
Again, the reason Iâm covering this, is that some people were saying âHave they proved Russia did anything?â and the answer is⌠no. And itâs not likely that they ever will. Unless some official in Russia is so stupid, they actually post all the stolen documents and emails, on a Kremlin.gov website or something, there is no way weâll ever know for certain.
The point being, even if we canât prove anything for certain, itâs pretty much a given the Russians were hacking. Of course they were hacking. The question is, did they give the emails and documents to wikileaks. Assange says no, but I donât consider his word credible, because the Russians would never directly send information to Assange anyway. They would likely go to an intermediary.
That said, intelligence work is never leaked to the public anyway. Some of the intelligence gathering that our CIA did in the 1950s wasnât released to the public until the 2000s. And the reason is obvious. If you let the other side know what information you have stolen, the other side will use that to figure out how you stole that data, and figure out a way to plug that hole. The idea that Russian intelligence would tip their hand to our government, is questionable. At least in my view, thatâs not very likely.
It also seems questionable that the would spend their resources trying to hack into a political party, rather than some important government agency, like the CIA or NSA, or almost anything military.
But the biggest key question is, why is this an issue now. The DNC, and RNC have both been hacked into many many times. Leaks in both have never been uncommon. So why did this become a huge issue right now?
I have a theory about this. Understand, this is opinion, not fact. But like several other things in this podcast, Iâve seen this before. Does anyone remember during the 90s, that every time some big thing came out in the news, suddenly something else popped up, and distracted everyone? When the Chinese money laundering to military front companies came out, all of sudden out came this little story about a white house intern, and magically this massive scandal with high-end weapons tech being sold to China just disappeared, and everyone forgot about it. Then when Bill Clinton was caught lying under oath, and witness tampering, and obstruction of justice, all of sudden we were firing missiles into Iraq, and magically everything else disappeared.
Over and over, throughout the 90s, every time that we got close to pinning something down, something else popped up out of nowhere, and the media dutifully moved on to the new story.
I had the same feeling when this came out. Just before Russia showed up in the news, we were all wondering about what Hillary was hiding on her emails, and talking about how they actively shut down Bernie Sanders. Then magicallyâŚ. Russia hacked us! And everyone goes âsquirrel! squirrel!â and forgets everything that was going on before hand.
I am personally convinced that while Russian hacking is likely, I wager the only reason we are hearing about it is because Hillary and the DNC, wanted to get the focus of the public off of their actions against Sanders, and Hillaryâs classified documentation on an unsecured server.
My hope is that this ends the Clinton saga, and that I wonât be doing another show about this crime family. Who knows. These people rarely seem to just go away, and unfortunately, they seem to have a vast number of followers that support them no matter what. I canât even begin to fathom why.
But that is the RCC perspective.
