Obama Threatens Benghazi Whisteblowers?

[Mike]

At least four career officials at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have retained lawyers or are in the process of doing so, as they prepare to provide sensitive information about the Benghazi attacks to Congress, Fox News has learned.
Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official and Republican counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, is now representing one of the State Department employees. She told Fox News her client and some of the others, who consider themselves whistle-blowers, have been threatened by unnamed Obama administration officials.
"I'm not talking generally, I'm talking specifically about Benghazi – that people have been threatened," Toensing said in an interview Monday. "And not just the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA."
Toensing declined to name her client. She also refused to say whether the individual was on the ground in Benghazi on the night of Sept. 11, 2012, when terrorist attacks on two U.S. installations in the Libyan city killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens.
However, Toensing disclosed that her client has pertinent information on all three time periods investigators consider relevant to the attacks: the months that led up to the attack, when pleas by the ambassador and his staff for enhanced security in Benghazi were mostly rejected by senior officers at the State Department; the eight-hour time frame in which the attacks unfolded, and the eight-day period that followed the attacks, when Obama administration officials incorrectly described them as the result of a spontaneous protest over a video.
"It's frightening, and they're doing some very despicable threats to people," she said. "Not 'we're going to kill you,' or not 'we're going to prosecute you tomorrow,' but they're taking career people and making them well aware that their careers will be over [if they cooperate with congressional investigators]."
Federal law provides explicit protections for federal government employees who are identified as "whistle-blowers." The laws aim to ensure these individuals will not face repercussions from their superiors, or from other quarters, in retaliation for their provision of information about corruption or other forms of wrongdoing to Congress, or to an agency's inspector-general.
Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican from California who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday to complain that the department has not provided a process by which attorneys like Toensing can receive the security clearances necessary for them to review classified documents and other key evidence.
"It is unavoidable that Department employees identifying themselves as witnesses in the Committee's investigation will apply for a security clearance to allow their personal attorneys to handle sensitive or classified material," Issa wrote. "The Department's unwillingness to make the process for clearing an attorney more transparent appears to be an effort to interfere with the rights of employees to furnish information to Congress."
The Obama administration maintains that it has been more than forthcoming on Benghazi and that it is time for the State Department to move on. At a recent hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Kerry noted that administration officials have testified at eight hearings on Benghazi, provided 20 briefings on the subject and turned over to Congress some 25,000 documents related to the killings.
"So if you have additional questions or you think there's some document that somehow you need, I'll work with you to try to get it and see if we can provide that to you," Kerry told committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., on April 17. But Kerry added: "I do not want to spend the next year coming up here talking about Benghazi."
Asked about Issa's complaints about attorneys not receiving security clearances, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell on Monday indicated that – far from threatening anyone – the administration hasn't been presented with any such cases. "I'm not aware of private counsel seeking security clearances or -- or anything to that regard," Ventrell told reporters. "I'm not aware of whistle-blowers one way or another."
Ventrell cited the work of the FBI – whose probe of the attacks continues almost eight months later and without any known instances of perpetrators being brought to justice – and the Accountability Review Board. The board was an internal State Department review panel led by former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Thomas Pickering and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen. An unclassified version of the board's final report that was released to the public contained no conclusions that suggested administration officials had willfully endangered their colleagues in Benghazi or had misled the public or Congress.
"And that should be enough," Ventrell said at Monday's press briefing. "Congress has its own prerogatives, but we've had a very thorough, independent investigation, which we completed and [which was] transparent and shared. And there are many folks who are, in a political manner, trying to sort of use this for their own political means, or ends."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/29/obama-administration-officials-have-threatened-whistle-blowers-on-benghazi/#ixzz2RuFjx1Ft

 

[hypocritexposer]

Reminds me of how Barry threatened the media about reporting on his birth certificate.

 

[Mike]

Appears as though his "Good Moral Character" is questionable? :lol:

 

[hypocritexposer]

Appears as though his "Good Moral Character" is questionable? :lol:

He was the only choice, over McSame

 

[Big Muddy rancher]

They had it on the news that they had Special Forces in Croatia that could have been in Libya in 4 hours. That would have been in time to stop the second wave of attacks.

But NOOOOoooo, I was told that that couldn't happen by some of our defunct liberals. :roll:

 

[Faster horses]

' but they're taking career people and making them well aware that their careers will be over [if they cooperate with congressional investigators]."

More like the people responsible for the deaths in Benghazi (and we know
who that is) careers will be over if this investigation continues and the
whistle-blowers have their say.

I received a phone call from a conservative group (cannot for the life of me
remember their name beyond the 'conservative' part, but it will come to me
eventually) and they played an ad they are running on "Impeach Obama".
It was good, very good and it is on the air now. The person I talked with
said there is a wave of talk of impeachment in D.C. because of how
Obama is violating the Constitution and the tricks he has pulled to do so.
Of course they needed money....and since I supported this organization
earlier, I did agree to help out with a donation. After all, what could be
a better cause???

 

[Tam]

Gee I wish we had one Liberal that would stop lurking and come out into the open long enough to explain to all of us how Obama is being the MOST TRANSPARENT PRESIDENT EVER. :?

 

[okfarmer]

As soon as a real crack shows in this administration, the whole ship is going to go down like the Titanic.

Once one of theses scandals can break through the slime protecting Zero, and he shows weakness, people from Fast and Furious to Benghazi to voter fraud to the Hawaii hospital are going to start jumping on him like a downed bully and flooding the media with personal accounts of fraud and wrong doing.

This is going to leave the dems picking up the pieces for a long time.

 

[Steve]

are going to start jumping on him like a downed bully and flooding the media with personal accounts of fraud and wrong doing.

and most of those liberals holding back critical information now will be holding out for a lucrative story or book deal,..

 

[Tam]

Obama Urged to Back New Whistleblower Act

By Ed O'Keefe


Updated 10:37 p.m. ET

A coalition of good government groups and federal workers unions called the Make It Safe Coalition is asking President Obama to support a House bill that strengthens whistleblower protections for federal government employees.

"As our country faces an economic crisis of historic proportions, one reform could save billions of taxpayer dollars and help fulfill your mandate for more transparency and accountability: authentic whistleblower protections for all federal employees," states a letter sent to the White House today. (See the full letter after the jump.)

"Federal workers are charged with safeguarding the public trust. They must have the confidence that if they do so, they will not face repression and retaliation."

The group urges passage of the Whistleblower Enhancement Protection Act, introduced last month by a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). The bill addresses long-standing concerns that federal employees lack the necessary protections to expose waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement without fear of retribution.

Observers note the bill is urgently needed, especially following Obama's signing statement on the omnibus spending bill issued last month. The president raised concerns with provisions that "prohibit the use of appropriations to pay the salary of any Federal officer or employee who interferes with or prohibits certain communications between Federal employees and Members of Congress."

"I do not interpret this provision to detract from my authority to direct the heads of executive departments to supervise, control, and correct employees' communications with the Congress in cases where such communications would be unlawful or would reveal information that is properly privileged or otherwise confidential," the president said.

White House officials said a literal interpretation of the omnibus provision would prohibit government officials from stopping government employees from sharing classified information, or matters related to national security or information subject to valid claims of executive privilege. Presidents have issued similar statements about similar provisions for at least a decade, officials said. President Clinton did so after signing a 1999 appropriations bill.

Regardless, the group's letter expresses "disappointment" with Obama's statement, saying it could be "interpreted as a warning to federal workers against communicating unclassified information and could have a chilling effect on the exposure of wrongdoing."

The White House would not express specific support for Van Hollen's bill, but White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said in a statement that "The President looks forward to working with Congress to craft an appropriate and tailored mechanism to strengthen statutory protections. He shares the goal of encouraging whistleblowers to come forward and report wrongdoing with the security of knowing that they will be safe from retaliation."

could be "interpreted as a warning to federal workers against communicating unclassified information and could have a chilling effect on the exposure of wrongdoing

YOU THINK. BTW Obama doesn't know who would be behind the threats, :roll:

 

[Tam]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm4wtlUg8_M


When the families met the bodies of their loved ones, Obama came across like he didn't care and Clinton was lying to the father.
He should not have been surprised with the Congressional report pointing the finger of blame at the two should he?

 

[Tam]

WOW WOW WOW According to Carney at this mornings Press briefing Benghazi happened a long time ago and the White House knows of nobody that has wanted to speak to the Congress that hasn't had a chance and nobody is stopping them.

So if it happened 7 months ago and that is considered a LONG TIME AGO is Obama going to live up to his promise to get to the bottom of the attack or will he just write the whole subject off and forget about the families of the men HE ALLOWED TO BE KILLED WITHOUT JUSTICE.