Showing posts with label CBS News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CBS News. Show all posts

Friday, February 8, 2019

For me, he was simply THE master politician of my 15 years in Washington, D.C. Remembering John Dingell and what legislators used to do and be











WDIV-TV, Detroit BREAKING: Former Michigan Rep. John Dingell dies at age 92

John Dingell writes a note to his younger self
CBS This Morning
Published on Dec 10, 2013
Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., begins his 58th year as a member of the House of Representatives. At age 87, he is the longest serving member of Congress in history. In the "CBS This Morning" ongoing series, "Note to Self," Dingell write about his personal connection to Pearl Harbor.






















Make sure you read the pillow he's holding!
Longest-serving Rep. Dingell on how Washington has changed
Longest-serving Rep. Dingell on how Washington has changed
Video: CBS News, Published on June 9, 2013 

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., the longest-serving congressman in American history, discusses how Washington has changed since he arrived on Capitol Hill more than 57 years ago, particularly the gradual loss of bipartisan cooperation.

Updated February 11, 2019

Upon my arrival in Washington, D.C. in February of 1988, the day after the Super Tuesday presidential primary election day in Florida, the Southeast U.S. and a few other states, I was more than elated to finally be in the city that I had always wanted to live and work in, and I made a promise to myself.
That vow was that I’d do everything in my power to expand my base of knowledge of policy and process on many different issues in a way that would also help me get a job in a very competitive environment. Growing up in North Miami Beach in the 1970's sans the Internet, I always believed that information was power and always strived to be a person “in the know” whom other smart and savvy people turned to for advice or counsel. And all throughout high school at NMB Senior High and college at Indiana University in Bloomington, and various national and state political campaigns I worked on at a pretty high level, that’s exactly who I was and the reputation I garnered.

I have always had a crazy memory for trivia and context that always helped me recall details that others didn't know or recall. Yes, I was that guy who often won trivia contests at spring break events, at hotel bars or restaurants or get-together at parties in Dc and suburban Northern Virginia.
And thanks to a lot of hard work and diligent effort, I became a well-connected person that was in-the-know. Or so it seemed to me. But who can really know. right?
Growing up in South Florida, because of my personality and interests, I always knew LOTS of TV and print reporters and columnists and editors, when I was in high school at NMB -spent hundreds of hours at the late Miami News at both their Sports and Entertainment desks- and that was also true at IU where college newspaper, the IDS, was one of the best managed in the country, housed in a building named for a journalism icon, Ernie Pyle, an IU alum.

I knew nearly everyone who was anyone at the ids and frequently attended get-to-gethers with many of them on Sunday nights in the Fall after the last NFL football broadcast. We'd meet around 7:30 pm in the school library cafeteria on the ground floor, and there, over burgers, fries, cokes and pizza, we'd discuss what was REALLY happening on campus.
The stories that few students on campus knew about but should be talking about, ones we often knew a bit too much about to keep quiet for very long.
By the end of my freshman year at IU I knew and was friends with lots of influential people at the I.U. Varsity Athletics Dept., and gave camous tours for them when VIPs were in town, often before a big game, and knew as well some of the more influential students on campus at the various student groups, including the three most important: student government, Student Athletic Board and Student Alumni Council, being especially devoted to the latter two when not in class, spending hundreds of hours a semester doing things to help them prosper and have fun at the same time.

All in all, I'd done pretty well to create a well-oiled little network for myself in Blooomington, and I hoped to replicate someting similar in Washington, D.C., however difficult that would seem at the outset. Because of my insatiable curiosity, I was always digging to know a little bit MORE than most people about what was really going on below-the-radar and how the sausage was put together if you will.
That led to people noticing that I had a way of getting things done and get the results I wanted more often than not. Plus, in keeping with my outgoing ENFP personality, I was able to do that without grating on people, a not uninmportant ability that I knew would help me qa lot in Washington, based on conversations with friends who already worked there.
But I knew that there were LOTS and LOTS of people in Washington my age who knew a great deal more than me about specific subjects, and that while my general knowledge may've been better than most, I needed to figure out a way of getting MUCh BETTER informed on those subjects that I was clearly lacking in.
To help accomplish that, from 1988-2003, I took copious contemporaneous notes of what I observed first-hand at myriad events with policy makers, journalists and news makers at the Brookings Institution, CSIS, SAIS at Johns Hopkins, AEI, the Wilson Center, the Goethe Institute, the Center for Security Policy, the IMF and The World Bank -BEST wine!-the Economic Strategy Institute, et al. 
There I'd hear subjects and stories that, for whatever reason, rarely saw the light of day in the pages of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post. Not even mentioned by friends of mine who worked at those media groups. 
This, naturally, had the entirely predictable ripple effect of making me realize that this would only ensure that these stories and issues almost NEVER made the airwaves of the TV networks, cablenets or, even NPR, either.
So, combined with my own personality and interests, the nature of my jobs in DC and the kinds of friends I had, and all those days and nights I was going to forums and events ariound town, I wound up with a front-row seat and below-the-radar perspective on many of the most contentious and implacable issues in Washington, D.C.
That was especially true for the sorts of policy debates that would take place on Capitol Hill, and their resultant fallout at DC-area think tanks, industry groups and public policy groups.

Nothing thou proved more valuable to me in widening my horizons than actually attending Congressional hearings and becoming familiar with not only the well-known public issues at hand, but also issues below-the-radar, and comparing and contrasting how the individual Members, their staff and the news media in attendance, all performed and interacted -or didn't- to either help illuminate or obfuscate an issue, for better or worse.

I heard pinpoint criticism of policies by members of Congress that I never saw mentioned in the press, and heard analysis that I hadn't heretofore known existed, found out that ideas that I always thought were popular had actually evaded public scrutiny, transparency or accountability for years, and I heard lots of well-aimed personal brickbats. 
Every week, I was able to see examples of the proverbial case of the media watchdog that doesn't bark, or see examples of why the latest case of media conventional wisdom had -again- been proven wrong, and why.
So on Capitol Hill, especially before the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994 that saw so many of my Democratic friends on Congressional committees get the heave-hoo, I saw first-hand how some Members chose to be earnest and diligent work-horses.
People like Lee Hamilton or Dante Fascell, my own Members back in Bloomington and Miami.

Members who did their hardest work behind-the-scenes, which was apparent by their choice of questions and their ability to intelligently follow-up  and elicit interesting answers from the people testifying, to get to the larger truth of an issue.
Others, of course, the Congressional show-horses, the majority, were largely content to simply show up and read the questions their well-informed but partisan staff had written for them, missing obvious follow-up opportunities. I also saw something I never imagined -Members who seemed to be bored with such a great job. A job I and so many others in the crowd would kill to have.

There were a few, though, who combined the work ethic of a work-horse and the showmanship of a show-horse, and one of them was John Dingell, the veteran Michigan Democrat who had held his Detroit-area seat since 1955, succeeding his father, who'd been swept into power during the first FDR presidential victory of 1932.
Dingell’s voluble style and legendary ability to generate both passion and news headlines were famous long before I arrived on the scene in Washington in 1988, of course, so I knew that whenever possible, I needed to attend one of his hearings so that I could see him operate in-person if I wanted to see how things could really work on the Hill, because those rare moments when he was properly engaged and enraged were truly magic.
I saw that Dingell magic for myself many times in the fifteen years I lived and worked in Washington, spending thousands and thousands of hours at/on/around Capitol Hill.

The hearings that made the most powerful impression on me came in April of 1988, just months after my arrival. I was fortunate enough to grab a seat at a Energy & Commerce committee hearing he chaired, after waiting in line for hours to get one of the coveted 30-plus seats inside, where Drexel’s Michael Milken was to testify before what seemed like most of the Beltway press corps.
A hearing where tension was already thick even before it started and then only seemed to grow once Milken publicly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination as camneras all over the room clicked, refusing to respond to the committee’s very pointed and explosive questions.
This, despite the fact that his attorney, the legendary Edward Bennett Williams -the Williams of the famous D.C. law firm, Williams & Connolly, as well as the cantankerous owner of the Washington Redskins football team and Baltimore Orioles baseball team- had already told the committee in advance that his client would not answer its questions because Milken was already under grand jury investigation. John Dingell, though, had bigger fish to fry that day, and was cagey enough to see Milken’s refusal to talk publicly for what it really was -for Dingell.
An opportunity for John Dingell to make a point much larger than the simple one being written about by the legion of journalistic lemmings in American newspapers and business magazines regarding whether Michael Milken and his business approach were a force of corporate good or evil. Dingell used his opening statement -which came before anyone else spoke- to outline what he perceived to be the “evils” of Drexels’s junk bonds, and their use in corporate takeovers that had led to the collapse of longstanding companies, thousands of productive jobs in towns large and small throughout America’s heartland.
People whose lives Dingell believed could never be made whole again. That was to be the drama.
April 27, 1988  Securities Markets and Federal Laws
The subcommittee held a hearing relating to the operations of the nation’s securities markets and the effectiveness of the federal securities laws. Following members' opening remarks, Mr. Milken invoked committee rules preventing television cameras from recording his testimony. After cameras left the room, he invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self incrimination. He was under investigation for racketeering and securities fraud.

The comedy was to come later, when Drexel’s CEO, Fred Joseph, came into the room and testified, apparently oblivious to everything everyone else in the room who counts had heard Dingell say from his seat in the middle of the dais during Milken’s portion of the hearing. In a shocking example of making a bad situation even worse, Joseph refused to address the legitimate points Dingell had raised, instead, claiming that financing takeovers was a small part of Drexel’s overall business.
(As opposed to, say, their percentage of company profits! If it really was so small, logically, you’d think that Joseph would try to address the thornier questions posed to Milken, without the embarrassment of taking the Fifth, but he didn’t.)
By the time Fred Joseph had concluded his testimony, the damage had largely been done. Dingell, ever the master pol, had simply let Milken and Joseph hang themselves on TV: Milken by his silence and Joseph by his inability to see the bigger picture that all of America would see that night on the network TV newscasts, via a narrative written and framed by Congressman John Dingell.
APRIL 28, 1988 Securities Markets & Federal Laws

The subcommittee met to investigate several areas of the securities market with the intent of improving the laws in this area. Subcommittee members were interested in regulating the market while also preserving the confidence of the public in the free market system.

John Dingell Visitation And Funeral Arrangements:



Monday, May 26, 2014

Poignant! Barry Gibb: The last Bee Gee goes it alone, by Anthony Mason via @cbsnews #SundayMorning; @GibbBarry #resilience :-)






My last post on Robin Gibb and all things Bee Gees was on April 15, 2012, with a nod to the title of their Spirits Having Flown album, which came out right before I turned 18, and was titled: 
Tears soon to be flowing like rivers: Robin Gibb remains near death in a coma in a west London hospital, just days after his 'Titanic Requiem' premiered at Westminster Central Hall on Tuesday http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/tears-soon-to-be-flowing-like-rivers.html


Anthony Mason's interviews with iconic music figures always bring out something special, just like his great piece on Glen Campbell did, which I recounted here on June 26, 2012 in a blog post titled, As a beloved music icon begins to leave the stage for good, due to Alzheimer's, we stop and wonder if a more beautiful song could possibly be sung about two such incongruous words? "Wichita Lineman," et al - Glen Campbell's Long Goodbye makes us so very sad and wistful; see him while you can...
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/as-beloved-music-icon-begins-to-leave.html

Saturday, August 10, 2013

The Washington Post's newsroom gets the Sixty Minutes treatment from Mike Wallace in 1974, as he tours the inner sanctum of Journalism's Mount Olympus and interviews Ben Bradlee and Katharine Graham. A time, a place, and the huge difference one well-run newspaper made, forever changing the face of American history and journalism. Four days after this aired, President Nixon resigned



From: Bezos bets on Wash Post -- what exactly did he buy?
By Ann Silvio
August 7, 2013 3:08 PM

In 1974, CBS News' Sixty Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace went inside what would later be considered by some to be the the inner sanctum of Journalism's Mount Olympus, The Washington Post's newsroom.

That summer he spoke to some of the confident-but-demanding people running it -Ben Bradlee and Katharine Graham- and some of the reporters whose dogged determination had made it so -Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

Wallace even interviewed competitors like the New York Times James "Scotty" Reston, who allows that Post editor Ben Bradlee might now just be good enough to work at the Times.

Four days after this segment aired on Sunday night August 4, 1974, President Richard Nixon resigned from office.

This video is NOT the entire segment that aired.

Yes, a time, a place, and the difference one well-run newspaper made.
While everyone else in the press corps largely IGNORED the Watergate story, one newspaper's reporters were given the freedom to dig-in harder -but had to confirm it with two sources- and forever changed the face of the country and journalism at large

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/local/wp/2013/08/07/revisiting-the-washington-post-circa-1974/ 

Monday, June 17, 2013

Emmy-award investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News is ‘Outraged’ about her work and personal computers being hacked, but most Mainstream Media have ignored or are STILL ignoring the story, with South Florida media preferring to post their customary flotsam & jetsam that the public is increasingly rejecting


CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson is ‘Outraged’ about her work and personal computers being hacked, but most Mainstream Media have or still are ignoring the story, with South Florida media preferring instead to post their customary flotsam & jetsam that the public is increasingly rejecting
POLITICO
Attkisson: 'Outraged' by computer hacking
By Mackenzie Weinger
June 17, 2013  12:47 PM EDT
CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson on Monday said she is “outraged” her computer was hacked and called it “a very serious and disturbing matter.”
Attkisson told “CBS This Morning” she reported her concern that her work and personal computers were being compromised to CBS News management in January, and they hired a cyber security firm to conduct an investigation. CBS News on Friday said Attkisson’s computer had been compromised and accessed “by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions” in late 2012.

The very troubling situating with Emmy-award winning investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson's computer has been completely ignored at Forbes.com and their Forbes Network Activity blogs which I subscribe to, a group that writes about everything under the sun, as well as by ProPublica and the supposedly media-savvy New York magazine, as the screen grab below from around 4:35 pm today shows.
Not even one.

Compare that to all the blog posts they have run the past year on alleged phone hacking by NewsCorp execs that actually happened in -yes- another country.
Yes, as far as they are concerned, it's very much a case of picking-and-choosing whose ox is to be gored.
But why would they ignore the story completely?
That's who they are.



Locally, the multi-month story which was first given attention by POLITICO's media columnist  Dylan Byers on May 21st 
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/05/sharyl-attkissons-computers-compromised-164456.html
was completely ignored until last Friday by the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, with genius editors at the Sun-Sentinel choosing to weigh-in with a weighty four-sentence report from Reuters.

Typical for the Sun-Sentinel the past few years under editor Dana Banker, they were both completely oblivious of the story and then after everyone else who has been ignoring the story finally went with it, they actually ran the worst-possible thing.
Four sentences.
That's why it's the Sun-Sentinel!

Nobody seriously expects real feats of journalism from them anymore.

More noteworthy is that the local CBS affiliate here in Miami, WFOR-TV, which has seen its news rating falter, is also completely ignoring the story thus far:
http://miami.cbslocal.com/search/?q=%22Sharyl+Attkisson%22

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Hard news: Let's face it, NOT a lot of of bright spots (or backbone) for hard news reporting in South Florida since Ralph Renick said goodbye; Video: Ralph Renick driving on the Julia Tuttle Causeway towards Miami Beach in 1959, before it opened; Ralph Renick wasn't just a newsman's newsman, he was an attitude, an attitude my friends and I wish were more dominant here instead of the propensity for fluff


Wolfson Archive YouTube Channel video: A Soaring Tuttle Tribute. WTVJ-TV news anchor Ralph Renick, the founding anchor of Florida's first TV station, driving east on the Julia Tuttle Causeway from Miami to Miami Beach in 1959 to show viewers what it would be like, just before it opened. Renick is driving what the Wolfson Archives thinks is a 1959 Simca Aronde Oceane. Uploaded May 9, 2013.

I'm following up on my angry blog post of yesterday morning bemoaning and hectoring the two local South Florida newspapers -Miami Herald and South Florida Sun-Sentinel- that insist -or is it persist?- in claiming that they're STILL major dailies, for their consistent lack of backbone and commitment to hard news coverage locally or nationally, by way of offering you three videos featuring South Florida's first TV news anchor and journalism icon, Ralph Renick.

For 36 years Renick's distinctive voice was the defining voice of Miami-area journalism and public policy, and for most of those years, he was the most well-known, most-recognized and most-respected man in all of South Florida. (Compare to now.)

Ralph Renick was a smart and shrewd man and cleverly used that power he'd earned over those many years in many very positive ways to help guide a somewhat-isolated and sometimes-youthful and unruly South Florida, towards becoming a more civic-minded place to live and work.
To not accept a poor work ethic and mediocrity and insist on high ideals in politicians and government officials so that when those standards sagged, they knew that he would goad them or go after them.

Renick was not only a man who anchored and reported on the news, but someone who, when he actually showed-up at a government or political event around the area, actually made that event news itself, and always caused a stir when he showed-up.

His being there made it news, and something that you would mention to other people the next day at work or school, back before you could immediately Tweet or blog about it with a photo to boot.

That trust and respect Renick earned came from being very demanding of himself and of the people at the TV station he was so widely identified with, which had a very positive national reputation within the TV news industry, too.

His influence on the reporters, producers and writers he hired and molded was profound, and since his general renown in the area, plus his status as station news director, which was and is very, very unusual, gave him lots of natural advantages that other stations couldn't compete with, like being able to groom young reporters in his serious image, but with their faces and talents, he could keep the standards very high, which only served to give the people who worked there a very real sense of well-earned satisfaction.

There's a reason that people like myself who grew-up or who lived here in the '70's can still remember the names of the field reporters at that station, and that is because they were very talented and worked very hard and didn't cut the corners on quality.
And, in many cases, were so good that many of them wound up working as national reporters for CBS News.
That these traits were also his traits only caused that station to hum in ways that most TV news operations never ever do.

For almost every month that Renick was the anchor, his 6 and 11 p.m. thirty-minute newscasts were the number-one newscast in the market, and the fact that he also did his trademark civics-minded editorials before signing-off and the intro to the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite or Dan Rather, gave his newscasts an extra heft and punch that the three others couldn't match for most of his reign, even with talented people in place there, too.



August 25, 1982 Ralph Renick editorial on WTVJ-4, Miami, on the filming of Scarface in South Florida. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyuJGHrjbRY

I guess what I'm trying to say here today, is that when I talk here on the blog about news reporting and journalism, and doing things the right way, what most stands in contrast to how things are now is that Ralph Renick wasn't just a newsman's newsman, he was an attitude.
A professional arms-length relationship with people and personalities in the news.

I don't want anchors and reporters to be pals and chums with elected officials or Dolphin or Heat players or head coaches, and playing in their charity golf or tennis outings, I want them hungry to keep them honest and above board.

That's an attitude that I and many of my friends seldom see in this TV market now, despite amazing technological innovations that make their jobs easier, and which ought to make it easier as well to tell compelling stories in new and original ways.
But it isn't happening, especially at the newspapers, where things only seem to be getting worse quality-wise.



thecardsaysmoops YouTube Channel video: WTVJ / Miami News Open - November, 1970 - Ralph Renick's Six O'Clock newscast, with its famiar musical theme, which odds as it sounds right now, was actually a comforting sound back in the day, when yours truly was a nine-year old living in North Miami Beach when this took place.
Renick's last newscast for WTVJ was in March, 1985. He died in June of 1991.  http://youtu.be/aCVUJmoBN1M

Honestly, I never feel older than when I think about how influential Renick's newscasts were on me and my friends as kids growing-up in NMB in the 1970's, and our way of looking at South Florida and what it could be someday if only...

And naturally, I can't help but wish that this area now had more people who took their jobs as reporters or govt. officials or community leaders as least as seriously as I want them to take it -and as seriously as Ralph Renick took his big responsibilities- not only for myself, but also so that kids growing-up down here now would know that there are some people here entrusted with power and influence who really take their positions seriously, and don't cut corners and compromise on ethical standards and behavior, so that frivolity and excess are not always shown as the easiest way to go through life.

I want more serious, hard news coverage of local news and so does everyone I know and respect.

In the year 2013, it's fair to ask, "Where's the quality 24/7 Miami/FTL local news cable channel we need and deserve?"

"May the good news be yours..."

My previous four or five blog posts that mention Ralph Renick can be found here:

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/search?q=ralph+renick

Friday, September 14, 2012

Mounting public anger & criticism of Obama & Hillary's dithering foreign policy failures in aftermath of Cairo & Benghazi attacks; Facts finally starting to penetrate MSM's pro-Obama narrative and defense shield on this story even while ABC's "World News With Diane Sawyer" lays one egg-after-another


publiusforum video: CNN's Nic Robertson Interviews Brother of Blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman in Cairo on September 10, 2011. Uploaded September 13, 2012. http://youtu.be/tPszLCEyu-I
Story at: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/09/13/Cairo-Riots-Were-Not-Over-Offensive-American-Movie-Freedom-of-Blind-Sheik-The-Goal

*FYI: CIA Director David Petraeus will be meeting with House Intelligence Committee members this morning*


Though it's the newscast that I always watch and prefer, Thursday night's "ABC World News with Diane Sawyer" was one of the worst in quite some time, more noteworthy for what they neglected to say than anything they actually reported -never a good sign.

This case of collective hysterical amnesia at the alphabet network seemed especially curious in light of interesting news reports that emerged over the course of the day that only gathered steam as the day went on, as they made even more preposterous many of the Mainstream Media's claims of the day before and that morning's daily newspapers.

The facts simply wouldn't cooperate and fit their assumptions. 

These were all "facts" that that you reasonably expected to see mentioned at some point in a national newscast when the subject of the riots and murder in Benghazi and Cairo came up

and yet...

Yes, sometimes even when Diane Sawyer is standing right there in the middle of it, the absence of evidence is evidence itself, and so is the refusal of her news program to mention these inconvenient facts when it goes against the Mainstream Media narrative of that morning.

Here's just a small list of what WASN'T mentioned on Thursday night's "ABC World News with Diane Sawyerhttp://abcnews.go.com/WN/


1.) Libyan government announced that organized and heavily-armed groups used the so-called film protests as a cover to stage coordinated attacks.

Yes, the rocket-propelled grenades are always a tip-off that civic discourse is not at the top of someone's agenda.

[And why so much reluctance by ABC News and the rest of the Mainstream Media in the U.S. to mention how often variations of "Osama, we are with you" was heard a week at the protests one week  after the DNC mentioned Osama Bin Laden 21 times with respect to their famous hunter Obama practically killing Bin Laden himself. 


TV and print reporters in other countries who speak Arabic and who are there on the ground are mentioning it, so why aren't U.S. reporters mentioning how often the words "Osama" and "Obama" are mentioned in the same sentence, and not in a positive light?

Speaking of speaking the language of the place you are reporting from, how's Barbara Raddatz's Arabic? 
Perhaps Paul Ryan will ask her at the October 11th Vice-Presidential debate she is moderating. 


No need to do that, I can answer that question for you.

ABC News reporter Barbara Raddatz, like so many other American A-list reporters routinely go to countries where they don't speak the language -like Arabic- and have to be totally dependent on others to explain what in the hell is going on. 
So, why do we need to hear from her then? 
Good question.

But ABC News doesn't care that she doesn't actually understand what is being said all around here while she is supposed to be reporting. 

To them, the most important thing is that she's there -is showing the ABC flag.
That's NOT the most-important thing to me -facts are. 
(She was in washington on Thursday night)


2.) Why nothing at all about this f-ed up situation with Larry Schwartz at the U.S. embassy in Cairo? Guess they were too busy trying to find another Republican in DC to criticize Romney.
Anonymously, of course.

Foreign Policy magazine

The Cable blog
Inside the public relations disaster at the Cairo embassy
Posted By Josh Rogin
September 12, 2012 - 8:48 p.m.
One staffer at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo was responsible for the statement and tweets Tuesday that have become grist for the presidential campaign, and that staffer ignored explicit State Department instructions not to issue the statement, one U.S. official close to the issue told The Cable.
Two additional administration officials confirmed the details of this account when contacted late Wednesday by The Cable.
Read the rest of the post at:
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/09/12/inside_the_public_relations_disaster_at_the_cairo_embassy

3.) All Thursday morning and afternoon, credible reports emerged that despite what President Obama said about the Libyan security forces helping transport Ambassador Christopher Stevens to another building per their protocol, credible stories that members of the Libyan security forces had in fact signaled to the armed organized groups that were there to storm the consulate that the move was taking place.
The groups already knew that Stevens would be moved, they just weren't sure where.
Once they knew, it was easy to fire their rockets right at him.

It was literally like he was herded into the scene of his death.
This was not mentioned at all on ABC's newscast 

Uh-oh! Mira!
Here's something finally penetrating the MSM's invisible force field
Notice that this is being given a 6:45 am time stamp, even though I heard this yesterday before 1 p.m.

CBS News

September 14, 2012 5:23 AM
Official: Libyan insiders may have aided assault
Updated 6:45 a.m. ET


(CBA/AP) BENGHAZI, Libya — Heavily armed militants used a protest of an anti-Islam film as a cover and may have had help from inside Libyan security in their deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate, a senior Libyan official said Thursday.
As Libya announced the first four arrests, the clearest picture yet emerged of a two-pronged assault, with militants screaming "God is great!" as they scaled the consulate's outer walls and descended on the compound's main building.

Read the rest of the article at:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57512847/official-libyan-insiders-may-have-aided-assault/



4.) Surprise! Reports throughout the day emerged that U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson wouldn't allow U.S. Marines guarding the embassy compound to carry live ammunition.
http://nation.time.com/2012/09/13/whats-worse-no-marines-or-possibly-unarmed-marines/

With all their resources and personnel, how is ABC News unable to either confirm or deny this story by 6:30 p.m. Eastern? 

Or mention that she was in Washington at the time?
Really, how can that be?

If it turns out to be true, like you, I can hardly wait to hear the future interviews with the Marines and their leaders back in Washington on the fact that the very people most-responsible for the safety of U.S. personnel were reduced to playing the role of Barney Fife, who, lovable as he was, famously, wasn't allowed to have a loaded gun while he was on-duty in Mayberry.

And as if I even have to mention it, Ambassador Ann Patterson's name was never spoken on-air Thursday. Again.
Hmm-m...

Honestly, what is it about female U.S. Ambassadors posted to the creepy patriarchal Middle East, and their own feelings of protocol and or inadequacy, that actually cause them to threaten U.S.lives thru their queer policy pronouncements?


If true, unfortunately, Anne Patterson's bad decision-making will remind many of us that after the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, the last year of the Clinton Administration, the U.S. Ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodineimposed all sorts of rules on the U.S. officials sent to investigate the bombing that took place on her watch.

She seemed to be the very stereotype of a spiteful feminist who wanted to keep men at a distance even though they were the ones who had any power on the block she lived on.
Instead of letting common sense prevail, she said that allowing so many FBI and CIA agents -read assertive men- would send the 'wrong signals' about who really ran U.S. foreign policy.

She forgot that it wasn't her. 

She was the worker bee who works for us, not the other way around.

In case you forgot or never knew the exact details, Bodine was the stick-up-her-ass PC U.S. Ambassador to Yemen who tried to thwart the Cole investigation and famously took steps to revoke the visa of FBI Special Agent John O'Neill, the FBI's leading expert on al Qaeda and on-scene commander in Yemen after he arrived from New York with his team of counter-terrorism agents.
Yes, really.

Among so many other things that seem contrary to U.S. interests, Bodine famously intervened and prevented his re-entry into Yemen after he'd flown back to New York for Thanksgiving 2000. 
O'Neill, of course, died ten months later in the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers

See PBS's Frontline "The Man Who Knew" 



PBS FRONTLINE: The Man Who Knew - Parts 5 of 8
http://youtu.be/s7T5gAD1SSI


Here is what PBS says on their Frontline website about that situation in October of 2000.
I usually would not put so much of that here, but it's important that you see what part of her decision-making rings familiar today, considering Patterson's orders.
Arriving in Yemen, O'Neill finds challenging field conditions. His agents confront 102-degree heat and a cramped, unsecured hotel for their quarters. O'Neill soon finds himself clashing with Barbara Bodine, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen, who is concerned about the number of FBI agents and military personnel flooding into the country after the bombing. O'Neill argues that the FBI needs resources to thoroughly investigate the attack. Bodine has different priorities, including maintaining good relations with Yemen. "I had to act as a cultural interpreter. They have endured first British colonialism, and then the Soviets. These people have only had foreigners telling them what to do. Now O'Neill and his men were coming in, doing essentially the same thing," Bodine later told Britain's The Sunday Times.
As relations between the two sour, the number of topics they disagree on multiplies. O'Neill wants a heavily-armed security presence; Bodine wants the agents to be unarmed. O'Neill wants to have direct access to Yemeni officials; Bodine feels she should supervise encounters. As O'Neill starts to seek support from Barry Mawn and other FBI officials back in the U.S., the cables sent by Bodine to the State Department become increasingly critical of O'Neill. It reaches the point where Louis Freeh and Janet Reno become personally involved in the dispute.
Meanwhile...
CNN IGNORES REAL GOAL OF CAIRO RIOTS: FREEDOM OF BLIND SHEIK
by WARNER TODD HUSTON  
14 Sep 2012, 2:47 AM PDT

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