While Fox News seems ready to dispense with any further investigation into the Benghazi attacks and go right to impeachment, apparently Michael Hayden, former CIA Director under George W. Bush, didn’t get the memo. When he appeared on Fox & Friends this morning, host Brian Kilmeade – a former sports reporter who, unlike Hayden, never served in either the military or in intelligence – made it very clear to the “we report, you decide” network’s viewers that they should pay no attention to the benefit of the doubt Hayden was giving the Obama administration.
Kilmeade prompted asked Hayden, “Do you believe that we’re seeing a cover up to the actual terror attack that killed four Americans?”
Hayden said, “Brian, I wouldn’t use the word cover up. There’s certainly been inconsistency. Let’s assume that those first intelligence reports – we now know them to be wrong – said this was spontaneous and video-related… (But) I think that intelligence begins to change rather quickly. So the real question is, why does the public position of the administration continue with the original story even though you’ve got these other strains of information coming in challenging the original premise?”
Citing “significant tradecraft improvements” in intelligence evaluation that were implemented in the wake of the Iraq debacle, Hayden said he wondered “what it was that was presented to the administration even in those early hours. What were the confidence levels that it was spontaneous and video related and did we indeed include those early conflicting views that an attack of this nature – complex, synchronized, sequential – could have been from a jihadist flash mob?”
That was hardly a pro-Obama stance but it was too supportive for Kilmeade. He said, with blatant incredulity, “You don’t honestly believe that from what we knew that it could have been a spontaneous attack? When you were getting reports, play by play, out of Benghazi showing that this was a coordinated attack that lasted for hours?”
Hayden admitted that his “instincts” that were “not fact based” told him “this was truly a terrorist attack.” But, he said, “There may have been some suggestions in the early streams that it was somehow connected to Cairo. But again, I would not have gone out with that estimate with any level of confidence.”
Still too sympathetic for Kilmeade. So he tried to get an indictment against Hillary Clinton. He asked, in a voice dripping with condemnation, “In the hierarchy, the Secretary of State, whose office rejected requests to keep security personnel in the country. Is she culpable? Does she have to answer questions in your mind?”
Unlike Kilmeade, Hayden has been in the partisan hot seat and he was not about to just blast everybody for the sake of political gain. He said, “I’m not in a position to judge the Secretary of State who, frankly, Brian, I think has been more candid than some with regard to the nature of the attack. And look, I’ve been in those hearings. I’ve had those kinds of questions pushed on me. It’s difficult to answer. I know what seems obvious now but I had a bit of sympathy with Deputy Assistant Secretary Lamb and my good friend, Pat Kennedy, trying to answer those questions yesterday.”
Once again, Kilmeade thought he knew better. He interrupted to say, “They didn’t seem like they were being candid, General.”
