Via
Angry Mike
The State Department has belatedly released dozens of photos of the
aftermath of last year’s terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission
in Benghazi after The Washington Times inquired about the authenticity
of photographs it received from a Welsh security contractor assigned to
the doomed American outpost in eastern Libya.
Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, had requested
all photos and videos of the besieged diplomatic mission under the
Freedom of Information Act in December and February, and the State
Department released only seven photographs in June.
But this week, after weeks of inquiries by The Times about
photos it received, the State Department released a trove of photographs
showing buildings and vehicles ablaze during the Sept. 11, 2012,
terrorist attack that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and
three other Americans. Other photos show ransacked offices, burned-out
cars and Arabic graffiti scrawled on walls.
The State Department said it had forwarded the photographs to
the FBI for its investigation into the attack and submitted them to the
accountability review board, the independent panel that conducted the
State Department’s mandatory probe of the Benghazi incident and events
leading up to it. The department also shared the photographs with
members of Congress looking into the Obama administration’s response to
the attack.
Judicial Watch was incredulous over the sudden release of
never-before-published photographs and criticized the State Department
for withholding requested videos of the attack and its aftermath.
“The new photos reveal a level of total devastation thoroughly
belying Obama’s original cover story that the carnage was perpetrated by
a bunch of random malcontents upset over an unpleasant video,” Judicial
Watch President Tom Fitton said Wednesday on the group’s website. “The
fact that we’ve had to wait nearly a year and file a federal lawsuit for
basic documentary material of the attack shows that this administration
is still in cover-up mode. And now the Obama administration brings the
Benghazi stonewall to a whole new level by withholding video of the
attack using frivolous arguments such as ‘privacy.’”
Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican, expressed outrage
over the State Department’s delay in providing materials requested under
the Freedom of Information Act.
