Politico Absurdly Avoids Attkisson Bombshell in Hillary Benghazi Story

September 16th, 2014 7:13 PM

Imagine the absurdity of reporting on supporters of Richard Nixon during the Watergate hearings with no mention of the White House Plumbers who performed the break-in at the complex. Such is the case now with Politico reporting on groups of Hillary Clinton supporters who will be defending her during the Congressional Benghazi hearings which makes absolutely no mention of the Sharyl Attkisson's report about how Hillary's aides at the State Department scrubbed the Benghazi documents of possibly incriminating information.

To get an idea how ridiculous it is for Politico to avoid the Benghazi elephant in the room, let us first look at some of the allegations in Attkisson's report:

As the House Select Committee on Benghazi prepares for its first hearing this week, a former State Department diplomat is coming forward with a startling allegation: Hillary Clinton confidants were part of an operation to “separate” damaging documents before they were turned over to the Accountability Review Board investigating security lapses surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.

According to former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell, the after-hours session took place over a weekend in a basement operations-type center at State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. This is the first time Maxwell has publicly come forward with the story.

...“I was not invited to that after-hours endeavor, but I heard about it and decided to check it out on a Sunday afternoon,” Maxwell says.

...When he arrived, Maxwell says he observed boxes and stacks of documents. He says a State Department office director, whom Maxwell described as close to Clinton’s top advisers, was there. Though the office director technically worked for him, Maxwell says he wasn’t consulted about her weekend assignment.

She told me, ‘Ray, we are to go through these stacks and pull out anything that might put anybody in the [Near Eastern Affairs] front office or the seventh floor in a bad light,’” says Maxwell. He says “seventh floor” was State Department shorthand for then-Secretary of State Clinton and her principal advisers.

“I asked her, ‘But isn’t that unethical?’ She responded, ‘Ray, those are our orders.’ ”

Pretty damning allegations but this bombshell goes completely unmentioned in the Politico story about friends of Hillary leaping to her defense during the upcoming Benghazi hearings:

As a select House committee probing the 2012 attacks in Benghazi convenes Wednesday, three Democratic outside groups are mobilizing to protect Hillary Clinton from any fallout.

In a plan shared with POLITICO, officials with the pro-Hillary Clinton group Correct the Record, working with the Democratic research super PAC American Bridge, said they will launch a new website, www.benghazicommittee.com. It’s a research hub that is designed like a news site and will issue detailed, rapid responses to charges against Clinton — mimicking the way a campaign would defend a candidate in real time during a presidential debate.

Also defending the former secretary of state against Benghazi criticism will be Media Matters, the watchdog founded by David Brock, a Clinton ally who also created both American Bridge and Correct the Record. In addition to using an army of researchers, Media Matters has been aggressively hitting Fox News, which has covered Benghazi extensively since the attacks two years ago.

Hmm... When will Politico refer to those Clinton State Department aides who scrubbed the Benghazi documents as a fourth group of those mobilizing to protect Hillary Clinton from any fallout?