Fox News host Greta Van Susteren had some strong words for the Obama administration for failing to provide the press with adequate information following the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack.
Speaking on her On the Record program on Friday, September 5, Van Susteren claimed that “the Obama administration’s behavior post-Benghazi has been weird, like they are hiding something.”
The Fox News host continued by insisting that the White House was deliberately targeting her network for daring to ask questions about Benghazi:
Since day one of Benghazi, Fox News has aggressively investigated. It hasn’t been easy. It's more like pulling teeth trying to get answers from the Obama administration...Remember the days right after the attack, the State Department had a conference call to brief all in the media and excluded Fox News? When confronted, State Department apologized and said it was oversight. Really? An oversight? Well, it happened again a short time later. This time the CIA giving a media briefing and guess who was specifically excluded? You got it. Fox News.
Van Susteren went one step further and maintained that “Fox News is being punished for aggressively asking questions, doing our jobs” and argued that the Obama administration pressured Fox to back down from its Benghazi coverage:
When reporter Jennifer Griffin said she was told that there was a stand down order at Benghazi, I got a weird call from the Obama administration trying to pressure me to get Jennifer to back down on her report. I thought the call from the Obama administration was dirty.
The Fox host concluded her “Off the Record” commentary by hitting the White House one final time for its repeated refusal to turn over all pertinent information on Benghazi:
As recently as April after the administration said it turned over all the information an email surfaces that had been withheld in the face of repeated requests. Are you suspicious? I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t born yesterday.
See relevant transcript below.
Fox News
On the Record with Greta Van Susteren
September 5, 2014
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN: Let's go Off the Record. Since day one of Benghazi, Fox News has aggressively investigated. It hasn’t been easy. It's more like pulling teeth trying to get answers from the Obama administration. The Obama administration's behavior post-Benghazi has been weird, like they are hiding something. First that silly story about that video. Remember Susan Rice on all the Sunday talk shows and even President Obama kept talking about the video for weeks. So Fox continued to press for information and it got weirder. Remember the days right after the attack, the State Department had a conference call to brief all in the media and excluded Fox News? When confronted, State Department apologized and said it was oversight. Really? An oversight? Well, it happened again a short time later. This time the CIA giving a media briefing and guess who was specifically excluded?
You got it. Fox News. Why? Well I think Fox News is being punished for aggressively asking questions, doing our jobs. But that's not all. A few weeks later, when reporter Jennifer Griffin said she was told that there was a stand down order at Benghazi, I got a weird call from the Obama administration trying to pressure me to get Jennifer to back down on her report. I thought the call from the Obama administration was dirty. Incidently, I don't control my colleagues and they don't control me. But then there’s been more. As recently as April after the administration said it turned over all the information an email surfaces that had been withheld in the face of repeated requests. Are you suspicious? I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t born yesterday. And that's my Off the Record comment tonight.
