Bret Baier
Fox News
11/5/2012
ANALYSIS: Two days before the election, CBS posted additional portions of a Sept. 12 “60 Minutes” interview where President Obama seems to contradict himself on the Benghazi attack. As the Benghazi investigation gets more attention and focus, CBS is once again adding to the Benghazi timeline.
In the interview, according to the latest portions, Obama would not say whether he thought the attack was terrorism. Yet he would later emphasize at a presidential debate that in the Rose Garden the same day, he had declared the attack an act of terror.
That moment was one of the most intense exchanges in the second presidential debate. Romney was on the offensive on what conservatives believed was a serious vulnerability of Obama — the handling of the Benghazi attack and what he called it from the beginning…
…on Sept. 12…The White House, the Situation Room, and all of those paying attention to intel channels know that the guys on the ground have determined the group that’s behind this. It’s the Al Qaeda-linked militia that are still fighting and have the hospital surrounded.
About 12 hours later — before heading to Las Vegas for a campaign event — Obama sits down for that “60 Minutes” interview with Steve Kroft.
And Sunday night, 54 days after the attack and almost two weeks after putting out the first additional clip that appeared to back up the president after the second debate, CBS without fanfare posted the rest of the Benghazi question online — the question before the question…
…Right after getting out of the Rose Garden, where, according to the second debate and other accounts he definitively called the attack terrorism, Obama is asked point blank about not calling it terrorism. He blinks and does not push back.
Understand that this interview is just hours after he gets out of the Rose Garden…
…There are many questions, and here are a few more.
Why did CBS release a clip that appeared to back up Obama’s claim in the second debate on Oct. 19, a few days before the foreign policy debate, and not release the rest of that interview at the beginning?
Why on the Sunday before the election, almost six weeks after the attack, at 6 p.m. does an obscure online timeline posted on CBS.com contain the additional “60 Minutes” interview material from Sept. 12?
Why wasn’t it news after the president said what he said in the second debate, knowing what they had in that “60 Minutes” tape — why didn’t they use it then? And why is it taking Fox News to spur other media organizations to take the Benghazi story seriously?
Whatever your politics, there are a lot of loose ends here, a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of strange political maneuvers that don’t add up.
That’s what reporters should live for, but this time they’re not. We will.
