What Gregory Hicks really said about Susan Rice!

MONDAY, MAY 13, 2013

The dumbness surpasses belief: Just for the record, what did Gregory Hicks really say about Ambassador Rice?

Last Wednesday, Hick testified to a House committee about the attack in Benghazi. At one point, he savaged Rice.

For background, see our previous post.

Hicks said his jaw dropped when he watched Rice on the September 16 Sunday shows. He said he was embarrassed by the things she said.

Why did he say he felt that way? Specifically, what was his criticism?

In typical fashion, no one ever really asked him to explain! Nor have we seen anyone note how crazy his comments were.

Below, you can read the relevant passage from Hicks’ testimony, which didn’t take place in the Senate.

Hicks was speaking with Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC), one of the dumbest mother-frumpers this side of Maureen Dowd. In this truly astonishing passage, Hicks semi-explains why his jaw dropped when he watched Rice on TV.

Gowdy behaves like a lunatic:
GOWDY (5/8/13): So Mr. Hicks, let's find out the truth. The president of Libya responded to the attack and labeled it an attack by Islamic extremists possibly with terror links, correct?

HICKS: Yes, sir.

GOWDY: So hours after our ambassador and three others are killed in Benghazi, the president of Libya says it was an attack with possible terror links, correct?

HICKS: Yes, sir, that's what I recall.

GOWDY: Did the president of Libya mention a spontaneous protest related to a video?

HICKS: No, sir.

GOWDY: When Ambassador Stevens talked to you, perhaps minutes before he died, as a dying declaration, what precisely did he say to you?

HICKS: He said, “Greg, we're under attack.”

GOWDY: Would a highly decorated career diplomat have told you, or Washington, had there been a demonstration outside his facility that day?

HICKS: Yes, sir, he would have.

GOWDY: Did he mention one word about a protest or a demonstration?

HICKS: No sir, he did not.

GOWDY: So fast forward, Mr. Hicks, to the Sunday talk shows and Ambassador Susan Rice. She blamed this attack on a video. In fact she did it five different times. What was your reaction to that?

HICKS: I was stunned. My jaw dropped. And I was embarrassed.

GOWDY: Did she talk to you before she went on the five Sunday talk shows?

HICKS: No, sir.

GOWDY: You were the highest ranking official in Libya at the time, correct?

HICKS: Yes, sir.

GOWDY: And she did not bother to have a conversation with you before she went on national television?

HICKS: No, sir.

GOWDY: So Ambassador Rice directly contradicts the evidence on the ground in Libya, she directly contradicts the president of Libya, she directly contradicts the last statement uttered by Ambassador Stevens!
That exchange is so dumb, in so many ways, that it beggars description. It would take all day to correct the errors, embellishments and logical gaps put on display in that passage.

That said, let’s get clear on one basic thing Gowdy kept saying in that remarkable passage.

Rather clearly, Gowdy was saying that Rice should have taken her brief that day from the Libyan president, not from U.S. intelligence! She should have said what the Libyan president said, not what the CIA had said about the events in question.

Just marvel at Gowdy'a analysis! The Libyan president hadn’t mentioned a spontaneous protest. For that reason, Ambassador Rice shouldn’t have mentioned a spontaneous protest either!

According to the outraged Gowdy, Rice “directly contradict[ed] the president of Libya!” Can Susan Rice really do that?

Americans, can we talk?

For better or worse, the CIA had described a spontaneous protest. The CIA had described such a protest/demonstration right from its original talking points on.

And here’s a minor clue for Gowdy and for the ridiculous Hicks: Rice was representing the United States government on TV that day, not the Libyan president!

That exchange between Gowdy and Hicks is death-defyingly stupid. Gowdy is the instigator, but Hicks plays right along.

By the way, how large are the gonads on Hicks? Given what actually happened during the Benghazi attack, this passage is simply astounding:
GOWDY: When Ambassador Stevens talked to you, perhaps minutes before he died, as a dying declaration, what precisely did he say to you?

HICKS: He said, “Greg, we're under attack.”

GOWDY: Would a highly decorated career diplomat have told you, or Washington, had there been a demonstration outside his facility that day?

HICKS: Yes, sir, he would have.

GOWDY: Did he mention one word about a protest or a demonstration?

HICKS: No sir, he did not.
By now, the intelligence community has decided that there was no pre-existing demonstration in Benghazi that day. If that is correct, then their original assessment was wrong.

That said, Ambassador Stevens had little chance to discuss this matter with Hicks. You see, Hicks failed to answer the telephone the first two times Stevens called from Benghazi, where he was under attack. As Hicks testified, he “was relaxing” in his villa, “watching a television show that I particularly like.” For that reason, he said he didn’t answer his phone the first two times the ambassador tried to reach him.

It really takes a major pair to discuss what Stevens didn’t say on the phone that night. As Hicks testified, when Stevens finally did get through, he only had time to say a few words before his line went dead.

Under these circumstances, it’s astounding to see the way Hicks and Gowdy went on about what Stevens didn’t say. But this is the way our discourse has worked for the past many years.

Hicks and Gowdy behaved like fools, but Maureen Dowd was moved by what Hicks said. Your country has had this massive cultural problem for a good many years.

Starting Monday night, the young millionaires on The One True Channel will have the chance to sort through this mess. Based on their past performance, do you think there’s any chance that they will know how to do that? That they will be willing to fight?

To be sure, they'll tell you that Fox is wrong. But will they challenge mainstream players like Dowd? Will they challenge the gutless reporting in the New York Times?

We think the odds on that aren't good. We'll discuss this problem all week.

36 comments:

  1. Barack Obama's stated policy:

    My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency...

    Bob defends Rice by pointing out that her statements on TV were consistent with the talking points she was given. Fair enough. The problem is that those talking points were deceptive.

    This controversy isn't about Rice. It's that, contrary to its promise, the Obama Administration has not been open and transparent. On the contrary, the prevailing attitude seems to be one of non-transparency and non-openness.

    P.S. For another example of the Administration's failure to pursue transparency, see this WaPo editorial yesterday about the IRS targeting conservative groups.

    "it was appalling to learn Friday that the IRS had improperly targeted conservative groups for scrutiny. It was almost as disturbing that President Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew have not personally apologized to the American people and promised a full investigation."

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    1. DAinCA, You're absolutely right. So that his statement could remain undisputed, Obama should have said, "My administration is committed to creating an level of openness in government, unprecedented in this century."

      How exactly were you deceived by the statements on Benghazi? Were you initially led to believe that a demonstration against an anti-Islam film led to the attack, but now you're shocked to find out that Ansar Al-Sharia was involved? Did you expect the CIA to reveal the extent of its classified knowledge about the group's involvement? Did the administration not use the word "terrorist" early enough and specifically enough thereby leaving you stunned to find out later that it was actually a terrorist attack?

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    2. He doesn't know how that was misleading and he doesn't care. He has to lie by pretending Rice did not tell Bob Schieffer that same day that it could be al Qaeda-affiliated or even al Qaeda-sponsored, and he has to pretend that she didn't say umpteen times with total clarity that everything she said about their current knowledge at the time was tentative -- which means she told the total truth as it was known that day to the extent the CIA permitted it to be disclosed.

      But you will never get people like David to admit the obvious that the whole "Benghazi, Benghazi" thing is a complete fraud. Complete, with no qualifications. But they think they've got something that will compromise Hillary Clinton in 2016 -- where there's smoke there must be fire, right? -- regardless of how dishonest it is, so they will not quit.

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  2. DInC
    Yes, the statement should have been "A CIA post in Benghazi was attacked by a heavily armed Muslim terrorist group, and the Ambassador to Syria and several other Americans were killed."

    By the way, if you had been paying attention, you might have noticed that Mideast heads of state typically blame terrorists for attacks on their government.

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  3. So now Hicks is "ridiculous" and behaved like a "fool." And when will TDH turn its scorn to Ambassador Stevens? Surely he must have been aware of the CIA's security warnings. Surely he was aware of the protests around the region because of the hated video.



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    1. Can you read? How about re-reading why TDH says Hicks behaved like a fool, and then tell the rest of us exactly why TDH is wrong. Hicks' behavior sure looks blatantly political to me.

      Maybe you didn't even read the explanation in the first place -- couldn't stand to be shown as a fool yourself -- so "re-reading" would be the wrong term.

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    2. TDH never says why Hicks behaved like a fool.

      TDH is very upset that Hicks doesn't answer his phone (on calls from unknown numbers) promptly on every call. TDH then pretends that Ambassador Stevens couldn't call anyone else in world except Hicks to tell them about the "demonstration," but sane people don't believe that. Did anyone else in Washington get a call from Stevens about the "demonstration?"

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    3. Talking as if Rice should have departed from the talking points approved by the CIA and the State Department and agree with the President of Libya is acting like a fool. So is implying that Stevens would have been expected to say the attack was preceded by a demonstration at the very moment the facility is under attack. Having your "jaw drop" at standard bureaucratic talk with multiple disclaimers is acting like a fool for someone who has been in government for one year, much less 21. Not answering two phone calls from the ambassador -- the chief officer of the mission in the country -- sounds like acting like a fool, but we can be generous and reserve judgment pending a better explanation on that one. (Would you ignore two calls on a weekend from the President of your company's division operating in a difficult and crisis-prone environment because you wanted to watch a TV show?)

      Yes, he says why Hicks behaved like a fool. If you think he didn't then you're lying to yourself if not to everyone else.

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    4. What's the logic here? All people who depart from talking points are fools? No, that's not it....All people who think other people should depart from inaccurate CIA/State Dept talking points are fools...yeah, that's it.

      Implying that the Ambassador to Libya would have called somebody about a demonstration in front of the poorly secured consulate/CIA post where he is stranded also makes one a fool. Hmmm.

      Do you actually write this stuff while sober?

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  4. Weird how this Hicks get all upset by a colleague getting killed and then their bosses covering their own behinds, huh? I mean what did he expect?

    Great post. Brings zero new facts....ohoh, no wait, you got in that great zinger about Hicks watching TV on his day off. Yeah, that was sweet.

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    1. Excuse me, Bozo, but the greater, and more relevant, point is the failure to answer the phone. You provide a good example of cherry-picking.

      Horace Feathers

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    2. I think the deal should be that you don't call commenters "Bozo" and they don't call you "sprezzatura."

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  5. "Rather clearly, Gowdy was saying that Rice should have taken her brief that day from the Libyan president, not from U.S. intelligence! She should have said what the Libyan president said, not what the CIA had said about the events in question."

    Well, actually, Rice should have taken her brief from someone who had it right. President of Libya, State Dept officials in Libya...pretty much anyone except the CIA. Why does TDH think that the CIA should be in charge of informing the public about international affairs?

    As a rhetorical device, the jingoistic appeal to disregard statements from non-American sources is pretty lame. Especially after the American sources are proved unreliable.

    At the top of the post it is claimed that:

    "Last Wednesday, Hick [sic] testified to a House committee about the attack in Benghazi. At one point, he savaged Rice."

    When did he "savage" her? When he answered "yes, sir" or when he answered "no, sir?"

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    1. This is as stupid as it gets. She didn't disregard the statements from any non-American sources. The statement was one agreed upon by the CIA with the State Department. She is supposed to disagree with them -- "taken her brief from someone who had it right" -- on the basis of what?

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    2. The point was that TDH ridicules the idea of Rice taking her brief from the President of Libya (on TV right before her) even when it turns out that would've been more accurate.

      You don't think any can disagree with gov't agencies? Even when the agencies don't agree with each other?

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    3. Yes, it's as stupid as it gets.

      And it will continue, of course. And, unimaginably, it will somehow get stupider.

      "Especially after the American sources are proved unreliable."

      HILARIOUS STUPIDITY!

      "after!!!"

      So, when we were "before" that "after," Rice should have said what a Libyan said, and not what official US intelligence said, because later US intelligence would turn out to be wrong!

      Rice should have contradicted the official US intelligence "before," by guessing that it would be incorrect, "after"!

      Time-traveling trolls for the win!!!!!

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    4. "
      So, when we were "before" that "after," Rice should have said what a Libyan said, and not what official US intelligence said, because later US intelligence would turn out to be wrong! "

      You seem confused. Do you know the difference between right and wrong? Here's a hint: you want to pick the right answer, not the wrong one. Even if the wrong one is pretty and shiny.

      Delete
    5. If you have to travel through time to know it's right, then you're the one who's confused.

      Or maybe you should give us all the keys to your time machine.

      Delete
  6. Once again, Somerby provides better analysis than anyone else. He lays out the full quotes and then picks apart the failures of fact and logic in a way that no one else seems willing and/or capable of. This is looking more and more like hunting of president Clinton - the vast right-wing conspiracy is reaching a fever pitch. Talk of impeachment has already begun.

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    1. emptywheel.net is better if you're interested in Benghazi and politics. TDH is better if you're interested in Rhee and schools.

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  7. urban legend, deadrat, gravymeister -- Aside from its outstanding writing, the New Yorker has a pretty liberal slant in its political articles. This New Yorker article answers your questions and responds to your comments.

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    1. Not so much...

      http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/05/heres-why-benghazi-may-finally-have-legs

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    2. DAinCA, Yeah, dontcha just love The New Yorker's outstanding writing? And how about that "pretty" liberal slant? Great stuff. Now, ordinarily you wouldn't credit a thing that outstanding, pretty magazine says, but now that you've found a criticism of the administration, you're apparently a subscriber for life.

      Here's what the article actually says: In the struggle between the CIA and the State Department to explain a disaster in which an ambassador was killed, drafts of public announcements ("talking points") changed. Apparently the sentence “[W]e do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida participated in the attack.” was replaced by “There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.”

      Did you actually read the article? 'Cause that's your whole scandal.

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    3. And once again, David lies by pretending Rice did not expressly say to Bob Schieffer that there could have been al Qaeda involvement in the attacks. That fact, along with her endlessly repeated disclaimers that everything she was saying was preliminary and therefore could be proved wring after investigation, completely demolishes the Sunday talk show critique.

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    4. And given the inconvenient fact that Obama called Benghazi an "act of terror," Issa is stuck with the argument, his only argument, that an "act of terror" is different from a "terrorist attack." Which hair he skillfully split today.

      No wonder that a PPP poll shows that 49% of those surveyed trust Clinton on the matter while only 37% trust Congressional Republicans.

      Go figure.

      Delete
  8. Hicks was being as dishonestly honest as he felt he could pass on. Hick's anti-Obama passion was barely beneath the surface or subtle. Hick's behavior was that of a typical BSer in the military. He appeared to be having a real kick playing the role of an insider on the attack in Benghazi.

    The four Americans who were killed were,.. guess what... they were in a war zone. People are killed in war zones. Former secretary Bill Gates said that the media coverage was "cartoonish",due to its unrealistic expectation of the military's impossible ability to respond to a situation on such short notice with no troops on the ground.

    For being the party that did not prevent 9-11, one might suspect that republicans would be more circumspect, but instead they choose to embarrass us all with a waste of time and taxes trying to scare up a scandal where there was none. Yes, there was human imperfection at play, but that is not a scandal, it's a reality.

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    1. I always know who the ass in a discussion about the dead when they reduce them to "four Americans." Because if you honestly cared about the topic, cared about the attack, you'd know their names. Bob Somerby doesn't care and never bothers to mention them. We're lucky if he throws out Ambassador Chris Stevens. Along with Stevens, the dead are Glen Doherty, Sean Smith and Tyrone Woods. But I guess naming the dead, putting faces on them, might harm the parlor games played here of Democrat versus Republican.
      This is really is disgusting, all of this, and it goes to just how immature and dumb our society is. Bob Somerby needs to find another topic if he can't right about the dead without some level of grace.

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    2. There are some who only care about American deaths, and see non-Americans as not worth counting. These are the true donkeys in the room.

      Do you know the names of the 70,000 people who were killed instantly in Hiroshima?

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    3. What an idiot to ask, 'Do you know the names of the 70,000 people who were killed instantly in Hiroshima?'
      Who in the world knows 70,000 people from an event that most likely happened before they were born (it was before I was born) and names that most likely would be a struggle for English-only speakers to pronounce or spell. This is garbage and this site is becoming garbage. The Anonymous who wrote that the four names (Stevens, Smith, Doherty and Woods) need to be stated is correct. That's what we're talking about, no Hiroshima.
      I'm getting real tired of the idiots who lie and lose their ethics because they're trying to defend "their side." And Bob Somerby's falling into that trap as well. He is a vast disappointment and obsessed with the trivial.

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  9. David in Ca's link to the New Yorker Hack's nonsense is significant in that there has been so little of this kind of Whitewater bullshit thus far going around. If you thought Obama's claims to transparency ment that the C.I.A. would now be run like Billy Jack's Freedom School you could be outraged, I guess..... Liberals used to speculate that right wing trolls were on think tank payrolls and hopped on sites to cause mischief. In David in Ca's case the notion is comforting, can you imagine this guy who obviously lives in some sort of Newsmax chat room sputtering out this hocum without compensation?

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    1. David in CA on this one, PattyMo and shooter242 on Kevin Drum, etc. My guess is they are all paid Young Republicans sporting bow-ties in some GOP basement.

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  10. Why conclude that Hicks' approach to Rice is "political", rather than being indicative of the priorities and concerns that are the job descriptions of career diplomats and other State Dept denizens?

    It's rational that Hicks would criticize Ambassador Rice and their fellow superiors upon THAT basis.

    We certainly know that it was well within the ability of the State Dept, tp push back against what they believed to be a false or dodgy official assessment from ithe CIA. Why wouldn't a professional diplomat hold another professional diplomat accountable for going out and mouthing a narrative that in Hicks (not inexperienced) opinion undermined the very work they were trying to accomplish in Libya.

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    1. Don't hold your breath waiting for a meaningful reply.

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    2. Here's all the meaning you need, Republican tool. I don't care if Hick's reply IS political, or even if he has an axe to grind. I mind that it is laughable nonsense, so tranparently and cynically trumped up to get the guy a deal with Regency Books and Fox News that he might as well be taking a dump on the graves of the five people he's pretending to care about. And may that ring in your ears every time you see him pick up an easy grand for being on Hannidy.

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