Following the attack in Benghazi, senior State Department officials close to Hillary Clinton...
* UNDER HILLARY CLINTON! UNDER HER! SHE WAS THE SECRETARY
OF STATE! SHE WAS THE BOSS!
...ordered the removal of a mid-level official who had no
role in security decisions and has never been told the charges against him.
* ...AND HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD THE CHARGES AGAINST HIM.
* AMERIKA... 2013... THE AGE OF OBAMA...
He is now accusing Clinton’s team of scapegoating him for
the failures that led to the death of four Americans last year.
* CLINTON'S "TEAM" WAS CLINTON! NOW IT'S
KERRY'S TEAM! AND UNDER BOTH CLINTON AND KERRY... ULTIMATELY WE'RE TALKING
OBAMA'S TEAM.
Raymond Maxwell was placed on forced “administrative
leave” after the State Department’s own internal investigation, [which was] conducted
by an Administrative Review Board (ARB) led by former State Department official
Tom Pickering.
* PICKERING AGAIN...
Five months after he was told to clean out his desk and
leave the building, Maxwell remains in professional and legal limbo...for
reasons that remain unclear.
* AMERIKA...
Maxwell, who served as deputy assistant secretary of
state for Near Eastern Affairs from August 2011 until his removal last December
- following tours in Iraq and Syria - spoke publicly for the first time in an
exclusive interview with The Daily Beast. “The overall goal is to restore my
honor,” said Maxwell, who has now filed grievances regarding his treatment with
the State Department’s human resources bureau and the American Foreign Service
Association - which represents the interests of foreign-service officers.
The other three officials placed on leave were in the
diplomatic security bureau, leaving Maxwell as the only official in the bureau
of Near Eastern Affairs (which had responsibility for Libya) to lose his job.
“I had no involvement to any degree with decisions on
security and the funding of security at our diplomatic mission in Benghazi,” Maxwell
says.
Maxwell was removed from his job on Dec. 18, the day
after the ARB report was released, and subsequently placed on administrative
leave - which is meant to give the State Department time to investigate whether
Maxwell should be fired or return to work.
Five months later, that investigation seems stalled and
Maxwell sits at home where he continues to be paid but is not allowed to return
to his job.
* AMERIKA...
The State Department declined to comment on the reasons
that Maxwell and the other officials were placed on administrative leave, or on
what the four were told about the reasons for the decision. It did confirm that
the ARB did not recommend direct disciplinary action because it didn’t find
misconduct or a direct breach of duty by the officials.
* SO... WHY ARE THESE PEOPLE BEING PUNISHED?
“As a matter of policy, we don’t speak to specific
personnel matters,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
* HAS ANYONE AT STATE ASKED THE INDIVIDUALS IN LIMBO
WHETHER THEY'D SIGN A WAIVER ALLOWING THE REPORT FINDINGS CONCERNING THEIR
PERSONAL ACTIONS TO BE MADE PUBLIC? I WOULD ASSUME THAT IF THEY HAVE NOTHING TO
HIDE, WELL, THEN STATE SHOULD LAY THEIR CARDS ON THE TABLE.
Since the leave is not considered a formal disciplinary
action, Maxwell has no means to appeal the status as he would if he had been
outright fired.
* AMERIKA...
To this day, Maxwell says, nobody from the State
Department has ever told him why he was singled out for discipline.
* AMERIKA...
Maxwell has never had access to the classified portion of
the ARB report - where all of the details regarding [alleged] personnel
failures leading up to Benghazi are confined. He also says he has never been
shown any evidence or witness testimony linking him to the Benghazi incident.
* I'D LIKE TO SEE WHAT STATE HAS... WOULDN'T THE REST OF
YOU? (AND CERTAINLY MAXWELL DESERVES TO KNOW WHAT HE'S ALLEGEDLY DONE TO
DESERVE THIS TREATMENT.)
Maxwell says he had planned to retire last September, but
extended his time voluntarily after the Sept. 11 attack to help the bureau in
its time of need. Now, he is refusing to retire until his situation is
clarified. He is seeking a restoration of his previous position, a public
statement of apology from State, reimbursement for his legal fees, and an
extension of his time in service to equal the time he has spent at home on
administrative leave.
“For any FSO, being at work is the essence of everything,
and being deprived of that and being cast out was devastating,” he said.
Soon after being removed from his job, Maxwell was
visited at his home late one evening and directed to sign a letter
acknowledging his administrative leave and forfeiting his right to enter the
State Department. He refused to sign, responding in writing that it amounted to
an admission he had done something wrong.
“They just wanted me to go away but I wouldn’t just go
away,” he said. “I knew Chris [Stevens]. Chris was a friend of mine.”
The decision to place Maxwell on administrative leave was
made by Clinton’s chief of staff Cheryl Mills, according to three State
Department officials with direct knowledge of the events.
* DOES MILLS ACKNOWLEDGE THIS? IF NOT, THERE MUST BE
OFFICIAL RECORDS...
On the day after the unclassified version of the ARB’s
report was released in December, Mills called Acting Assistant Secretary of
State for Near Eastern Affairs Beth Jones and directed her to have Maxwell
leave his job immediately. "Cheryl Mills directed me to remove you
immediately from the deputy assistant secretary position," Jones told
Maxwell, according to Maxwell.
* AGAIN... THIS SHOULD BE EASY ENOUGH TO CORROBORATE! BUT
THE QUESTION IS... DID HILLARY MAKE THE CALL? WOULD A CHIEF OF STAFF HAVE THE
AUTHORITY TO MAKE SUCH A CALL ON HER OWN? WITHOUT EVEN RUNNING IT BY SOMEONE IN
THE OFFICIAL GOVERNMENTAL (AS OPPOSED TO POLITICAL) CHAIN OF COMMAND? I WOULD
TEND TO DOUBT IT. I WOULD ASSUME THAT ONLY MRS. CLINTON OR ONE OF HER
UNDER-SECRETARIES OF STATE WOULD HAVE SUCH AUTHORITY. ("LINE" vs.
"STAFF.")
The decision to remove Maxwell and not Jones seems to
conflict with the finding of the ARB that responsibility for the security
failures leading up to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in
Benghazi should fall on more senior officials.
* "...SEEMS TO CONFLICT..." NOW IMAGINE THAT!
“We fixed the responsibility at the assistant secretary
level, which is in our view the appropriate place to look, where the
decision-making in fact takes place, where, if you like, the rubber hits the
road," Pickering said when releasing the ARB report.
* PICKERING IS OBVIOUSLY PART OF THE COVER-UP. THIS WAS
AN ATTACK ON A U.S. CONSULATE... ON A U.S. AMBASSADOR AND HIS PEOPLE; THE
PRESIDENT SHOULD HAVE BEEN RUNNING THE CRISIS RESPONSE TEAM PERSONALLY AND IF
DELEGATING SHOULD HAVE DELEGATED TO EITHER THEN-SECRETARY OF STATE CLINTON OR
THEN-SECRETARY OF DEFENSE PANETTA OR PERHAPS VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN. NO, FOLKS...
I TOTALLY REJECT PICKERING'S ASSERTION.
The report found “systemic failures and leadership and
management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State
Department,” namely the Diplomatic Security (DS) and Near East bureaus.
* BOTH OF WHICH WERE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THEN-SECRETARY
OF STATE HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON!
Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns testified in
December that requests for more security in Libya, denied by the State
Department, did reach the assistant secretaries and “it may be that some of my
colleagues on the 7th floor saw them as well."
* DENIED BY "THE STATE DEPARTMENT?" NO! DENIED
BY A PERSON! WHO WAS THAT PERSON! MY MONEY IS ON HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON! AND IF
IT WASN'T CLINTON... THEN CLINTON IS STILL GUILTY OF GROSS MISMANAGEMENT!
But Jones was not disciplined in any way following the
release of the report, nor was the principal deputy assistant secretary of
State at NEA, Liz Dibble, who is slated to receive a plush post as the deputy
chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in London this summer.
* HMM... COULD THERE BE SOME HISTORY BETWEEN MS. DIBBLE
AND HRC... YOU KNOW... LIKE THERE WAS AND IS BETWEEN HRC AND HUMA ABEDIN? (SEE THIS
PAST FRIDAY'S NEWSBITES FOR MORE ON HRC AND ABEDIN!)
In the DS bureau, the assistant secretary, principal
deputy, and deputy assistant all lost their jobs. In the NEA bureau, only
Maxwell was asked to leave.
Jones and Dibble were responsible for security in Libya,
Maxwell and three State Department officials said. What’s more, when Maxwell
was promoted to his DAS position in August 2011, most responsibility for Libya
was carved out of his portfolio, which also included Algeria, Morocco, and
Tunisia. Although Maxwell did some work on Libya, all security related
decisions were handled by Dibble and Jones, according to the three officials.
* WHO ARE THESE THREE OFFICIALS? WE NEED TO KNOW.
One State Department official close to the issue told The
Daily Beast that Clinton’s people told the leadership of the NEA bureau that
Maxwell would be given another job at State when the Benghazi scandal blew
over. Maxwell said Jones assured him he would eventually be brought back to NEA
as a “senior advisor,” but that Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff, reneged.
* FOLKS... WE NEED TO PUT ALL THESE PEOPLE ON THE STAND
UNDER OATH!
“The deal that NEA made with Cheryl Mills and the 7th
floor was to keep Ray within NEA and just give him another portfolio. For
whatever reason, it didn’t go down like that and that was a complete shock to
Beth Jones because that was the deal that Beth made with Cheryl,” the official
said. “Behind Beth’s back, Maxwell ended up being put on administrative leave.”
* FOLKS... THESE ARE THE PEOPLE AT THE HIGHEST ECHELONS
OF GOVERNMENTAL POWER! FOLKS... THE CRIMINALS ARE RUNNING THE PRISON!
Jones and Mills both declined to comment for this
article, but a source close to Mills denied that any kind of deal was made or
reneged on regarding Maxwell’s future employment. The decision to place Maxwell
on administrative leave was based on the classified portion of the ARB’s
report, which named Maxwell specifically the source said, but since the ARB
didn’t say that Maxwell had committed a “breach of duty,” he couldn’t be
outright fired.
* FOLKS. THIS STINKS TO HIGH HEAVEN. HOW CAN ANY OF US
HAVE ANY CONFIDENCE WHATSOEVER IN OUR OWN GOVERNMENT?!
“Administrative leave was the best option available
within the very narrow authority that anyone had. That was the harshest
discipline the department could mete out,” a State Department official involved
in the decision making process said. “There really weren’t any other options
available. If they could have been fired they would have been.”
* SIMPLY DE-CLASSIFY THE ENTIRE ARB REPORT!
One person who reviewed the classified portion of the ARB
report told The Daily Beast that it called out Maxwell for the specific
infraction of not reading his daily classified briefings, something that person
said Maxwell admitted to the ARB panel during his interview.
* WHY SHOULD ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THIS BE CLASSIFIED IF
INDEED MAXWELL HAS ACKNOWLEDGED IT? (AGAIN... THIS JUST DOESN'T SMELL RIGHT...)
“The crime that he is being punished for is not reading
his intel. That explains why Jones and Dibble were not disciplined,” this
person said.
Maxwell had no response to this allegation other than to
say he has not been officially counseled on what he did wrong and has not been
allowed to read the classified report. Also, he believes that Clinton’s staff,
not the ARB, was in charge of the review of the attack that took place during
her watch.
* OF COURSE THE CLINTON STAFF WAS IN CHARGE! AS
REPREHENSIBLE AS OBAMA'S BEHAVIOR WAS... AS PANETTA'S WAS... AS SENIOR MILITARY
AND INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY LEADERS' WAS... ULTIMATELY THE COVER-UP WAS AND IS
ABOUT TRYING TO RETAIN HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON'S VIABILITY AS A PRESIDENTIAL
CANDIDATE COME 2016!
* YES... THERE'S BLOOD ON OBAMA'S HANDS... BUT THE LEVEL
OF INCOMPETENCE SHOULD BY CLINTON DURING HER FAILED STEWARTSHIP OF THE STATE
DEPARTMENT IS WHAT HAS THE DEMOCRATS CIRCLING THE WAGONS!
“The flaws in the process were perpetrated by the
political leadership at State with the complicity of the senior career
leadership,” he said. “They should be called to account.” “There are people who
seem to have responsibility who have yet to be held accountable.”
* HILLARY SHOULD HAVE RESIGNED AFTER BENGHAZI. THAT... OR
BEEN FIRED BY OBAMA OR IMPEACHED AND REMOVED FROM OFFICE BY CONGRESS. NOTE: I
WROTE "SHOULD HAVE." WE NO LONGER LIVE IN AMERICA. WE NOW LIVE IN
AMERIKA. POWER IS ALL THERE IS.
Eight months after the attack, Congressional
investigators and outside groups are still pressing the State Department to
explain how the ARB came to the conclusion that four mid-level officials were
the only ones with responsibility for the failures that led up to the attack.
The Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep.
Darryl Issa (R-CA), has announced that he will subpoena Pickering in order to
compel him to submit to a deposition. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), the chairman
of the subcommittee on national security, told The Daily Beast in an interview
that he wants to know exactly why Maxwell and the three other officials were
placed on administrative leave and have not been granted due process to defend
themselves.
“I certainly would like to hear their side of the story.
It seems fair that they should be given that opportunity. If they can’t get it
within the administration, I think Congress would love to hear their story,” he
said. “Secretary Clinton says she takes responsibility, but that seems like lip
service rather than the reality because there are people who seem to have
responsibility who have yet to be held accountable and I don’t understand
that.”
Chaffetz and Issa sent a letter in January to State
asking why Clinton, Deputy Secretary Tom Nides, and Deputy Secretary Bill Burns
were not interviewed by the ARB.
* I BELIEVE WE ALL KNOW THE ANSWER TO THAT ONE!
Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy
admitted in Oct. 10 congressional testimony that he was in the loop on
decisions regarding security requests in Libya before the attack. He was
interviewed by the ARB but not identified as having done anything wrong.
* IS... ANYONE... SURPRISED...?
“The ARB tried to blame everyone but hold no one
responsible, except for some of the lower level people who were not in control
of the situation,” said Chaffetz. “You have a report that seems incomplete at
best.”
Susan Johnson, the president of the American Foreign
Service Association told The Daily Beast that administrative leave does damage
to a foreign service officer’s reputation and career if it goes on for more
than a couple of weeks, much less several months. The treatment amounts to a de
facto disciplinary action, she said. “There’s a feeling that foreign service
officers often end up as scapegoats when scandals rise to congressional or
public attention,” she said. “Our broader concern is to ensure some measure of
fairness and transparency, ensure some reasonable process that meets some kind
of minimal standard here.”
* LISTEN... I HAVE NO DOUBT WHATSOEVER THAT THE CAREER
STATE DEPARTMENT BUREAUCRACY IS RIFE WITH INCOMPETENCE AND WORSE... BUT,
AGAIN... PANETTA, CLINTON, AND OBAMA - AND THE REST OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY
COUNSEL AND TOP LINE AND STAFF MILITARY COMMANDERS SHOULD HAVE ALL BEEN IN THE
LOOP AND "RUNNING" THE CRISIS IN REAL TIME AS IT UNFOLDED. TO THIS
DAY WE DON'T KNOW WHERE OBAMA OR HILLARY WERE OR WHAT WAS SUPPOSEDLY MORE
IMPORTANT THAN RUNNING THE BENGHAZI CRISIS.
Maxwell just wants his day in court. He wrote a poem on
his personal blog in April which referred to the State Department’s treatment
of the four officials removed from their jobs after Benghazi as a “lynching.”
Last week, he posted another poem about the growing
Benghazi scandal.
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