State vs. CNN: Who is the Biggest Loser? And CIA Makes a Bid for the Title

Well, well, well. It just doesn't get better than this: a lovers' quarrel between the Obama State Department and one of the jewels in the Obama media crown, CNN! Akin to the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, it's tough for an outside observer to pick a favorite--better to let the battle continue.

Seems the intrepid lads and lassies at CNN, true to their vulture DNA, went picking among the ruins and carrion of the burned US Consulate in Benghazi and lifted a notebook belonging to the murdered US Ambassador. But wait! How did they get in! Didn't State's Victoria Nuland tell us that the administration would say no more about the 9//11 mayhem and murders in Benghazi because the charred Consulate was now a "crime scene"? The Keystone Cops FBI had it all well in hand; well, they hadn't arrived yet because it was too "dangerous," but they were thinking about it. That counts, right? Maybe they will bring Robert Hanssen out of retirement to help, or maybe the ATF, if it can pull itself away from selling guns to Mexican drug cartels? But, never mind. That Nuland-declared "vow of silence," after all, only lasted about 36 hours--then the hack Susan Rice launched a TV blitz telling us all we need to know, i.e., the whole thing resulted from some "folks" getting a little rambunctious, nothing to see here, move along.

Apparently the CNN crew managed to get under that police tape, past the vigilant CSI guys and gals, and violate--somehow--the tight crime scene chain of evidence regime, steal a dead man's notebook, hide that fact from the family, and then use it in their reporting. So what was in the late Ambassador Stevens' "diary" of note? He had serious concerns not only about security at Consulate Benghazi but also about his own personal safety, including the possibility that Al Qaeda had him on a hit list. The unscrupulous CNNers have created a dilemma for State. I am not surprised to see State furious and lashing out at CNN. The Obama narrative on Benghazi has completely disintegrated. If Stevens saw a threat to him and to Benghazi, the questions that flow are obvious: Why did he visit Benghazi on 9/11? Why have the consulate open on 9/11? Why have a consulate in Benghazi if it could not be adequately protected? What had Stevens said to his masters in Washington about all this?

It gets even more absurd. Soon after the attack, I saw press snippets and heard from a friend still active in the intel business that the attack was a major intel disaster for the US. According to these sources, the Consulate was a centerpiece in our collection efforts against Islamist radicals in eastern Libya. I had a hard time believing that a "lock-and-leave" facility would have sensitive materials and play a key role in combatting terrorist activity. It seems, however, that it did, and that the attack was a major blow to the CIA presence and operations in Libya. This might help explain the ferocity of the attack on the installation by the Islamist "folks," to wit, in one spectacular blow kill the Ambassador and knock-out a CIA listening post, and do it all on 9/11. If this proves true, then the stunning flood of stupidity and incompetence we have seen at Obama's State and Obama's NSC, also breaks like a tsunami over Obama's CIA and the rest of Obama's intel community.

So what does our Commander-in-Chief have to say? Not to worry, it is all just a bump in the road.

That bump comes from dead Americans.