Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/130753
Sarasota News Leader May 17, 2013 OPINION Page 65 assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous — not a premeditated — response to what had transpired in Cairo," where a mob stormed the U.S. embassy, breached the walls and tore down the American flag. The cause of the Cairo violence actually was the YouTube video. One size fits all. mendations from President Obama, Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and other senior officials for his handling of the post-attack situation in Libya. The Obama Administration could not muzzle the Libyan president, but it could express its great displeasure in practical ways to U.S. officials unwilling to support the official fiction. can to prevent it from ever happening again." State Department officers who are not promoted after a certain number of review cycles are retired: up or out. Hicks, a 22-year veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service, has been reassigned as a Foreign Affairs officer: a desk Libyan President Muhammad Yusuf al-Magari- officer who will not serve abroad again. af wasted no time disassociating himself from Testifying before Congress in January 2013, Rice's bogus comments. The attack on the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that consulate, he said to CBS News, "was planned, whether the deadly attack was provoked by a definitely, it was planned by foreigners, by film or by hardened terrorists was completely people who entered the country a few months irrelevant. "What difference, at this point, does ago, and they were planning this criminal act it make?" she said, adding, "It is our job to figsince their arrival." ure out what happened and do everything we In May 2013, whistleblower Gregory Hicks, a fluent Arabic speaker who served as the deputy chief of mission under Ambassador Stevens — and the number two U.S. diplomat in Libya on Sept. 11, 2012 — testified before the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that his public questioning of Rice's characterization of the attack as a spontaneous act by Libyans upset with the YouTube video had earned him an "effective demotion" after receiving a negative fitness report. Earlier he had received written com- Improving security at the facility would have been a good start. In October 2012, State Department security officials and military officers testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about the deaf ears in Washington on which their urgent pleas for additional security personnel ultimately had fallen. Eric Nordstrom, the State Department's RSO (Regional Security Officer) for Libya, described the worsening security situation in eastern Libya. He said that "the takeaway … for me and my staff was abundantly clear — we were not going to get resources until the aftermath of an incident." Nordstrom added,