Speaker 1: Pushkin previously on fiasco. A number of conservative media outlets
Speaker 1: were particularly genda.
Speaker 2: This is a political cover up of some kind of
Speaker 2: intelligence officials acknowledged they originally got it wrong.
Speaker 3: I know the Ghazi Annex chief personally, and he's a
Speaker 3: decent man.
Speaker 4: The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Benghazi kicks off at
Speaker 4: the top of the hour.
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton's painted apparently hit her head and had that concussion.
Speaker 5: I bet that we might never hear her testimony. She
Speaker 5: doesn't want to answer the question.
Speaker 1: When Alison Camarada was an anchor on Fox News, she
Speaker 1: talked about Benghazi a lot.
Speaker 5: For what's been called Benghazi Gate. There was a lack
Speaker 5: of security at the US consulate in Benghazi, but who
Speaker 5: is to blame for not beefing it up? Was the
Speaker 5: administration just clueless or was there a cover up?
Speaker 1: Joining us among other things, it was just a good,
Speaker 1: rich story with a seemingly endless stream of angles to explore.
Speaker 5: There were some mysteries embedded in Benghazi that needed to
Speaker 5: be answered, so that gave it legs for sure.
Speaker 6: There were four dead.
Speaker 5: Americans and that is obviously something that resonated with our viewers,
Speaker 5: and they wanted justice, and we could beat the drum
Speaker 5: of justice.
Speaker 1: At the time, Camarada was one of the co hosts
Speaker 1: of Fox and Friends Weekend. She ended up leaving the
Speaker 1: network in twenty fourteen, and she's been public with her
Speaker 1: criticisms of Fox News in the years since. But during
Speaker 1: the months after the Benghazi attack, Camarada spent her weekend
Speaker 1: mornings dutifully beating the drums of justice alongside her Fox colleagues.
Speaker 5: That Chris Stevens was saying, we're under attack, We're under attack,
Speaker 5: please help, And of course nothing was done to help them.
Speaker 5: Four Americans dead, and we need justice for this, so
Speaker 5: on wins.
Speaker 1: According to Camarata, Fox's relentless emphasis on ben Ghazi came
Speaker 1: directly from the network's founder and chief executive, Roger Ales.
Speaker 5: Sometimes at Fox, Roger got to be in his bonnet
Speaker 5: over certain stories, and we would do them time and
Speaker 5: again and again and again. Ben Gazzi's right at the
Speaker 5: top of that list. I don't know that it was
Speaker 5: some grand strategy from the get go, but I just
Speaker 5: think that he did naturally lean towards outrage.
Speaker 1: Ales didn't personally dictate Fox's coverage at all times, but
Speaker 1: he didn't need to because his producers knew what he wanted.
Speaker 6: By the time you became an executive producer at Fox,
Speaker 6: you could channel Roger. It wasn't hard Obama, bad Muslims,
Speaker 6: bad Hillary, bad Republicans, good Democrats, crazy like it wasn't
Speaker 6: rocket science.
Speaker 1: Before he created Fox News in nineteen ninety six, Ayles
Speaker 1: spent decades in conservative politics, serving as a campaign advisor
Speaker 1: to Richard Nixon, Mitch McConnell, and George H. W. Bush. Later,
Speaker 1: he was the executive producer of a short lived TV
Speaker 1: talk show starring Rush limbar Ardys and gentleman Best Rush
Speaker 1: bar From the beginning, Ayle's positioned Fox News as a
Speaker 1: counterbalance to what he called the communist broadcasting system CBS
Speaker 1: and the Clinton News Network CNN.
Speaker 7: Fox News channel fair and balanced, where news is going,
Speaker 7: where news should be.
Speaker 1: But in its early days, Fox's conservative opinion shows like
Speaker 1: The O'Reilly Factor were kept at arm's length from its
Speaker 1: news division.
Speaker 7: Few broadcasts take any chances these days, and most are
Speaker 7: very politically correct. Well, We're going to try to be different,
Speaker 7: stimulating and a bit daring.
Speaker 1: It was only gradually that Fox's identity as a platform
Speaker 1: for the right became more holistic By the time the
Speaker 1: Bengazi attack happened, the network was producing a mix of commentary, activism,
Speaker 1: and propaganda.
Speaker 8: Welcome into Fox and Friends.
Speaker 1: Fox and Friends Weekend, where Camarato worked, aired every Saturday
Speaker 1: and Sunday from six to ten am.
Speaker 6: Well, I always saw Fox and Friends' Weekend as quite
Speaker 6: of a morning zoo of political talk. I mean, I
Speaker 6: sometimes called it talk radio in a skirt. I mean,
Speaker 6: it was a variety show. It was mixing in the
Speaker 6: really incendiary political stuff, but not for too long. We
Speaker 6: would immediately in a toss, turn to and coming up
Speaker 6: breaking news. Subway sandwiches. Foot long subs are only eleven
Speaker 6: and a half inches long.
Speaker 5: Subway sandwiches foot long subs are only eleven and a
Speaker 5: half inches long.
Speaker 6: I know, everyone, I fill your outage.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be Camarata says that despite being an anchor,
Speaker 1: she didn't have much control over the actual content of
Speaker 1: Fox and Friends. Because it aired so early in the morning,
Speaker 1: a small team of producers would always work overnight to
Speaker 1: build the next day's show.
Speaker 6: By the time I got in, there was already a rundown.
Speaker 6: It was a built show. When I came in, I
Speaker 6: was busy. You know, I was going and I was
Speaker 6: getting into my outfit. I was getting into hair and makeup,
Speaker 6: and then I had like probably from five fifteen till
Speaker 6: I had to run to the set at five point
Speaker 6: fifty to get miked up to dive in and study.
Speaker 6: You know, that's not enough time. It just wasn't built
Speaker 6: to ever do real research. It was basically headlines, talking points,
Speaker 6: and you know, mixing it up.
Speaker 1: In January of twenty Thirteenillary Clinton was set to testify
Speaker 1: before Congress about Benghazi for the first time. As it happened,
Speaker 1: she was planning to leave the Obama administration about a
Speaker 1: week later, which meant that her Benghazi testimony would be
Speaker 1: one of her last public appearances as Secretary of State.
Speaker 5: While the White House preparing today for Secretary of State
Speaker 5: Hillary Clinton to testify tomorrow regarding the deadly September eleventh
Speaker 5: attack on our consulate in Libya, Secretary.
Speaker 1: Clinton was there was there a lot of anticipation for
Speaker 1: her appearance?
Speaker 6: Oh god, yes, I mean part of the Fox model
Speaker 6: is just constant build up. It's teasing.
Speaker 5: Republicans are expected to grill her about what she knew
Speaker 5: about the attack and when she knew it. Some have
Speaker 5: charged that the administration deliberately tried to hide that the
Speaker 5: ambush was the work of terrorists linked to al Qaeda.
Speaker 6: It's teasing what's going to happen tomorrow. It's teasing what's
Speaker 6: going to happen this week in front of committee. It's
Speaker 6: teasing Hillary Clinton's appearance. And that's not new what.
Speaker 8: She knew when she knew it.
Speaker 1: Is this going to get answered today?
Speaker 2: She has had time to prepare, but she has an
Speaker 2: awful lot to answer for.
Speaker 3: She's one of the top candidates for president in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 3: so she can either help move on or she could
Speaker 3: have a Susan roy Sunday Show moment.
Speaker 9: And not.
Speaker 1: The committee will come to order. Clinton appeared in front
Speaker 1: of both the Senate and the House back to back.
Speaker 1: She started her day shortly after nine am with a
Speaker 1: prepared statement in which she took responsibility for making changes
Speaker 1: of the State Department to prevent another tragedy.
Speaker 6: As I have.
Speaker 10: Said many times, I take responsibility, and nobody is more
Speaker 10: committed to getting this right.
Speaker 1: For the most part, Clinton's questioners were fairly cordial.
Speaker 8: Thank you, Adam, Secretary, and wonderful to see you in
Speaker 8: good health, and as combative as ever.
Speaker 1: There were two points that kept coming up over and
Speaker 1: over again, and they generated the most intense moments of
Speaker 1: the day. The first had to do with a case
Speaker 1: cable sent to the State Department with Ambassador Stevens's approval
Speaker 1: about a month before the attack. The cable had warned
Speaker 1: about an increase in violent incidents in Benghazi and the
Speaker 1: rise of anti American militias. Republicans wanted to know why
Speaker 1: Clinton hadn't personally reviewed the cable and weighed in that
Speaker 1: had I been president at the time and I found
Speaker 1: that you did not read the cables from Benghazi, you
Speaker 1: did not read the cables from bessaror Stevens, I would
Speaker 1: have relieved you of your post.
Speaker 6: I think it's inexcusable.
Speaker 3: The thing is.
Speaker 1: The second point of focus was on the Obama administration's
Speaker 1: original explanation of the Bengazi attack as a protest gone wrong.
Speaker 1: A Republican senator from Wisconsin wanted to know why Clinton
Speaker 1: hadn't immediately called the survivors of the attack to find
Speaker 1: out whether or not there really had been a protest
Speaker 1: that night.
Speaker 10: We were misled that there was supposedly protests, and then something
Speaker 10: sprang out of that, and assault sprang out of that.
Speaker 1: Clinton, who up to this point had appeared even keeled
Speaker 1: and in decent spirits, suddenly changed her tones, and they didn't.
Speaker 10: With all due respect, the fact is we had four
Speaker 10: dead Americans.
Speaker 6: Was it because of a protest?
Speaker 10: Or was it because of guys out for a walk
Speaker 10: when night, or decide they'd go kill some Americans?
Speaker 6: What difference at this point does it make?
Speaker 10: It is our job to figure out what happened and
Speaker 10: do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again.
Speaker 1: Senator Now, honestly, this became the SoundBite of the day.
Speaker 1: On the big broadcast networks, Clinton's testimony was described as
Speaker 1: fiery and riveting.
Speaker 7: Today, this woman who has traveled the world as America's
Speaker 7: top diplomat, came to the Hill ready for a fight,
Speaker 7: and her.
Speaker 11: Long awaited appearance before Congress was remarkable.
Speaker 1: Harrying Hasso questions all day.
Speaker 12: Clinton was also the political pro massaging big egos, sidestepping
Speaker 12: attacks when she could when she couldn't, giving as good.
Speaker 3: As she got.
Speaker 1: But on Fox News, the clip of Clinton saying what
Speaker 1: difference does it make? Was played as callous indifference toward
Speaker 1: those who lost their lives in Bengazi.
Speaker 7: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's monumental gaff that may haunt
Speaker 7: her for the rest of her political career.
Speaker 1: Allison Camarada covered Quinton's testimony as a fill in host
Speaker 1: on the regular weekday edition of Fox and.
Speaker 6: Friends mad As Hill.
Speaker 5: Secretary Clinton fires back at Congress in a battle over
Speaker 5: ben Ghazi.
Speaker 10: What difference at this point does itn't make?
Speaker 5: Well, this morning, we may have an answer for what
Speaker 5: difference it makes, and it may include three more dead Americans.
Speaker 5: You're going to want to hear this, all right.
Speaker 6: Fox really was good at sloganeering and catchphrases and coming
Speaker 6: up with a little outrage nugget to send viewers on
Speaker 6: their way, So that one just came, you know, ready made.
Speaker 6: They just zeroed in for days and days and weeks
Speaker 6: and weeks on what difference does it make? As though
Speaker 6: she was being callous, as though she was being cavalier. Basically,
Speaker 6: they were trying to make it sound synonymous with who cares?
Speaker 10: What difference at this point does itn't make?
Speaker 13: It makes a lot of difference.
Speaker 1: You may notice Camarata uses the word they when talking
Speaker 1: about Fox News. Part of the reason it might just
Speaker 1: be that she doesn't work there anymore. But even at
Speaker 1: the time, Camarada says she felt separate from the network
Speaker 1: and not fully bought in, which I admit reminds me
Speaker 1: of coming home in high school and telling my mom
Speaker 1: it was my friends who had been smoking, not me.
Speaker 1: But Camarada told me that she was never comfortable with
Speaker 1: how her producers and co hosts talked about Bengazi, and
Speaker 1: in particular, how they presented the Clinton sound bite. Over
Speaker 1: the coming weeks. Camarada bristled at Fox's framing of what
Speaker 1: she thought was an uncontroversial comment if she listened to
Speaker 1: the whole thing, But Fox's producers often cut out right
Speaker 1: after what difference at this point does it make?
Speaker 6: So they would end it right there instead of it
Speaker 6: is our job to figure out what happened and do
Speaker 6: everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again,
Speaker 6: that's her next sentence, and they wouldn't always play that part.
Speaker 1: Camarata decided to push back on air.
Speaker 5: Her point is that what is the label? What difference
Speaker 5: does the label make? And her point, which then she
Speaker 5: didn't answer, is where's the justice? Why hasn't it even
Speaker 5: been prosecuted? We are our American was killed. They were
Speaker 5: terrorists and had we gone.
Speaker 1: It was a quiet rebellion and pretty easy to miss
Speaker 1: if you weren't looking for it. But Camarada told me
Speaker 1: that every time she departed from the party line in
Speaker 1: this way, she felt like she was risking her job.
Speaker 5: There was no winning that conversation with Roger. He had
Speaker 5: his opinion, and you were supposed to sort of reflect
Speaker 5: his opinion.
Speaker 1: Looking back, Camarata describes Fox's Bengazi coverage as a kind
Speaker 1: of feedback loop.
Speaker 5: There is a certain kind of self fulfilling prophecy when
Speaker 5: it comes to outrage. We did train the audience to
Speaker 5: become outraged.
Speaker 6: Often the scripts.
Speaker 5: Would say you'll be outraged right after a commercial. We
Speaker 5: told people stick around for the outrage.
Speaker 6: We told them they would be outraged.
Speaker 5: We told them afterwards, were sure they are outraged, and
Speaker 5: lo and behold, they came outraged.
Speaker 1: The right wing outrage machine was not invented by Fox News.
Speaker 1: It had been around in various forms for decades, and
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton had long been one of its favorite targets. Now,
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack, the machine was
Speaker 1: about to kick into high gear. I'm Leon Nafok from
Speaker 1: Prolog Projects and Pushkin Industries. This is fiasco Bengazi.
Speaker 4: He said, the government is lying to you. What they're
Speaker 4: saying happened did not happen.
Speaker 5: Is the Obama administrations threatened Benghazi whistleblowers.
Speaker 13: I was literally afraid from my life.
Speaker 3: What do you mean, stand down?
Speaker 12: They're invading the place. Yeah. I think there's a direct
Speaker 12: line from what happened in the nineteen nineties to twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Episode five Greatest Hits, in which Benghazi transforms from an
Speaker 1: Obama scandal into the ultimate Clinton scandal, as decades of
Speaker 1: built up Clinton lore provide all parties with a roadmap,
Speaker 1: a backstory, and a cudgel. We'll be right back. When
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton testified before Congress in January of twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: it was not her first time having to publicly address
Speaker 1: a scandal. She had been fighting off various allegations ever
Speaker 1: since her husband Bill first ran for president in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two, long before Fox News even existed. The din
Speaker 1: of controversy was a fact of life for the Clintons
Speaker 1: and a source of endless frustration.
Speaker 12: Clinton was elected, and there were people in the right
Speaker 12: wing who didn't accept that election as legitimate.
Speaker 1: This is David Brock. During the early days of Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton's presidency. He was a young journalist working at a
Speaker 1: conservative magazine called The American Spectator.
Speaker 12: And you know, in circles that I was in, they
Speaker 12: were talking about impeaching him literally before he was even
Speaker 12: sworn into office. So there was a machinery in place
Speaker 12: to try to make that happen.
Speaker 1: As Brock tells it, the writing he did for The
Speaker 1: American Spectator was part of an effort known internally as
Speaker 1: the Arkansas Project. It was funded by a conservative billionaire
Speaker 1: named Richard Mellen'scaife, and its purpose was to dig up
Speaker 1: dirt on the Clintons from before they moved into the
Speaker 1: White House.
Speaker 12: Anything was fair game. They were looking for anything they
Speaker 12: could find that could help, at first to cause problems
Speaker 12: for Clinton, and then it became more explicit mission to
Speaker 12: get him out office.
Speaker 1: Brock told me that at the time he genuinely thought
Speaker 1: he was doing journalism, but he realized pretty quickly that
Speaker 1: his patrons saw him more as a political operative, and
Speaker 1: he embraced it. The outgoing message on Brock's answering machine
Speaker 1: during Clinton's first term was I'm out trying to bring
Speaker 1: down the president.
Speaker 12: That was the intention of the Arkansas project. It used
Speaker 12: tactics of journalism, but it was more like political opposition
Speaker 12: research without any scruples at all. It had no fealty
Speaker 12: to facts or truth. If it was a myth that
Speaker 12: could stick, that was fine. It was just to create
Speaker 12: an atmosphere in which it was difficult for Clinton to
Speaker 12: govern and to throw sand in the gears of any
Speaker 12: progress that would be made under Clinton.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety three, Brock got a tip from a
Speaker 1: major Republican donor. Apparently there were some Arkansas State troopers
Speaker 1: who had served on Bill Clinton's security detail while he
Speaker 1: was governor, and they had some salacious stories to tell
Speaker 1: about what they'd seen.
Speaker 12: I went down to Arkansas. I spent hours and hours
Speaker 12: debriefing the troopers. They were seemingly first hand witnesses to
Speaker 12: these events.
Speaker 1: The troopers told Brock that they had helped then Governor
Speaker 1: Clinton coordinate and cover up his extramarital.
Speaker 12: Affairs, basically being part of a political movement that wanted
Speaker 12: to do damage to the Clintons. You know, I took
Speaker 12: them at their word. I did not do a lot
Speaker 12: of like checking beyond what they said.
Speaker 1: As Brock explained it to me, the main goal of
Speaker 1: the story was to conjure the width of scandal so
Speaker 1: that journalists in the mainstream media could pick up the scent.
Speaker 1: The Spectator had a relatively modest circulation and they were
Speaker 1: known to have an anti Clinton slant. But if they
Speaker 1: could get coverage of the State Trooper story into a
Speaker 1: more mainstream outlet, it would remove the air of bias
Speaker 1: from the allegations and amplify the scandal to a massive audience.
Speaker 1: Brock came to think of this process as scandal laundering.
Speaker 12: One of the goals that the Spectator was to try
Speaker 12: to hook more established media onto some of our narratives.
Speaker 12: You'd plant a seed and then it kind of grows
Speaker 12: on all sorts of places, and by the time you're done,
Speaker 12: it's on the evening news.
Speaker 4: This is CNN.
Speaker 1: When Brock was ready to go to press with his story,
Speaker 1: but the State Troopers, the American Spectator made a point
Speaker 1: of giving CNN a sneak peek.
Speaker 12: They went for it. They interviewed the troopers themselves the
Speaker 12: day the piece was published, and the troopers were on
Speaker 12: six o'clock evening news on CNN on a particular day
Speaker 12: the story broke, Hilary Sawer.
Speaker 7: She told me, she said, I know who she is,
Speaker 7: I know what she is here for get the whole
Speaker 7: out of here.
Speaker 12: So it very quickly got into the bloodstream of the
Speaker 12: mainstream media, which is what our goal was.
Speaker 1: The troopers say they helped Clinton pick up women up
Speaker 1: to the day he left for Washington to become president.
Speaker 1: The story became known as Troopergate. The scandal had been
Speaker 1: duly laundered.
Speaker 2: One senior administration official complained that every time they have
Speaker 2: to deny a new round of these kinds of allegations,
Speaker 2: it gets harder.
Speaker 1: Over the next few years, the American Spectator printed one
Speaker 1: story after another suggesting that the Clintons were nothing less
Speaker 1: than criminal masterminds.
Speaker 12: There were stories about Clinton being involved in drug grinning
Speaker 12: out of an airport in Arkansas. There was some speculation
Speaker 12: that the Clintons somehow were implicated in Vincent Foster's death,
Speaker 12: which was a suicide, but was said to be something else.
Speaker 1: What Brock is referring to here is the so called
Speaker 1: Clinton body count, a darkly absurd rumor alleging that the
Speaker 1: Clintons have had multiple close associates murdered the best known
Speaker 1: data point in this fantasy was always Vince Foster, a
Speaker 1: longtime friend and colleague of the Clintons who worked in
Speaker 1: the White House before taking his own life in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three. After Foster's death, the allegation that the Clintons
Speaker 1: had something to do with it gained so much traction
Speaker 1: that it was discussed in congressional hearings. One of the
Speaker 1: theories that sprouted from Foster's death was that he and
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton have been having an affair, but there were
Speaker 1: many other theories too, and between nineteen ninety three and
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, at least five official investigations looked into them.
Speaker 1: Each one came to the same conclusion, including one led
Speaker 1: by independent counsel Ken Starr.
Speaker 7: The Whitewater Special prosecutor. Kenneth Starr issued his final report
Speaker 7: today on the death of former White House Deputy Council
Speaker 7: Vince Foster and reaffirmed that Foster was depressed and committed suicide.
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton had famously bragged on the campaign trail that
Speaker 1: a vote for him was a vote for Hillary too.
Speaker 11: I always say that that my slogan might well be
Speaker 11: a buy one, get one free.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately for Hillary that seemed to mean that when it
Speaker 1: came to scandal, she and her husband would also be
Speaker 1: treated as a pair. During just the first two years
Speaker 1: of Clinton's presidency, Hillary was implicated in Troopergate, which you've
Speaker 1: heard about, Travelgate, in which Hillary was accused of funneling
Speaker 1: government business to a travel agent friend, and Whitewater, which
Speaker 1: concerned an Arkansas real estate deal for which she spent
Speaker 1: four hours in front of a federal grand jury.
Speaker 10: The White House today had little comment on the first
Speaker 10: lady's grand jury appear runs, other than to say she
Speaker 10: answered all questions and was not told she'd have to return.
Speaker 1: When reports first surfaced about her husband's affair with a
Speaker 1: former White House intern, Hillary Clinton blamed a vast right
Speaker 1: wing conspiracy.
Speaker 14: I mean, look at the very people who were involved
Speaker 14: in this. They have popped up in other settings. The
Speaker 14: great story here for anybody willing to find it and
Speaker 14: write about it and explain it is this vast right
Speaker 14: wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since
Speaker 14: the day he announced for president.
Speaker 1: At the time, independent counsel Ken Starr dismissed the idea
Speaker 1: as nonsense, while the media portrayed Clinton as the woman
Speaker 1: who cried conspiracy won too many times.
Speaker 8: The first lady salvo appears to be a favorite Clinton tactic,
Speaker 8: fired off in almost every scandal, from Jennifer Flowers to
Speaker 8: Paula Jones to Whitewater.
Speaker 11: Instead of his Clinton raising her antenna and circling the
Speaker 11: country to find the source of our problems, she can
Speaker 11: look at her own family and she'll find them right there.
Speaker 1: The problem for the Clintons was that some of what
Speaker 1: they were accused of turned out to be true. No,
Speaker 1: they didn't have a kill list, but Bill Clinton did
Speaker 1: have extramarital affairs that he consistently lied about. Also, the
Speaker 1: Clinton's attempts to damage control in the face of scandal
Speaker 1: often caused them to make decisions that looked suspicious and secretive.
Speaker 12: I mean, both things ended up being true. There was
Speaker 12: an affair with Monkolinsky, and there was a best right
Speaker 12: wing conspiracy. So I think people said this is like
Speaker 12: a delusional type of defense, and that she had possibly
Speaker 12: deluded herself into thinking that the Lensky affair didn't happen.
Speaker 12: But what got lost there was that both things were true.
Speaker 12: Just because the allegations of the affair ended up being correct.
Speaker 12: The way that all that was dug up was part
Speaker 12: of the wrongful scheme.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen ninety four, Rockets started working on a
Speaker 1: biography of Hillary Clinton. His friends all assumed it would
Speaker 1: be a devastating takedown, but Brock found himself writing something
Speaker 1: much milder. The book was almost generous to Clinton. Rock
Speaker 1: called her intelligent, talented, ambitious, and very determined. After the
Speaker 1: book was published, Brock found himself getting uninvited from dinner
Speaker 1: parties and not getting booked by right wing radio hosts
Speaker 1: like g Gordon Lyddy and Oliver North. This cold reception
Speaker 1: wounded Brock and convinced him that his friends on the
Speaker 1: right were just as unscrupulous about the truth as his
Speaker 1: enemies on the left. Eventually, Brock came to regret his
Speaker 1: work for the Arkansas Project, and in a piece for
Speaker 1: Esquire magazine titled Confessions of a right Wing hit Man,
Speaker 1: he described himself as having been bought and paid for
Speaker 1: by the conservative movement. David Brock, the road warrior of
Speaker 1: the right, is dead, he declared.
Speaker 12: Part of what happened was I felt complicit in the lying,
Speaker 12: the separation that I made from the right wing, and
Speaker 12: the conversion that I had wasn't really around ideology, it
Speaker 12: was around ethics.
Speaker 1: In subsequent years, Brock made the most of his status
Speaker 1: as an x right wing defector. In two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: he founded Media Matters, a liberal watchdog group that scrutinized
Speaker 1: the conservative media ecosystem. Brock had once been a part of.
Speaker 1: That ecosystem had changed dramatically since the early nineties, mostly
Speaker 1: due to the advent of Fox News. But when Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton became the focus of the Benghazi scandal, Brock got
Speaker 1: deja vu.
Speaker 12: The phrase that was used was Hillary lied, four died,
Speaker 12: and so the idea that Hillary was a liar, she
Speaker 12: covered things up. That was one of the through lines
Speaker 12: in Benghazi. They were convinced that Hillary was hiding something,
Speaker 12: going back to the Whitewater scandal and Vince Foster and
Speaker 12: all the other things. It had those same themes. And
Speaker 12: then the fact that every allegation kept getting knocked down, debunked,
Speaker 12: and disproven didn't seem to slow it down. The facts
Speaker 12: didn't matter, and it was hard to cut through the
Speaker 12: fog of disinformation.
Speaker 1: Brock was ready to deploy Media Matters as a countervailing force.
Speaker 1: In twenty thirteen, the website dedicated a huge percentage of
Speaker 1: its resources to monitoring Fox News' coverage of Benghazi. Their
Speaker 1: goal was to delegitimize Fox's coverage in the eyes of
Speaker 1: mainstream journalists who might otherwise feel compelled to match it
Speaker 1: or amplify.
Speaker 12: It, because you figure, you can't really change Fox itself,
Speaker 12: but you could change how others viewed Fox so that
Speaker 12: what happened with Whitewater didn't happen with Benghazi, that the
Speaker 12: whole rest of the media became obsessed with it as well,
Speaker 12: and then yeah, you'd never get out from under it.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what your instructions were to your team
Speaker 1: at Media Matters in terms of how to cover Benghazi.
Speaker 12: The main thing was, there's nothing too small to address.
Speaker 12: Every minor charge, any minor misrepresentation could end up mushrooming
Speaker 12: and becoming quote a thing. So we had to be
Speaker 12: very careful and listen very carefully, and be very attentive
Speaker 12: to every sort of jot and tittle of what they
Speaker 12: were saying, because you never knew what would get traction.
Speaker 1: Just nine days after delivering her congressional testimony, Hillary Clinton said,
Speaker 1: farewell to the State Department.
Speaker 10: And I hope that you will continue to make yourselves,
Speaker 10: make me and make our country proud. Thank you all,
Speaker 10: and God bless you.
Speaker 1: But no one expected her to leave the spotlight for long.
Speaker 1: With the twenty sixteen election coming up, it was widely
Speaker 1: understood that Clinton would soon start running for the Democratic nomination,
Speaker 1: and so Clinton's handling of ben Gotta remained in the news,
Speaker 1: where the scandal would go on to sprout yet another
Speaker 1: new head, and this time there would be whistleblowers.
Speaker 4: My husband and I were in Parpagnon, France. We were
Speaker 4: right on the Mediterranean, and I awoke to my cell
Speaker 4: phone with a big headline US ambassador murdered in Benghazi.
Speaker 1: This is Victoria Tunsing. She's a lawyer who served in
Speaker 1: the Justice Department during the Reagan administration before going into
Speaker 1: private practice and making herself the go to attorney for
Speaker 1: various Republican causes. Tunsing and her husband, a fellow lawyer
Speaker 1: named Joe Degeneva, became media stars during the nineties as
Speaker 1: legal commentators. In nineteen ninety eight, the Washington Post reported
Speaker 1: that the couple had appeared on TV or in news
Speaker 1: stories talking about the Clinton Lewinsky scandal more than three
Speaker 1: hundred times in one month.
Speaker 4: We have tapes where her voice to Lynda Tripp is
Speaker 4: saying I had a sexual relationship, and most importantly, people
Speaker 4: asked me to lie about it. Here is one more
Speaker 4: person saying the president lied to me.
Speaker 1: After the Benghazi attack, Tunsen got a phone call that
Speaker 1: made her want to get involved.
Speaker 4: I got a call the next day from a good
Speaker 4: friend who I was supposed to meet in Paris, and
Speaker 4: he says, I can't do it. These are my friends
Speaker 4: who were murdered in Benghazi.
Speaker 1: According to Tunsing, her friend, a former lawyer. The CIA
Speaker 1: then told her something she never forgot.
Speaker 4: He said, the government is lying to you. What they're
Speaker 4: saying happened did not happen.
Speaker 1: When Tunsing got back to Washington, she put out a
Speaker 1: call on Capitol Hill saying she was willing to work
Speaker 1: pro bono on behalf of anyone involved in the Benghazi story.
Speaker 4: About a week later, I get a phone call, we
Speaker 4: have a client for you to represent, and I find
Speaker 4: out the person that needed representation was the DCM, called
Speaker 4: the Deputy Chief of Mission, the number two person in
Speaker 4: the embassy.
Speaker 1: The Deputy Chief of Mission in Tripoli was Greg Hicks.
Speaker 1: You first heard from him in episode three when he
Speaker 1: was trying to reach Chris Stevens by phone as the
Speaker 1: attack in Benghazi was unfolding. Later, when Hicks returned to
Speaker 1: the United States, he was asked to step down from
Speaker 1: his position in Libya. He agreed, but when he started
Speaker 1: looking for another job at the State Department, he found
Speaker 1: that no one seemed interested in working with him.
Speaker 3: I walked the halls of the State Department looking for
Speaker 3: a job. I would get an interview and there would
Speaker 3: always be sad eyes, and they would listen and say,
Speaker 3: you really have a great career. You've done a lot
Speaker 3: of good things, and we could certainly use you in
Speaker 3: this job, but we have another candidate. I'm sorry, and
Speaker 3: you know, a couple of months later, I would look
Speaker 3: at the available jobs list and it would still be open.
Speaker 1: Hicks suspected that higher ups in the State Department were
Speaker 1: blocking him from getting the jobs he was applying for.
Speaker 1: He didn't know why exactly, but as far as as
Speaker 1: he could figure, his problems could be traced back to
Speaker 1: an incident involving a Republican Congressman, Jason Chaffits. This gets
Speaker 1: slightly convoluted, so bear with me. Chafits was investigating Benghazi
Speaker 1: as a member of the House Oversight Committee. Roughly a
Speaker 1: month after the attack, he traveled to Libya's capital to
Speaker 1: see the US embassy with his own eyes. Because of
Speaker 1: Chaefitz's role in the House investigation, the State Department sent
Speaker 1: one of its lawyers to sit in on all of
Speaker 1: his conversations with embassy officials, but when Hicks took chafits
Speaker 1: to meet with the local CIA station chief, the State
Speaker 1: Department lawyer was not allowed to join because he didn't
Speaker 1: have the necessary security clearance. Afterwards, Hicks says he received
Speaker 1: a phone call from Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, Cheryl Mills,
Speaker 1: who was well known as a loyal, longtime associate of
Speaker 1: the Clintons.
Speaker 3: She spoke for This is Clinton in many circumstances, so
Speaker 3: everyone in the department knew that if Cheryl Mills was calling,
Speaker 3: you set up straight and listened very carefully, because something
Speaker 3: is going to be imparted to you. I was shaking
Speaker 3: in my boots.
Speaker 1: According to Hicks, Mills wanted to know what had happened
Speaker 1: during Chaefitz's briefing with the CIA station chief, and though
Speaker 1: Hicks says she never explicitly said, she was angry at
Speaker 1: him for allowing the briefing to take place without the
Speaker 1: State Department. Lawyer Hicks had no doubt she was furious.
Speaker 3: It was in the tone of her voice. She was very,
Speaker 3: very upset, and so in my view, this was a
Speaker 3: concern that Jason Chafitz may have gained information that would
Speaker 3: be released into the public debate leading up to the
Speaker 3: presidential election. That is my interpretation of what was going on.
Speaker 1: Later, when Hicks was back in Washington and struggling to
Speaker 1: find a new position in the State Department, he thought
Speaker 1: back to that phone call with Clinton's chief of staff
Speaker 1: and concluded that it was the reason he was now
Speaker 1: being blacklisted. Hicks thought he had marked himself in Clinton's
Speaker 1: mind as someone who wasn't a team player, someone who
Speaker 1: couldn't be counted on to defend the administration when called
Speaker 1: to do so.
Speaker 3: I became to think that all of this was being
Speaker 3: driven from Hillary Clinton's perspective, even though she was out
Speaker 3: of the administration by then, but also by the Obama administration.
Speaker 3: They were afraid of me, and then they were creating
Speaker 3: even greater fears in my own mind that I was
Speaker 3: a threat to them, and I felt they were a
Speaker 3: threat to me. I absolutely felt they were a threat
Speaker 3: to me. It just becomes so negative in your own
Speaker 3: mind that what can I do? Everything I do, I'm
Speaker 3: being squashed like a bug. And on top of that,
Speaker 3: by this time, I also was beginning to believe that
Speaker 3: I was under surveillance. Over time, as I was walking
Speaker 3: my dog at night, I noticed that there was constantly
Speaker 3: a truck park at the end of my cul de
Speaker 3: sac with the lights on point that at my house,
Speaker 3: and I was like, well, where did that truck come from?
Speaker 13: And what's he doing here?
Speaker 3: And so you begin to have tricks.
Speaker 13: Played in your mind.
Speaker 3: I don't know whether that was surveillance or not, but
Speaker 3: I came.
Speaker 13: To believe that I was under surveillance.
Speaker 1: Hicks's new lawyer, Victoria Tunsing, wasn't surprised by her client's experience.
Speaker 4: This is what they do. Democrats have no problem doing
Speaker 4: in a whistleblower. The whistleblower they don't like, they kill.
Speaker 1: Tonsing could personally relate to Hicks's fears. Back in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight, when she and her husband were appearing on
Speaker 1: TV to talk about the Clinton Lewinsky scandal. They came
Speaker 1: to believe the White House was targeting them.
Speaker 4: To when my husband and I were speaking out a
Speaker 4: lot about the Clintons. They hired a private detective to
Speaker 4: find out anything about us, but they couldn't find anything.
Speaker 1: At the time, Tunsing's husband made a similar claim during
Speaker 1: an interview on Meet the Press.
Speaker 7: Deputies, Republican attorney Joe Degeneva, a commentator who defends Starr,
Speaker 7: says he was told he's being investigated too.
Speaker 1: That is truly a frightening, frightening development. It was a
Speaker 1: spectacular enough charge that the White House felt compelled to respond.
Speaker 7: You don't retain private investigators that go Snooper ran about prosecutors,
Speaker 7: reporters or Joe Dejenneva.
Speaker 1: Now, at the height of the Bengazi scandal, Tunsing's client
Speaker 1: Greg Hicks, also suspected he was being watched, and as
Speaker 1: he explained to me, the person he was thinking about
Speaker 1: was Vince Foster. Did you fear for your life?
Speaker 13: I did when the surveillance started. I was very concerned.
Speaker 3: The Vince Foss story was well known. I knew of
Speaker 3: what had happened to him, and I was concerned that
Speaker 3: that I might be on a list for elimination.
Speaker 13: I was literally afraid from my life.
Speaker 3: You get to a point where just you become desperate,
Speaker 3: and so at this point I felt my only way
Speaker 3: out was to come forward and testify.
Speaker 1: And so in May of twenty thirteen, after more than
Speaker 1: twenty five years as a State Department employee with no
Speaker 1: public profile, Greg Hicks stepped into the spotlight. By this point,
Speaker 1: Fox News had spent two weeks talking about the anonymous
Speaker 1: whistleblowers getting ready to come out against the State Department.
Speaker 1: As Hicks's representative, Victoria Tunsing made the most of the anticipation.
Speaker 15: Well, let me just tell you that, knowing the unclassified
Speaker 15: information is, there are inconsistent facts with what the administer
Speaker 15: has said.
Speaker 13: Can you sure any one of those with us?
Speaker 12: No, I can't be.
Speaker 4: I just can't, you know, be glad to come back here.
Speaker 1: But in early May it was announced that the House
Speaker 1: Oversight Committee would hold a hearing to interview Hicks and
Speaker 1: three others. Among them was a former marine in the
Speaker 1: State Department's Bureau of Counter Terrorism, who conveniently was being
Speaker 1: represented by Victoria Tunsing's husband. At Fox News, the emergence
Speaker 1: of the whistleblowers was treated with unrestrained excitement.
Speaker 6: Well, guess what, there's four whistleblowers now.
Speaker 10: Who say that they have new information about Benghazi and
Speaker 10: what exactly happened that night and the county is.
Speaker 1: The big ticket items expected from Hicks centered on two
Speaker 1: separate points. First that the US military didn't do everything
Speaker 1: it could to help the Americans in Benghazi, and second
Speaker 1: that Hicks knew it was a terrorist attack immediately, even
Speaker 1: as the Obama administration was going on about an anti
Speaker 1: Islamic video. Tunsing promised fireworks on heraldo at large, she
Speaker 1: and her husband and delivered what was essentially a promo
Speaker 1: for their client's testimony.
Speaker 2: This purported testimony is a game changer. Is it fair
Speaker 2: to say that your clients will debunk the notion that
Speaker 2: the scurreless anti Muslim video is what precipitated the violence
Speaker 2: in Benghazi without a doubt, without a doubt.
Speaker 4: This is cover up, one oh one, without a doubt.
Speaker 4: That's why we got involved.
Speaker 1: Greg Hicks told me that having an advocate as aggressive
Speaker 1: as Victoria Tunsing made him feel less afraid.
Speaker 3: It was a big watershed when I made the decision
Speaker 3: to go forward and be a whistleblower, and with Victoria
Speaker 3: as my attorney. Victoria is such a confident person in
Speaker 3: such an accomplished lawyer that I just began to feel safer,
Speaker 3: and I began to feel better that I was on
Speaker 3: the right track, that I was doing the right thing.
Speaker 3: She was instrumental in respect during my own natural self confidence.
Speaker 1: I asked Hicks if he ever worried that associating himself
Speaker 1: with Tunsing, with her long record of anti Clinton activism,
Speaker 1: would undermine his credibility as a witness. He told me
Speaker 1: he had barely thought about it, even if others did.
Speaker 9: To an extent, I am fascinated by the sudden appearance
Speaker 9: in the Benghazi story of Joseph Degeneva and Victoria Tensing,
Speaker 9: who were two of the real stars of the anti
Speaker 9: Clinton legal community in the nineteen nineties. When you want
Speaker 9: to keep a scandal ginned up, you go to the pros.
Speaker 1: Eventually, in the days leading up to the whistleblower hearing,
Speaker 1: Fox News built up the anticipation, much like they did
Speaker 1: with Clinton's testimony in January.
Speaker 5: It was a well guarded secret. But we now know
Speaker 5: the identities of the ben Ghazi whistleblowers, So will we
Speaker 5: finally get answers about what happened?
Speaker 1: We have nuans Even Alison Camarada, the reluctant weekend host
Speaker 1: of Fox and Friends was excited to hear the whistleblower's account.
Speaker 6: I thought, ooh good, this will be interesting. Like now
Speaker 6: I'm going to hear what happened.
Speaker 1: Finally, the hearing had come to order. Greg Hicks test
Speaker 1: to fight in front of the Oversight Committee on Wednesday,
Speaker 1: May eighth, twenty thirteen. The hearing was titled Benghazi Exposing
Speaker 1: Failure and Recognizing Courage. Hicks was billed as the star witness.
Speaker 3: I'm glad my bladder was much stronger in those days
Speaker 3: because I literally sat in the same chair for six
Speaker 3: and a half hours.
Speaker 1: In his opening statement, Hicks spent a full half hour
Speaker 1: recounting his experience on the night of the attack. Under questioning,
Speaker 1: he expressed his belief that if military planes had been
Speaker 1: sent to Benghazi that night, it was possible they could
Speaker 1: have deterred the mortar attack on the CIA annex. Hicks
Speaker 1: also described his reaction when he saw Susan Rice on
Speaker 1: the Sunday shows, saying the attack had grown spontaneously out
Speaker 1: of a protest.
Speaker 3: I was stunned, my jaw dropped, and I was embarrassed.
Speaker 1: There was one detail that stood out from the rest
Speaker 1: of Hicks's testimony. It had to do with a decision
Speaker 1: made on the night of the attack by the US
Speaker 1: military's Central Command for Africa AFRICAM for short. Hicks testified
Speaker 1: that a team of four Special Forces officers based in
Speaker 1: Tripoli had been ready to get on a plane to Benghazi,
Speaker 1: only to be told by someone at AFRICAM not to go.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Once again, this gets a little tricky, but as you
Speaker 1: may recall, one team of agents from Tripoli did fly
Speaker 1: to Benghazi during the attack. In fact, one of them
Speaker 1: was killed at the CIA Annex. The team Hicks was
Speaker 1: talking about in his testimony was separate. They were getting
Speaker 1: ready to fly to Benghazi much later, closer to six
Speaker 1: a m. After the attack was essentially over. But Hicks
Speaker 1: saw the decision to keep them in Tripoli as a
Speaker 1: grave mistake. As he put it, there was every reason
Speaker 1: to continue to believe that our personnel were in danger.
Speaker 1: Here's how Congressman Jason Chafitz asked about afrikam's decision to
Speaker 1: hold back the Special Forces in Tripoli.
Speaker 7: How did the personnel react at being told to stand down?
Speaker 16: They were furious. Well, I will quote Lieutenant Colonel Gibson.
Speaker 16: He said, this is the first time in my career
Speaker 16: that a diplomat has more balls than somebody in the military.
Speaker 1: Hicks himself never used the phrase stand down order, and
Speaker 1: he told me that he never thought the term was accurate.
Speaker 1: But during the hearing, Republicans used the phrase repeatedly.
Speaker 3: Where'd the standown order come from?
Speaker 1: I believe it came from, and Hicks did not correct them.
Speaker 16: Either Africom or South Africa, now I understanding is a general.
Speaker 1: When the hearing ended, Hicks felt like he had done
Speaker 1: his part to bring the truth about Benghazi to the public.
Speaker 12: So with that, this hearing is closed, but this investigation
Speaker 12: is not over.
Speaker 3: I remember walking out of the ray Burn Building feeling
Speaker 3: like the weight of the world had lifted from my shoulders.
Speaker 3: I felt very good about what I'd said and about
Speaker 3: how the hearing had transpired.
Speaker 1: On MSNBC, the verdict was that Hicks's testimony had not
Speaker 1: revealed much in the way of new informations. Fox News
Speaker 1: was all geared up today to really capture the outrage.
Speaker 1: It's been endless politicization, and today this was their blockbuster,
Speaker 1: this was their watergate, and by two o'clock people were
Speaker 1: like changing the chance but on Fox News, the big
Speaker 1: takeaway was stand down order.
Speaker 3: They were told to stand down. What do you mean
Speaker 3: stand down? They're invading the place.
Speaker 10: Who told the military to stand down?
Speaker 3: You're telling people to stand down?
Speaker 12: You have no idea when.
Speaker 3: The attack ends.
Speaker 1: Media matters. David Brock's website found that in the weeks
Speaker 1: after Hicks's testimony, Fox's primetime programming mentioned the standown order
Speaker 1: at least eighty five times. It didn't matter that the
Speaker 1: team of Special Forces officers that was held back in
Speaker 1: Tripoli wouldn't have gotten to bend Gaussie and time to
Speaker 1: stand up to anyone. The fact that they could have
Speaker 1: been sent and weren't was enough. Hicks's testimony reinforced an
Speaker 1: idea that had been circulating in various forms since the
Speaker 1: attack that the Obama administration had made a deliberate decision
Speaker 1: not to rescue Chris Stevens and the others. Among the
Speaker 1: Fox News anchors who talked about the standdown order was
Speaker 1: Allison Camarata.
Speaker 5: Right, So, I mean a shocking revelation. That was a
Speaker 5: particularly stunning moment on Wednesday at the hearings, because either
Speaker 5: we don't have contingency plans in place, I mean, I
Speaker 5: think it is an American's assumption that the reason that
Speaker 5: we have military stationed around the world is for events
Speaker 5: like this, that when something terrible is going down, that we,
Speaker 5: in a moment's notice, can at least attempt a rescue
Speaker 5: of our fellowtail.
Speaker 1: This is Camarata on Fox and Friends Weekend, raising questions
Speaker 1: about the standdown order the Sunday after Hicks's hearing.
Speaker 5: Right now, the next question, of course, by the way,
Speaker 5: should have been, or is now today, who gave that
Speaker 5: order to stand down? Who was it that said don't
Speaker 5: send help to our people who were under attack?
Speaker 6: Of who gave the stand down order? Became the catchphrase
Speaker 6: that just kept on giving. It embodied all of it,
Speaker 6: the outrage, the tragedy, the mystery. It just had it all.
Speaker 6: It never got old. And I was very interested in
Speaker 6: who gave the standown order. That was something that really
Speaker 6: intrigued me and piqued my interest, and I wanted to
Speaker 6: get to the bottom of it. And then during the
Speaker 6: testimony it's clear that there was no standdown order given,
Speaker 6: and that comes up and people debunk it, but it
Speaker 6: never went away. At Fox, it was too valuable to
Speaker 6: get rid of because that kept the viewers watching.
Speaker 1: The phrase standdown order went through a strange evolution over
Speaker 1: the course of the Benghazi scandal. It was almost like
Speaker 1: it got detached from any one specific situation and started
Speaker 1: getting used to refer to a bunch of different decisions
Speaker 1: that were made on the night of the attack. For instance,
Speaker 1: you might recall from episode three that the Benghazi CIA
Speaker 1: station chief hesitated to send his men to the diplomatic
Speaker 1: compound when they first got the distress call, and that
Speaker 1: eventually they overruled him and just took off. Fox News
Speaker 1: was calling that a standdown order as early as October
Speaker 1: of twenty twelve. Separately, there was the decision not to
Speaker 1: send jets to Benghazi from Italy because it would have
Speaker 1: taken them too long to get there. That was referred
Speaker 1: to as a stand down order too. After Hicks's testimony,
Speaker 1: the phrase started being used in reference to that six
Speaker 1: a m decision in Tripoli, and against the backdrop of
Speaker 1: the other stand down orders, it just kind of tract.
Speaker 13: And I'm curistic.
Speaker 1: Were you conscious of at the time that there was
Speaker 1: a sort of conflation happening around this term stand doown order?
Speaker 6: You are way overthinking this. Once you have a handy slogan,
Speaker 6: don't try to dissect it too closely, Like, all you
Speaker 6: need to know is that somebody gave a standown order.
Speaker 6: And maybe it's the CIA, maybe it's Hillary Clinton, maybe
Speaker 6: it was President Obama, maybe it was Africom. But there
Speaker 6: was a standown order. So the fact that it morphed
Speaker 6: from one to the other, that's just a little consequence.
Speaker 6: You just got to keep repeating it and repeating it
Speaker 6: and repeating it.
Speaker 5: Right, There's still so many questions. I mean, who gave
Speaker 5: the order to stand down instead of trying to help?
Speaker 5: And now who is looking for the perpetrators? Why hasn't
Speaker 5: anyone been prosecuted?
Speaker 6: Where is the justice?
Speaker 5: We allow this to happen without justice? Is that who
Speaker 5: we are now as a country when we have this.
Speaker 1: Camarata's first show after the hearing coincided with Mother's Day.
Speaker 1: To mark the occasion, Camarada's producers played a clip from
Speaker 1: an interview with Patricia Smith, the mother of the IT
Speaker 1: specialist who was killed in Benghazi, alongside Ambassador Stevens.
Speaker 8: I want to wish Hillary a happy Mother's Day. She's
Speaker 8: got her child. I don't have mine because of her.
Speaker 8: I know that In the.
Speaker 1: Months after the attack, Smith appeared on Fox News multiple
Speaker 1: times speaking out about her son and her frustration with
Speaker 1: those she believed were responsible for his death.
Speaker 8: But the government doesn't care. They don't care about us
Speaker 8: people at all. All they have to do is tell
Speaker 8: me what happened, and I would have gone away, but
Speaker 8: they didn't even bother. I was an unimportant person and
Speaker 8: now I'm an unimportant person that doesn't have a child
Speaker 8: for Mother's Day, and I'm I feel it so deeply.
Speaker 8: They cannot understand how I feel.
Speaker 5: That's heartbreaking, heartbreaking to hear on Mother's Day. But obviously
Speaker 5: the victims' families are not satisfied and they want more answers.
Speaker 6: Her grief was raw. Her grief was raw, and it
Speaker 6: never got less raw. She just became this kind of
Speaker 6: go to victim. I guess that Fox could keep exploiting
Speaker 6: and holding up as this personification of grief, and I
Speaker 6: found it really uncomfortable. And I did hope that she
Speaker 6: got answers, you know, I mean, I could never have
Speaker 6: said on the air, Wow, we're really exploiting her. I
Speaker 6: just think that I did the best I could.
Speaker 3: Was there a distance for you internally about that? And
Speaker 3: did that contribute to your decision to leave?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 6: Every day, every day, But I mean it wasn't just Benghazi.
Speaker 6: I mean every day I wrestled with being at Fox,
Speaker 6: and I tried to leave many times, and Roger blocked me,
Speaker 6: and I felt trapped. I still needed my paycheck. I'm
Speaker 6: tap dancing pretty hard on the air, and I'm trying
Speaker 6: to preserve my integrity. But you know, some days were
Speaker 6: harder than others. I mean, it's just really unpleasant to
Speaker 6: be part of that outrage factory. I didn't like it,
Speaker 6: and I tried in my own meager ways to either
Speaker 6: make it not an outrage factory, or to present a
Speaker 6: different position, or to be the voice of reason, or
Speaker 6: to add levity. I tried to deploy lots of different
Speaker 6: coping mechanisms, and then at some point right after this,
Speaker 6: they just ran out.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Camarata left Fox News in March
Speaker 1: of twenty fourteen. At her new job at CNN, she
Speaker 1: doesn't remember being asked to do any Benghazi coverage. The
Speaker 1: fact that re a broader reluctance on the part of
Speaker 1: the mainstream media to treat the attack as a scandal.
Speaker 1: That's not to say that Fox was the only outlet
Speaker 1: covering it. In just the month following the attack, The
Speaker 1: New York Times put it on its front page eighteen times. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: two of the broadcast networks, CBS and ABC were so
Speaker 1: eager to get in on the action that they ended
Speaker 1: up airing stories that had to be retracted or substantially corrected.
Speaker 15: The most important thing to every person at sixty minutes
Speaker 15: is the truth, and the truth is we made a mistake.
Speaker 1: Still, by far, the most expansive coverage of Benghazi came
Speaker 1: from Fox News and other conservative outlets. According to David Brock,
Speaker 1: this was a result of how much the media had
Speaker 1: changed since the nineties and how much more awareness there
Speaker 1: was and the part of mainstream journalists about how scandal
Speaker 1: laundering worked.
Speaker 12: My sense of it was by that point, because Fox
Speaker 12: News was beating the drums so hard on it, it
Speaker 12: had the inverse effect, and there was more skepticism in
Speaker 12: the main media about picking it up because it had
Speaker 12: been such a Fox phenomenon, And so I think it
Speaker 12: was very different than what went on in the nineties,
Speaker 12: when the path to getting something from a place like
Speaker 12: The Spectator onto CNN was much easier.
Speaker 1: Brock says that Benghazi was fueled by the same forces
Speaker 1: and in many cases the same individuals that drove earlier
Speaker 1: Clinton scandals like Whitewater and Troopergate.
Speaker 12: The Clinton scandals, in the end, in my opinion, end
Speaker 12: up having very little to do with the details. You know,
Speaker 12: I think there's a direct line from what happened in
Speaker 12: the nineteen nineties to twenty sixteen, and there was always
Speaker 12: something that was beyond just normal politics about the way
Speaker 12: they went after the Clintons.
Speaker 1: What would you say was animating people like Victoria Tenzing.
Speaker 12: I can't say for her exactly, but I can say
Speaker 12: that there was kind of a joy in the hunt.
Speaker 12: I guess you could see that too, that they were
Speaker 12: in times of triumph, deliriously happy when they were able
Speaker 12: to score.
Speaker 1: It feels almost too pat to say the Bengazi scandal
Speaker 1: was driven or propped up by a single news network,
Speaker 1: like it shouldn't be possible for it to have been
Speaker 1: so straightforward, And in fact, when Hillary Clinton was ensnared
Speaker 1: in scandal much earlier in her career, it wasn't that
Speaker 1: straightforward back then. In order for stories about Vince Foster
Speaker 1: and Whitewater to gain traction, they needed to travel through
Speaker 1: the media ecosystem from the margins into the mainstream. But
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen that wasn't necessary anymore. People like Victoria
Speaker 1: Tunsing didn't need to engage in scandal laundering to make
Speaker 1: an impact. All they had to do was get on
Speaker 1: Fox News and they would immediately be heard by millions
Speaker 1: of people who would then post about it on social media,
Speaker 1: and they would be heard by Republican congressmen, who, when
Speaker 1: they weren't appearing on Fox News themselves, could turn the
Speaker 1: network's outrage into official action. In my interview with Tunsing,
Speaker 1: I asked her if she felt like her client, Greg Hicks,
Speaker 1: had gotten what he wanted out of his time as
Speaker 1: a whistleblower.
Speaker 4: You often ask Greg how he feels, but that that's
Speaker 4: not our practice of law. Really, So you know, is
Speaker 4: your client still alive and is he working and is
Speaker 4: he relatively happy? Is the criteria I use.
Speaker 1: Well, but if your goal was to sort of help
Speaker 1: chip away at this person that you felt was lying
Speaker 1: and had done a terrible job and to keep them
Speaker 1: from attaining more power, you guys did pretty well at that.
Speaker 4: I thought, Yeah, Well, I mean, you know, if Greg
Speaker 4: had really done a good job. He'd be vice president
Speaker 4: is of company right now, and then you know that's
Speaker 4: you can ask him how he feels about it. You know,
Speaker 4: if he'd do it again, I think he'd say yes.
Speaker 4: But you don't know. I found a patient, you know,
Speaker 4: I was in the emergency room. I got a patient,
Speaker 4: and he walked out of the emergency room. So that's
Speaker 4: how I look at it.
Speaker 1: It's true that Hicks is not the vice president of
Speaker 1: a company, but after his testimony, he did manage to
Speaker 1: get a job working for Devin Nunez, one of the
Speaker 1: Republican congressmen who most voraciously chased the Bengazi scandal. As
Speaker 1: Hicks told me, he knew his days of the State
Speaker 1: Department were over.
Speaker 3: I felt that I had faced pretty serious retaliation and pressure.
Speaker 3: Ultimately that led to my retirement from the State Department,
Speaker 3: and in August of twenty sixteen, when it looked quite
Speaker 3: likely that missus Clinton was going to become president, and
Speaker 3: I had no desire to ever work for her again.
Speaker 1: And yet Hi says he never hated the Clintons, and that,
Speaker 1: in fact, after his testimony, he stopped believing that they
Speaker 1: had placed him under surveillance or that they were ever
Speaker 1: considering having him killed.
Speaker 3: It's hard to think that people are just evil. I
Speaker 3: think that missus Clinton exercised very poor judgment in a
Speaker 3: lot of instances over this incident. Beyond that, you know
Speaker 3: Vince Foster, who knows kill lists. That seems far gone
Speaker 3: to me. I've never actually seen a list of names.
Speaker 3: Show me the names, give me the facts. Tell me
Speaker 3: why why the Clintons would have had all these people killed.
Speaker 13: Explain that to me. I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't understand that there's a lot of hatred for
Speaker 3: them out there from a lot of.
Speaker 13: People that's not me.
Speaker 1: On the next and final episode of Fiasco, the FBI
Speaker 1: captures a Libyan man accused of helping plan the Bengazi attack,
Speaker 1: while a congressional investigation surfaces a devastating revelation about Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton email gate.
Speaker 3: Hillary Clinton has some explaining to do.
Speaker 13: Hillary Clinton email mess This story is something for everyone.
Speaker 1: For a list of books, articles, and documentaries we used
Speaker 1: in our research, follow the link in our show notes.
Speaker 1: Fiasco is a production of Prolog Projects, and it's distributed
Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries. The show is produced by Andrew Parsons,
Speaker 1: Ulla Kulpa, Sam Lee and Me Leon Mayfock, with editorial
Speaker 1: support from Sam Graham Felsen and Madelin Kaplan. Our researcher
Speaker 1: was Francis Carr. Our score was composed by Dan English,
Speaker 1: Joe Valley and Noah Hecht. Additional music by Nick Sylvester,
Speaker 1: Billy Libby and Joel Saint Julian. Our theme song is
Speaker 1: by Spatial Relations Audio mixed by Rob Buyers, Michael Raphael
Speaker 1: and Johnny Vince Evans. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks
Speaker 1: at Chips and y Copyright Council. Provided by Peter Yassi
Speaker 1: at Yasi Butler PLC. Thanks to Archive dot Org, Hannah Groach, Begley,
Speaker 1: Mark Thompson and Mark Zaid. Special thanks to Lubinari and
Speaker 1: thank you for listening. Binge the entire season of Fiasco
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