Foreign Policy Magazine Casts More Doubt On Fox's Benghazi Source

Fox News has been hyping the statements of an anonymous source who has contradicted the account of both the Obama administration and independent findings about the attack on a U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. Now two separate statements by experts in Foreign Policy are casting more doubt about the claims of Fox's source.

Fox's flagship show Special Report ran a series of reports that highlighted an anonymous source who claims to have knowledge about the Benghazi attacks. In one segment, the source claimed that the Obama administration had forces available to aid the victims of the attack, but chose not to utilize them, a claim contradicted not only by the State Department, but by the Accountability Review Board, an independent panel convened to investigate whether there was a breach of duty during and after the attack.

But in a post on Foreign Policy magazine's website, national security journalist Tom Ricks, who previously accused Fox News of “operating as a wing of the Republican Party” on the Benghazi issue, published two accounts from experts who strongly questioned Fox's Benghazi source. Ricks reported that he's hearing Fox doesn't have a scoop with its Benghazi source, and quoted Retired Special Forces Col. David Maxwell stating:                                 

Whistle blower my a**. If this guy is a real special operator (and I have my doubts) I wonder if he realizes what an embarrassment he is to the community. What he offers is pure speculation and not based on any real facts as I have heard and appears to be coming from his fourth point of contact. He comes across as just another conspiracy theorist who is taking Fox News for a ride.

In a separate article, U.S. Marine Corps officer and special operations team leader Billy Birdzell called Fox's source “a clown” and criticized news outlets for “not using Google” before promoting him. Birdzell explained how forces in the area, including the force training in Croatia that Fox's source discussed, would have needed far more time to reach Benghazi than they had. 

On April 30, 2013, Fox News aired an interview with a supposed member of U.S. Special Operations Command who said that members of “C-110,” who were training in Croatia on September 11, 2012, could have both arrived at the Benghazi consulate in 4-6 hours and arrived before the second attack on the annex during which Tyronne Woods and Glen Doherty were killed. The mystery man critiques the Obama administration's decision-making, yet offers no information as to how C-110 would have influenced the battle in such a way that the outcome would have been different. Perhaps because it was actually impossible for C-110 to arrive before the attack, and if they did, they would not have been able to do anything that would have prevented our heroes, Woods and Doherty, from being killed.

[...]

Assuming magical planes were waiting for the CIF and they were somehow able to physically get to the annex before 0515, mystery man failed to mention that Doherty and Woods were killed by mortar fire. Forty operators armed with rifles and light-machine guns can neither stop mortar rounds nor determine from where the mortar is being fired. The only thing the CIF would have done had they gotten to the annex before 0515 is created more targets and overcrowded the consulate.

Even if the CIF was on ready 5 (fully armed, sitting in the aircraft with pilots at the controls) in Sigonella (the closest European base to Benghazi) with advanced warning of an attack but unsure of the time, and they launched at 2232 on only-in-Hollywood orders from someone other than the president, they would not have been able to do anything about Stevens and Smith's deaths, nor stopped the mortar rounds. Strike three.

The person in the interview is a clown and I am incredibly disappointed in the news for not using Google.