WASHINGTON DC – The State Department’s Office of Inspector General is investigating the special internal panel that probed the Benghazi terror attack for the State Department, Fox News has confirmed.

The IG’s office is said by well-placed sources to be seeking to determine whether the Accountability Review Board, or ARB — led by former U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen — failed to interview key witnesses who had asked to provide their accounts of the Benghazi attacks to the panel.

The IG’s office notified the department of the “special review” on March 28, according to Doug Welty, the congressional and public affairs officer of the IG’s office. (more…)

BEIRUT – Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad retook a central district in the city of Homs on Thursday, driving a wedge between two isolated pockets of rebel resistance in Syria’s third largest city, fighters and activists said. (more…)

Well I am not liberty to disclose the identity of the witnesses but I will just say what I have said previously which is it is going to be a very informational and instructive hearing. I would encourage you to follow it. Benghazi is warming up. It is not going away despite the efforts of this administration… You know that hearsay evidence is not so interesting. First hand accounts by eye-witnesses much more compelling. So I would again repeat for your audience and those who may be watching. Let me just say next week will be a good opportunity for us to hear non-hearsay accounts of what happened in Benghazi.“

Odd mixes of irony surrounding the Boston Bombers.   After information came out that taxpayers had funded their endeavors; providing welfare, food stamps, child care and housing assistance, tuition and possibly unemployment benefits, we now provide the best defense money can buy.

We know Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has the benefit of the most Islamist Sensitive Judge, Marianne Bowler, who has guest lectured in Kuwait 1997, and even in Egypt [2012] after the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and their candidate, now President, Morsi.

So it should come as no surprise the most skilled, well-versed, prolific and successful public defender of all things Jihadist would be hand-picked to represent Tsarnaev.

Associated Press […] The team that will be led by Miriam Conrad, the chief federal public defender for Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, got a major boost Monday with the addition of prominent San Diego lawyer and death penalty opponent Judy Clarke. Not that Conrad is considered any slouch.

“She is as tenacious as they come,” said Joshua Levy, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Boston who has gone up against Conrad in federal court. “I always found her to be very smart and focused on whatever she perceived as chinks in the armor in the government’s case. She would zone in on that.” (more…)

WASHINGTON DC – At least four career officials at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have retained lawyers or are in the process of doing so, as they prepare to provide sensitive information about the Benghazi attacks to Congress, Fox News has learned.

Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official and Republican counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, is now representing one of the State Department employees. She told Fox News her client and some of the others, who consider themselves whistle-blowers, have been threatened by unnamed Obama administration officials.

“I’m not talking generally, I’m talking specifically about Benghazi – that people have been threatened,” Toensing said in an interview Monday. “And not just the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA.” (more…)

(Via Doug Ross)   U.S. Had Assets That Could Have Saved U.S. SEALs

BAIER: The administration has insisted there was no help for the Americans under assault in Libya, none that could arrive in time to change the outcome in Benghazi. Tonight is the first of three exclusive reports charging that claim is just not true.

Because the Special Operator in this piece is fearful of reprisal, we have agreed to conceal his identity. Correspondent Adam Housley has the story.
HOUSLEY: Many Americans are asking indeed, I asked myself. How could this happen? In the seven months since the Benghazi attacks on 9/11, information from the administration has been incomplete at best.

Details and time lines provided by the State Department, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies had been contradictory and failed to answer many questions.

In December, a State Department review concluded: There simply was not enough time for U.S. military forces to have made a difference: Having said that, it is not reasonable nor feasible to forces at the ready to respond to protect every high risk post in the world.
But members of the military who are monitoring events in Benghazi disagree. (more…)

KABUL, Afghanistan — For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.

All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.

“We called it ‘ghost money,’ ” said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai’s chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. “It came in secret, and it left in secret.” (more…)

“We are not recommending any policy other than one exception. That is, if the United States decides to arm the Syrian rebels with lethal weapons, not just defensive weaponry, that those rebels and those weapons be very carefully vetted. We had a very bad experience with Libya where shoulder-fired missiles went disappeared very quickly and showed up in our backyard. We don’t want that to happen again in Syria.”

APRIL 27th 2013 –  It was revealed for the first time today that the body of murdered Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was recovered by a secret two man Special “Ops” team that was not affiliated with any of the other security entities involved in the Benghazi attack..

This team, acting under their own initiative and armed with their own weapons, undertook this mission despite very little intelligence available for this exceedingly hostile and volatile environment. The information came to light this morning on WVOX’s Vernuccio/Allison radio show.

The previously undisclosed information was provided by former Army Ranger Jack Murphy who is the co-author along with Brandon Webb of Benghazi: The Definitive Report. (more…)