Corker on Libya Lies

Jennifer Rubin interviews Sen. Bob Corker.  Corker may be the straightest shooter on Capitol Hill.

This morning, I spoke with Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who had just returned from Libya, about the Benghazi debacle. He was animated and clearly flabbergasted at the administration’s reaction. “It baffles me that the vice president of the United States would continue to say things that don’t square with the facts on the ground, “ he said in reference to VP Joe Biden’s remarks in the debate Thursday night. He reiterated, “There was no protest. There was no reaction to the [anti-Muslim video], and they knew it in 24 hours. I don’t understand what they are doing.”

This week he had extensive meetings with the FBI and intelligence officials on the ground in Benghazi as well as officials from the Libyan government. He was emphatic: “What I know is our intelligence officials on the ground in real time and also in Washington within 24 hours knew what had happened.”

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In this case, he was both irate and insistent: “When four Americans are killed, it’s just not possible that the president didn’t know [it was a terrorist assault].. . . There is not a cell in my body that doesn’t earnestly believe that the administration didn’t know within 24 or 48 hours.”

Biden’s effort in the debate to lay this off on the intelligence community isn’t winning over national security experts either. The Romney campaign put out a statement by former CIA director Michael Hayden and former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff that read: “During the Vice Presidential debate, we were disappointed to see Vice President Biden blame the intelligence community for the inconsistent and shifting response of the Obama Administration to the terrorist attacks in Benghazi. Given what has emerged publicly about the intelligence available before, during, and after the September 11 attack, it is clear that any failure was not on the part of the intelligence community, but on the part of White House decision-makers who should have listened to, and acted on, available intelligence. Blaming those who put their lives on the line is not the kind of leadership this country needs.”