You lecturing about “free press” is a joke. The night Stevens and Sean Smith were killed you pointed at a YouTube video. That same night you emailed your daughter it was an al Qaeda-like group. The next day you told Egypt it was a planned attack, not the film. Then the public story stayed on the video. The press ran it. Nakoula got locked up on a probation hit after that narrative. Tyrone Woods’s father said you told him you would arrest the filmmaker for his son’s death. You used the press to sell a fake protest so an election calendar wouldn’t have to say “terror attack.” Now you call three lost badges authoritarianism. You spent a career hiding from questions, ranking reporters as friends or problems, and feeding stories to the ones who played along. Your campaign tracked journalists so they couldn’t close to you or ask you anything hard. That is managing the press. Not defending it. You hid official work on a private server. Comey called it extremely careless. Classified mail went through it. They can still publish. Other critics are still inside. A door is not the First Amendment. Your record is not a clean conscience.

I came across this last night. Looked into it. I’m in. Austin has a Service Dog named Major locked in a kennel for 500+ days and they still want him dead. Truck hits the Major, Owner runs for a phone. A woman tries to move an injured animal out of the road. He bites her. Accident. Pain. Fear. That’s the whole case. She did not press charges. She did not go after the owner. She did not want him euthanized. City did it anyway. That’s the problem. They don’t do case-by-case. They do a broad stroke. Injury happened = kill the dog! Doesn’t matter if Major was bleeding and injured in the street after being hit by a truck. Doesn’t matter if the person who got bit is telling you not to do this. Accidents happen. A hurt dog reacting to a stranger is not a dog who meant to hurt or kill somebody. We know the difference. Austin is pretending they don’t. Local people fighting this case say one of the officials in the bite chain, Rebekha Montie at Austin Animal Services, was in a 2019 dog-attack incident and severely injured as a city employee. If that’s true, she should not be anywhere near judging these files. A nip, a provoked bite, a dog that had a bad day all of it looks the same when your own scar is in the room. That’s bias. Release the 2019 report. Recuse her if it’s her. Don’t tell me it’s “just process.” Texas law does not require his death. Health & Safety Code 822.003: if a dog kills someone, the court shall order him destroyed. If it’s serious injury, the court may destroy or release him to the owner or another authorized person. A trainer, Jonas Black, already agreed to take him under conditions. The court can release him. The city is the one that asked for the kill. They can stop it! Texas courts walked away. A federal judge temporarily blocked the euthanasia. Next hearing: September 29, 1:30 p.m. He is not saved. He’s on a pause. If you want to help: Sign the petition: change.org/p/free-major Go to @kali.mali.pup IG PAGE petition and automatic emails are in the bio. Use theirs or write your own like I did. Call:
Mayor 512-978-2100
Animal Services 512-978-0521
City Manager 512-974-2000
City Attorney 512-974-2268 Email Watson and Council. Monica.Dangler@austintexas.gov and susana.carbajal@austintexas.gov Tell them: no euthanasia. Conditional release to Jonas Black, a trainer who agreed to take the dog in to help. The victim isn’t asking you to kill him. The statute doesn’t require it. Don’t sit this one out. #FreeMajor

The First Amendment protects publishing. It does not create a White House hard press pass. Those have been 2 different things since the beginning. Washington to Adams: party papers, attacks in print, even the Sedition Act of 1798. No badge. Access was whatever the president allowed. 1800s: reporters waited outside or grabbed people leaving. In 1896 William W. Price of the Washington Evening Star parked at the gate. Theodore Roosevelt pulled them inside and controlled who got information. Taft, 1909–1913, cut the access Roosevelt had given them. Reporters said he was withholding news. The president still decided how close they got. 1913: Wilson starts regular press conferences. 1914: reporters form the White House Correspondents’ Association to keep the briefings. Private guild, Not the Constitution. Eisenhower years: too many reporters for a small room, so a small rotating crew covers the Oval and the plane for everyone else. Nixon, 1969–70: he built the briefing room over Franklin Roosevelt’s old swimming pool. A hard press pass is a Secret Service badge. Government property. 1977, Sherrill v. Knight, D.C. Circuit, not the Supreme Court: once the White House opens a press facility, it can’t deny a bona fide reporter arbitrarily. Notice. A chance to answer. A written reason. That is process on a room the executive built. It is not ownership of the West Wing. Showing up for decades is not an easement on federal land. Hamilton, Federalist 78: the judiciary is “beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power.” Judgment, not the sword. Jefferson: judges are not “the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions.” Sept. 18, 2026: A press pass somehow becomes a constitutional right?! Trump bans CNN, MS NOW, and Politico for “fake news,” “fiction and lies.” Same day he said they can still write it; they don’t get the people’s house. Sept. 19: badges deactivated at the gate. Founders protected printing. They did not invent a badge. Publishing is still legal. The credential is what was removed.

Ryan Fournier just named the bypass. Trump TV is live 24/7 on the White House YouTube channel. Continuous coverage. Real time updates. Zero legacy media spin. And the same people who spent years lecturing America about democracy are losing their minds because the President is talking straight to the American people without asking their permission first. That is not a glitch. That is the whole game coming into the light. For years the press corps acted like they owned the microphone. They filtered every sentence. They framed every story. They decided which voices counted as serious and which voices got buried, smeared, or locked out. They called it journalism while they ran cover for institutions that lied to your face about elections, about lawfare, about who gets protected and who gets crushed. They sold access as virtue. They sold gatekeeping as public service. And when the people stopped buying it, they screamed that the country was dying. No. The country was waking up. Ryan put it clean. Democrats and fake news are melting because Trump bypassed them completely. He did not beg for a fair segment. He did not wait for their panel to finish dunking on him. He went around the cartel and put the feed where millions already live. White House YouTube. Live. Continuous. Straight to the people. That is what a serious person does when the stacked deck refuses to deal fair. Look at who is screaming. The same outlets that spent a decade calling half the country a threat. The same faces that platformed every soft landing for the people who weaponized agencies, courts, and media against a sitting President and then a private citizen. The same machine that told you to trust the experts while the experts ran cover stories. Now the White House can speak without their caption. Of course they hate it. Their product was never truth. Their product was control. This is why the access fights matter. This is why the whining about being shut out of rooms they treated like private clubs matters. They do not want a seat so they can report. They want a seat so they can shape. They want the first draft of reality. They want to decide what America hears before America hears it. Trump TV on the White House channel blows that up. Continuous coverage with zero legacy spin is not a branding stunt. It is a declaration that the old priesthood is done. They will call it propaganda. They always do when they lose the filter. They called dissent dangerous. They called scrutiny of elections a threat to democracy. They called questioning lawfare an attack on the rule of law. Honor left the building a long time ago. What you are watching now is institutional rot throwing a tantrum because the audience walked out of the theater and found the live stream. Do not confuse their panic with principle. If they cared about the American people hearing the truth, they would celebrate more direct communication from the White House, not rage that it skips their spin cycle. They are furious because the bypass works. Because people can watch without the middleman. Because the monopoly cracked. Same same every time. When the people get unfiltered information, the cartel calls it chaos. When the people ask hard questions, the cartel calls it extremism. When a President refuses to kneel for their narrative, the cartel calls it an assault on democracy. WTH. Democracy was never their god. Power was. Ryan Fournier is not inventing a mood. He is naming what millions already feel. Huge win is right. Not because a channel appeared. Because the gatekeepers lost another lever. Because the American people get to hear the President without the legacy press rewriting the sentence in real time. That is the fight. That is the rot. That is why they cannot stand still. Keep watching. Keep sharing. Keep refusing the filtered version. The people who lied to you about everything else will lie to you about this too. They will say the live feed is dangerous. They will say bypassing them is authoritarian. They will say you need them to interpret your own eyes. No. You do not. You needed them to stop pretending they were honest brokers. Pray. Stand. Speak. ACT. Love, What all of you good people are thinking @realDonaldTrump keep talking straight to the American people. Do not give the legacy press their filter back. Keep Trump TV live. Keep the bypass open. The country is done asking permission.

THE TEST Part 11: Does a Prediction Coming True Prove a Prophet? Don’t believe me. Read it yourself. Last Tuesday we tested the claim that Muhammad’s messenger was Gabriel. Now let’s test another argument used to support Muhammad: “He predicted things that came true, so he was a prophet.” There’s a problem with that. God had already established the rules for testing prophets centuries before Muhammad. “If the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken.” Deuteronomy 18:22 A prediction that fails is evidence against the prophet. But fulfillment alone still does not prove him: “If… the sign or the wonder comes to pass… you shall not listen to the words of that prophet”Deuteronomy 13:1–3 In other words, even when the sign happens, you still test the message against what God already revealed. Now look at one of the strongest predictions Muslims use for Muhammad. Qur’an 30 says the Byzantines had been defeated by Persia but would become victorious “within three to nine years.” Qur’an 30:2–4 Islamic tradition connects the prediction with a wager by Abu Bakr. An initial six-year period passed without the claimed victory, while the tradition places fulfillment in the seventh year. Historically, Byzantine emperor Heraclius began his major counteroffensive in 622. But the war was not decisively won until 627, with peace following in 628. So what exactly fulfilled the prediction? Was it starting the comeback? Winning battles? Or actually winning the war? Depending on where you start counting, final victory came roughly 11–13 years after the commonly proposed date of the prediction, not within nine years. Fine. Give Muhammad the most favorable interpretation and call it fulfilled. It still does not prove he was a prophet. That standard had already been established in the Torah. A successful prediction does not allow a later messenger to create a new standard and then use that standard to authenticate himself. Compare that with biblical prophecy. Isaiah specifically names Cyrus and connects him with Jerusalem and rebuilding. Micah identifies Bethlehem in connection with the coming ruler. Biblical prophecy can make concrete claims about people, places and events outside the prophet’s control and those claims remain subject to God’s established test. There are also predictions attributed to Muhammad that remain unfulfilled, while some reports containing expired deadlines come from weaker hadith. I’m not going to use weak evidence just to make the case look stronger, I don’t need to. Give Muhammad his strongest claimed fulfillment. He still has to pass Deuteronomy 13. Did his message agree with what God had already revealed? Or did a later revelation contradict the earlier one and then expect us to judge it by a different standard? Muhammad doesn’t get to rewrite God’s test. That is THE TEST. Next Tuesday: Did Muhammad’s message change who Jesus is and why He came? Read it yourself. #TheTest

They want a White House badge after this record. What CNN, MS NOW, and Politico pushed that was a lie: 1. Benghazi was a protest over a YouTube video.
There was no protest. It was a planned terrorist attack. 2. Nobody told the team to stand down.
We were told to stand down. Not wait. Stand down. Two men are dead because of that delay. 3. Jussie Smollett got beaten by MAGA attackers in Chicago.
He paid two men he knew to stage it. 4. Hunter Biden’s laptop (Got me removed from twitter) was Russian disinformation.
It was his laptop. The FBI authenticated it. 5. The COVID lab leak was a conspiracy / Trump talking point.
It was a live origin theory. The FBI later called it likely. 6. The 2020 riots were “mostly peaceful.”
Cities burned. People died. That was not a vigil. 7. Officer Sicknick was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher on January 6.
The medical examiner said strokes. No blunt-force trauma. 8. An ICE doctor was a “uterus collector” doing mass forced hysterectomies.
A judge called that verifiably false. They settled the lawsuit. 9. A Navy vet running Afghanistan extractions was a black-market profiteer.
A jury found CNN defamed him and awarded $5 million. 10. Covington Catholic kids in MAGA hats started a racist mob.
Full video showed otherwise. CNN settled with Nick Sandmann. 11. Trump called neo-Nazis “very fine people.”
He said he was not talking about neo-Nazis and white nationalists and they should be condemned totally. They cut the next sentence and ran the smear for years. 12. Trump told Americans to inject bleach.
He asked if UV light or disinfectant that kills the virus on surfaces should be studied. He did not write a Lysol prescription. 13. Trump promised a “bloodbath” meaning civil war.
The line sat inside a tariff speech about Chinese cars and the U.S. auto industry. They stripped the context and sold the word. A right is not a press pass. A press pass is a privilege. Where was this free-speech act when Americans were getting throttled on Twitter, Facebook, and Google? In 2020 the FBI spent months warning platforms about a coming “hack and leak.” Twitter blocked the laptop story. Facebook buried it. In 2021 the Biden White House pressed Facebook for months to police COVID posts, including jokes. Zuckerberg later said both were wrong. These same outlets ignored it. Some helped sell the laptop as Russian disinfo. They did not treat that as a First Amendment emergency. But Losing the badge did! News is supposed to be as accurate as it can be. When it pushes lies and a narrative instead of facts, it should lose credibility and it should lose airtime. Period! This is a short list off an extremely long one. That is the point. They do not care about the truth and they do not care what it does to this country. They care about views, clicks, and likes. That is not journalism, it is the problem and it is one of the biggest problems America has.

They didn’t lose the First Amendment. They lost a badge. They can still speak. They can still publish. They can still cover him. They just don’t get to do it from inside the White House. Nancy Pelosi doesn’t get to lecture anyone about the Constitution. Her gun record: • In Congress since 1987
• NRA grade: F. Scores 0–8% for decades
• Brady Campaign: 100%
• 1994: voted for the federal assault-weapons ban
• 1999: voted against cutting the gun-show wait from 3 days to 1
• 2003: voted against letting commercial pilots carry
• 2003 and 2005: voted against protecting gun makers and sellers from misuse lawsuits
• 2009: “We want them registered. We don’t want them crossing state lines.”
• 2019: whipped and passed H.R. 8 background checks on private sales
• 2019: passed H.R. 1112 stretch the background-check wait up to 10 days
• 2022: voted for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act
• 2022: brought H.R. 1808 to the floor and voted yes new assault-weapons and magazine ban
• 2020: Everytown “Gun Sense Lawmaker of the Year” She spent 40 years treating the Second Amendment like a privilege. Now she’s clutching the First Amendment over a press pass. A White House badge is not the Bill of Rights. Neither is her record. @tigtiegen

Hey @grok based on my tweets, I am: - Which dictator? - Which politician? - Which religious figure? - Which historical figure? - Which artist? - Which ideology? - Which political party? - Which poet? - Which president?

Just had orthopedic knee surgery. Turns out I pretty much have no cartilage left in my knee, so now I get to wear this fancy contraption until we figure out the next step, partial or full knee replacement. And I still have to get the left knee taken care of too. But of course, none of it is considered service connected. 🙄 I mean, I was only an 0311 Marine infantryman. Running, rucking, jumping, kneeling, carrying heavy shit and beating the hell out of my body was kind of part of the job. Apparently knees just randomly destroy themselves like this with no trauma or years of abuse whatsoever. 😂 WTH. Always Move Forward.

This Friday, September 18, is National POW/MIA Recognition Day. For me, this is more than a date on the calendar. It is a reminder that some Americans went to war and never came home. Some endured captivity. Some families have spent decades waiting for answers. We owe them more than a passing thought. We owe them remembrance. We owe their families our respect. And we owe those who are still missing our commitment to never stop looking. The words on that black and white flag say it plainly: YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN. Take a moment Friday. Remember the prisoners of war who came home. Remember those who did not. Remember the missing. Remember the families who still carry that weight every day. As a Marine, I was taught that we do not leave our people behind. That commitment should not end when the fighting stops. Until every possible answer is found, we keep looking. We remember them. We honor them. We do not forget them. John “Tig” Tiegen Running for Mayor Common Sense for COS

What was meant for a hostage rescue saved a soldier's life. Wearing full battle rattle with side plates turned out to be critical protection during a firefight. #Military #SurvivalStory

THE TEST Part 10: How Do We Know It Was Gabriel? Don’t believe me. Read it yourself. Last Tuesday we ended with one question: Who independently verified that the being Muhammad encountered was actually Gabriel? A private encounter does not automatically make a revelation false. The Bible has private angelic encounters too. But look at how Scripture handles the identity of Gabriel. In the Torah, angels are often left unnamed when God does not identify them. Later, Daniel records: “Gabriel, make this man understand the vision.” @Daniel 8:16 Gabriel appears again to Daniel in Daniel 9. Then in the New Testament, Gabriel appears to Zechariah and says plainly: “I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God…” Luke 1:19 And later Gabriel appears separately to Mary: “The angel Gabriel was sent by God…” Luke 1:26 Different people. Different encounters. The same named messenger. And the messages are followed by fulfillment and corroboration. Now apply THE TEST. According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad was alone in the Cave of Hira when the being first appeared. But in that first account, the being never says: “I am Gabriel.” Muhammad returns home frightened and tells Khadija what happened. Khadija takes him to Waraqa. But Waraqa was not there. He did not see the being. He did not hear the message. He heard Muhammad’s account afterward and interpreted the experience. When the being appeared to Muhammad again, the report still does not record him saying: “I am Gabriel.” Later Islamic revelation and tradition identify the being as Gabriel. So here is the question: Who independently established that identity? Not Muhammad saying what happened. Not someone interpreting Muhammad’s story afterward. Who independently knew that this being was Gabriel? And remember what God already told us: “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits…” 1 John 4:1 The question is not whether Muhammad had an experience. The question is: Who was the being? And does the message he delivered agree with what God had already revealed? Because simply calling the messenger Gabriel does not prove he was Gabriel. That is THE TEST. Read it yourself. #TheTest

🇺🇸 SAVE THE DATE — FEBRUARY 27, 2027! 🇺🇸 UNITED FOR HEROES: A GALA FOR HOPE & HEALING Mark your calendars and get ready for an unforgettable evening supporting the mission of Heroes United to Heal Foundation and the Veterans and First Responders we serve. ⭐ KEYNOTE SPEAKER: JOHN “TIG” TIEGEN ⭐ Be prepared to be inspired as Tig shares his story of courage, resilience, sacrifice, and what it means to keep moving forward when the fight is over but the battle within continues. Individual tickets and event sponsorships are available now! IMPORTANT: The link provided below is the ONLY official way to purchase tickets or secure an event sponsorship. Don’t wait—click the link and reserve your spot! Come spend an evening with us as we stand UNITED FOR HEROES and bring hope and healing to those who have given so much for others. February 27, 2027 — We’ll see you there! #UnitedForHeroes #HeroesUnitedToHeal #HopeAndHealing #SupportOurHeroes #Veterans #FirstResponders zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/un…

12 DAYS OF BENGHAZI: DAY 12 PART 2 finale one WHY I KEEP TALKING ABOUT IT For the last 12 days, I have not been trying to retell 13 Hours. If you want the battle, read the book or watch the movie. I wanted people to understand what happened BEFORE the attack and what happened AFTER it. The warnings were there. The attacks had already started. Security requests had already been made. People on the ground were asking for help. The morning of September 11, we personally carried another threat warning directly to Ambassador Stevens. Then the attack happened. Four Americans died. Chris Stevens. Sean Smith. Tyrone “Rone” Woods. Glen “Bub” Doherty. And in the years since, I have learned things I did not know that night. Cable traffic. Timelines. Intelligence. What was happening in Washington. What military assets were available. What people were being told. What Sarah Adams, Boon, and others have uncovered. That is why I still talk about Benghazi. Not because I am stuck in 2012. Not because I need attention. And not because I want to spend the rest of my life arguing with government reports. I talk about it because if we do not tell the truth about why something failed, we cannot fix it. The government can write reports. Agencies can protect themselves. Politicians can blame each other. People can argue over terminology until the end of time. But none of that changes what happened. Four Americans are dead. Families lost sons, husbands, fathers and brothers. And those of us who were there will carry that night for the rest of our lives. I will keep telling what I saw. I will keep telling what I heard. I will keep asking the questions people in power would rather stop answering. And I will keep saying their names. Chris. Sean. Rone. Bub. Because Benghazi should never become just another political argument people remember every four years. It happened. There were failures. There were warnings. There were opportunities to do better. And Americans paid the price. NEVER FORGET BENGHAZI. #12DaysOfBenghazi #Benghazi #13Hours #NeverForget #HonorTheFallen

12 DAYS OF BENGHAZI: DAY 12 PART 1 ACCOUNTABILITY Even with everything we know now, It’s a fact nobody inside the State Department, Department of Defense, or CIA will ever be held accountable for the catastrophic failures that left Americans exposed and cost lives. Except for the ones that expose it and tell the truth like Tanto, Jake, Boon, Oz and myself did. That is the reality of Benghazi. People were reassigned, reinstated, promoted, retired, protected, or allowed to disappear back into the system. Four Americans were dead, and the institutions responsible kept moving. And this is not just about Benghazi. Our government has failed Americans before, and it has failed Americans since. Different administrations. Different agencies. Different crises. Same pattern. Warnings are missed and ignored. Bad decisions are made. People die. Then the investigations start, everybody protects their own, and meaningful accountability disappears. September 11, 2001. Benghazi 9/11/2012 Abbey Gate. Mogadishu. The USS Cole. Hurricane Katrina. COVID. That’s a short list! Different events. Different failures. Different agencies. But the same question keeps coming back: WHO IS ACTUALLY HELD ACCOUNTABLE WHEN GOVERNMENT FAILURE COSTS AMERICAN LIVES? If your incompetence or dereliction of duty costs American lives, there should be real consequences. If you accept a position where Americans depend on your judgment, preparation, and decisions for their lives, then you accept the responsibility that comes with that job. You do not get to take the title, the authority, the salary, and the power, then hide behind bureaucracy when your failures get people killed. And when the evidence proves criminal negligence, willful dereliction of duty, corruption, or deliberate misconduct, the people responsible should be prosecuted. If convicted, they should go to prison! If you cannot handle that responsibility, do not take the fucking job. Because if nobody is ever held accountable, why should anyone believe the system will ever fix itself? #12DaysOfBenghazi #Benghazi #Accountability #NeverForget #HonorTheFallen

12 DAYS OF BENGHAZI: DAY 11 PART 3 of 3 THE AIR SUPPORT THAT NEVER CAME By the time Benghazi was attacked, this was not happening in a vacuum. Cairo had already been breached that day. Benghazi had been deteriorating for months. Western targets had already been attacked. Security requests had been denied, reduced, or ignored. And that morning, we personally carried another threat warning directly to Ambassador Stevens. That is why my question is bigger than just Benghazi and who told the military to stand down crap. WHY WASN’T THE WHOLE REGION SPINNING UP? After Cairo was breached, why weren’t U.S. and allied assets across the region being put on alert, repositioned, fueled, crewed, or prepared in case something else happened? Especially Benghazi! The warning signs had been there for months. The argument always becomes, “Could a fighter jet or some other aircraft have made it there after the attack started?” That is not the question I am asking. My question is: WHY WAS NOTHING ALREADY MOVING? The official timelines show F-16s at Aviano were never launched. FAST platoons were held. The Commander’s In-Extremis Force was sent to Sigonella instead of Benghazi. A four-man SOCAFRICA team in Tripoli was told not to board a plane to Benghazi and remain in place. The bigger failure was posture. I had flown through Crete on my first trip into Benghazi. I knew U.S. and allied military assets operated in that region. Souda Bay was only a few hundred miles away. Sigonella was in Sicily. Aviano had F-16s. And I keep hearing the argument that the jets were not armed or could not have dropped bombs in the city. That misses the point. We did not need bombs first, we needed aircraft overhead. A fighter making low passes over that fight changes the enemy’s calculation immediately. Get something there. Send the armed package behind it if you need to. Years later, I was shown cable traffic from that night referencing the medical bird Charleston wanting to come to Benghazi from Germany. After the first attack on our compound, our team leader told the Charleston we didn’t need them, we were good. That was not intentional. He was responding to the situation as he understood it. Nobody outside Benghazi understood we were still under attack. We were still knee deep in the fight. Once that message went out that we were “good,” people farther up the chain were making decisions based on a picture that was already wrong. If you don’t understand why the response broke down, you can’t fix it. A medical bird was moving. Libyan authorities were cooperating with aircraft movement. So where was the combat support? Where were our allies? We came to the aid of the British Ambassador when his convoy was attacked in Benghazi. That is what Americans do. We help our allies. We move. We respond. So when Americans needed that same help, where was everybody? The official record can argue over “stand down,” “hold,” “remain in place,” or “do not board.” Fine. The result was the same. The region was not postured to respond when Americans needed it. Sarah Adams and Boon have made the same broader point: we were not asking somebody to rescue us so we could run away. We needed reinforcement. We were still in the fight. And nobody came. After months of warnings, previous attacks, denied security requests, Cairo being breached, and another threat warning that morning… WHY WASN’T THE WHOLE REGION ALREADY SPINNING UP? The only answer I can come up with is incompetence! #12DaysOfBenghazi #Benghazi #13Hours #NeverForget #HonorTheFallen

12 DAYS OF BENGHAZI: DAY 11 PART 2 THE STAND-DOWN When the U.S. consulate came under attack, we were at the CIA Annex about a mile away. We were geared up, ready to go, and prepared to move. Then Bob looked directly at me and said “stand down you need to wait” Let me make something crystal clear: that stand-down did not come from Washington, the Pentagon, or somebody else talking in his ear. It came from Bob. Weeks before September 11, the commander of the 17 Feb had already told Bob that if anything happened, they were not going to help us. Then, on the night of the attack, while we were getting ready to go, Bob got that same commander on the phone. And again, the answer was the same: they were not going to help. But understand this part too: WE DID NOT KNOW THAT. We had no idea what 17 Feb was telling Bob that night or what they had told him weeks earlier. If we had known they had already told him they were not coming, we would have punched out immediately. We were standing there ready to move, believing Bob was still trying to coordinate some kind of local response and a joint link-up. Meanwhile, he already knew 17 Feb was not coming. And he was still telling us to stand down. I was standing there. Bob looked directly at me and said it. Americans were under attack. We were about a mile away. We were ready to move, and Bob was telling us not to leave. We did not wait for him to change his mind. The final straw was Alec Henderson, the senior Diplomatic Security agent at the compound, coming over the radio: “If you guys don’t get here now, we’re all gonna fucking die.” That was it. Americans were calling for help. Hell, we started leaving before our team leader was even with us. We left without Bob’s permission. That is the stand-down I have been talking about all these years. And that stand-down order is the reason Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith are not with us today. If we had left when we were ready, the attackers wouldn’t have had free rein to set the buildings on fire. That is a fact! Bob gave the order. Bob knew 17 Feb was not coming. We did not know. And we went anyway. We were the only hope they had of getting out alive. #12DaysOfBenghazi #Benghazi #13Hours #NeverForget #HonorTheFallen

12 DAYS OF BENGHAZI: DAY 11 PART 1 By the morning of September 11, the warning signs had been piling up for months. Then Benghazi gave us more. Around 9 or 10 that morning, I drove our CIA Chief of Base, “Bob,” and another case officer to meet with local Libyan intelligence. It was the first time they had met at this location, directly across the street from the U.S. Special Mission compound. Normally I wouldn’t have gone inside. This time I did because something about the place didn’t feel right. The office itself felt wrong too. From the second floor, you could clearly see into the main compound where Ambassador Stevens’ villa was located. After years of doing this kind of work overseas, it didn’t look like any intelligence office I was used to. Hardly any furniture. Small desks. A few office chairs. Almost empty. I didn’t sit in on the meeting. But when Bob and the other case officer came out, we went straight to the U.S. compound. The Libyans had warned them that intelligence indicated a local government facility in Benghazi would be attacked that day. We took that warning directly to Ambassador Chris Stevens. Morning of September 11, local intelligence was warning that an attack was expected in Benghazi that day. There was another red flag. A Libyan police officer assigned around the U.S. mission was reported photographing the compound from an elevated position across the street. Sean Smith knew about it and later wrote online: “Assuming we don’t die tonight. We saw one of our ‘police’ that guard the compound taking pictures.” Then look at what was happening elsewhere. Hours before Benghazi was attacked, protesters in Cairo breached the perimeter of the U.S. Embassy, entered the compound, tore down the American flag and replaced it with a black flag. So by then, an American diplomatic facility had already been overrun on September 11. Washington knew unrest was spreading across the region. It knew Benghazi was a high-threat post. It knew about the previous attacks. It knew about the security shortfalls. And that morning, we had personally carried another threat warning directly to Ambassador Stevens. Yet no American military force had been positioned close enough to Benghazi to respond quickly if something happened. That is what amazes me to this day. Cairo had already been breached! Benghazi had been warning Washington for months. We had another threat warning that morning. And still, nothing was being moved toward that region in anticipation of trouble. Then that night the attack started. And even after Washington knew Americans were under attack, the later House investigation found that almost six hours after the first attack began, no military asset ordered by the Secretary of Defense was moving toward Benghazi or Tripoli, aside from personnel already in Tripoli who arranged their own movement. Think about that. The warnings were there. The security failures were known. Another U.S. Embassy had already been breached that day. And still, when Benghazi erupted, the military response was starting from behind. That is why Day 11 is not about retelling the 13 Hours. If you want the fight, read the book or watch the movie. This is about what happened before the first shot was fired and how many chances there were to be ready. #12DaysOfBenghazi #Benghazi #13Hours #NeverForget #HonorTheFallen

Why are people so stupid? Congress arguing over the State Department’s worldwide request is not why Charlene Lamb told Nordstrom not to ask for the MSD team to stay. The compound had already been bombed. The British ambassador had already been hit with an RPG. Stevens and the people on the ground asked for more security. Washington said no. That’s not a budget footnote. That’s a decision. Had nothing to do with Jason Chaffetz talking to Soledad O’Brien. Had nothing to with funding dipshit! And the guy in the meme isn’t even Chaffetz. Budget fight ≠ Lamb’s “do not ask for the MSD team.” They asked. State said no. Four Americans died. Try again.