Circumstantial Evidence Points
To Morsi-Benghazi Connection
Was former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood involved in the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya?
Circumstantial evidence possibly links the attack to Morsi’s campaign to free the so-called blind sheik, Omar Abdel-Rahman, who is serving a life sentence in the U.S. for conspiracy in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Securing Rahman’s release was one of Morsi’s main foreign objectives. One week before the attack in Benghazi, Morsi once again called for the U.S. to free Rahman.
Last week, several major Arabic newspapers ran a story, first reported by the Kuwaiti paper Al Rai, quoting a Libyan intelligence report on the Benghazi attack that mentions an alleged connection to Morsi and other prominent Egyptian figures. The report, prepared by Mahmoud Ibrahim Sharif, director of national security for Libya, is based on purported confessions of some of the jihadists arrested at the scene.
While the credibility of the confessions solicited in Libya, probably under duress, can easily be called into question, there is other information pointing to Morsi’s possible involvement in the Benghazi attack.
YouTube videos of the attack find some of the jihadists speaking an Egyptian dialect of Arabic, as previously reported by FrongPageMag. One of the videos shows a jihadist carrying out the attack while stating in an Egyptian dialect, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, Dr. Morsi sent us.”
There were also unconfirmed reports that Egypt would not allow the U.S. to interrogate suspects in the attack.
Originally, the Obama administration claimed the attack evolved from popular protests over an obscure anti-Muhammad film. Later, it became evident that no such demonstrations took place; instead the attacks were a coordinated jihadist assault. The White House sought to connect the Sept. 11 Benghazi attack to protests that same day in Cairo, Egypt, in which rioters climbed the walls of the U.S. Embassy and tore down the American flag.
The Cairo protests were widely reported as acts of defiance against the anti-Muhammad movie. However, the protests were announced days in advance as part of a movement to free Rahman. In July 2012, Rahman’s son, Abdallah Abdel Rahman, threatened to organize a protest at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and detain the employees inside.
On the day of the Sept. 11, 2012, protests in Cairo, CNN’s Nic Robertson interviewed the son of Rahman, who described the protest as being about freeing his father. No Muhammad film was mentioned. A big banner calling for Rahman’s release can be seen as Robertson walked to the embassy protests.
A jihadist group seeking the release of the blind sheik and calling itself the Omar Abdul Rahman Brigades reportedly was responsible for a June 6, 2012, bomb attack on the U.S. facility in Benghazi. The bomb exploded at the perimeter of the facility, wounding one. There is information that murdered U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens or another U.S. employee was the target of the attack.
What The New York Times Neglected To Say
A New York Times profile of Valerie Jarrett, President Obama’s top aide, glosses over her family’s radical history, including ties to a top communist activist and to former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.
The profile, from September 2012, received newfound media attention earlier this week after BuzzFeed.com reported White House efforts to defend Jarrett behind the scenes by circulating glowing talking points about her to other administration officials who were candidates to be interviewed for the Times piece.
The Times profile of Jarett was not without criticism, but it did not include any of Jarrett’s radical family connections. Regarding Jarrett’s mother, the Times wrote only that “her mother had a Chicago street named after her for her work in early childhood education.”
As this journalist was first to report, Jarrett’s mother, Barbara Taylor Bowman, founded an education initiative alongside Ayers’ family that was funded by Ayers, Obama, and ultimately the 2009 stimulus legislation.
The Erikson Institute focuses on training people who work in early childhood development. Besides founding Erikson, Bowman was president of the institute from 1994 to 2001 and served as the school’s Irving B. Harris professor of child development.
One of the Erikson Institute’s former trustees and members of the executive committee is the late Thomas Ayers, father of Bill Ayers. Weatherman terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers’ wife, also served on Erikson’s board.